From owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Fri Jan 1 09:13:04 1993
Status: RO
X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]
["16103" "Fri" "1" "January" "1993" "08:55:19" "+0200" "Denise Tree"
"tree@midget.towson.edu " nil "373" "Linux News #9" "^From:" nil nil "1"])
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA06542
(5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4 for < arl@cs.hut.fi>); Fri, 1 Jan 1993 09:11:52 +0159
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by niksula.hut.fi id <61796-6>;
Fri, 1 Jan 1993 09:11:25 +0200
Received: from midget.towson.edu ([131.118.70.11])
by niksula.hut.fi with SMTP id <61796-5>; Fri, 1 Jan 1993 08:57:01 +0200
Received: by midget.towson.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C)
id AA09989; Fri, 1 Jan 93 01:55:47 -0500
X-Note1: Remember to put 'X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS' to your mail body or header
Message-Id: <9301010655.AA09989@midget.towson.edu>
Sender: owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
From: tree@midget.towson.edu (Denise Tree)
To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
Subject: Linux News #9
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 08:55:19 +0200
X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS
L i n u x N e w s
A summary of the goings-on in the Linux community
Issue #9 December 21 to Jan 1
Our Motto: "To Hack and to Serve"
***** News of Note
- 0.99 and 0.99 patchlevel 1 kernels released
- GCC 2.3.3 and Linux C library 4.2 available at tsx-11
- H.J. Lu's new bootable rootdisk released
- YAPPS (yet another /proc ps) source at tsx-11
- Xxgdb (X interface to Gnu debugger) uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu
- New Gnu utility binaries from Rik Faith
- Tinymush and tinyfugue binaries uploaded
- PennMush 1.5 ported
- Newest Seyon is 1.6
- Ver. 0.2 of libgr.so sent to sunsite.unc.edu
- SUGG conference in Moscow calls for papers on free software
- Ed Carp uploads atp-1.3 (QWK reader)
- Drivers for XT controllers Alpha-4 version are ready
- Lars Wirzenius steps down as Linux News Editor, Denise Tree takes
over
***** Goodbye
After doing eight issues of Linux News I decided to force, er, ask
somebody else to continue. After I sent out issue #8 with the request
for volunteers, I received several replies within a couple of hours.
Nice to see that there is still that kind of spirit lingering among
Linuxers.
I picked Denise Tree as my successor, partly using a few random
criteria (I recognized her name from c.o.l from way back, and a few
other things like that), but mostly because her reply was by far the
funniest. I'm sorry for all you others who also wanted to do it, but
it is better to have only one person in charge of this kind of thing.
However, I'm sure Denise will be glad to get any offerings for help,
especially after the first few issues (it's more fun in the beginning;
trust me, I know what I'm talking about).
I have received about fifteen post cards and one letter in response to
the begging buried in the legalese section of a few issues. Thanks to
all of you who sent them, they (among other things) motivated me a lot
when the thing started to get only routine and less and less fun.
Don't get me wrong, Linux News never got unpleasant; I gave it away
before things got that bad. Especially the first three or four issues
were quite fun. The rest were more routine than creativity, and I
feared that I would get quite bored and quite disgusted with it, and
this was one reason why I decided to give LN away.
Let's hope that Denise likes routine more than I do.
Some people noticed that I got somebody else to do the INFO-SHEET and
the Meta-FAQ as well, and were curious why I did that. Was I going to
give up Linux?
Well, no, I'm not going to give up Linux. Part of the reason I have
given up these things is that I don't really have the time for them.
The time freed by not doing them anymore I will allocate for studies
(which haven't been progressing very well during the past year), and
also for the Linux documentation project, which I coordinate.
Unfortunately, there are more unpleasant reasons as well. Those who
read comp.os.linux might have noticed that it is very active and has a
lot of messages per day. Although I have no problem myself with the
volume (even if I have at least skimmed through every article, high
though it is, the amount of quality discussion is heart-breakingly low
and the amount of crap unpleasantly high.
Even worse, the number of persons asking questions that are directly
answered either by my INFO-SHEET and Meta-FAQ, the real FAQ, or what
other documentation is available is so high that I almost feel sick.
So, since there seem to be few people who make use of them, the hours
I have put into writing them, and the on-going effort of maintaining
them, seem to be quite wasted. Since I did I-S and M-F for a purpose
-- to reduce the number of repeated questions -- and since that goal
did not seem to get achieved, I didn't find it worth my time to go on.
At the moment, I have grown tired of fighting windmills and trying to
improve the signal-to-noise ratio of comp.os.linux. I guess c.o.l
will never again be the cozy meeting place of hackers and intelligent
newbies who discuss things in a friendly manner, fool around, and
generally have a good time.
I am not certain that I wish to dwell much in the dark place that
c.o.l has become, where newbies come in and the first thing they do is
to try to change the Linux community to their tastes, who want to be
spoonfed any and all information, and who go around demanding that
others do various bigger and smaller things for them, preferably by
tomorrow.
Therefore, I will retire myself from most things I've been doing for
the Linux community, instead continuing to whine. Of course, since
there really _are_ people who do behave in the way that I consider to
be civilized, I haven't just stopped doing things, but have instead
found other people to take over the tasks, in the hope that these
people will continue to be helped.
On a more pleasant note, I'd like to thank all of those who have given
me feedback over the past months, either in the form of thank yous,
encouragement, or, best of all, constructive criticism and
corrections. Despite my dark ramblings above, you have been many and
I am truly thankful for you all. Without that kind of support from
the Linuxers, I probably would have given up a lot sooner, given that
I very easily grow tired of people I consider stupid (being ignorant
is all right, being stupid and/or inconsiderate is not).
I guess what I want to say is that I don't like comp.os.linux that
well anymore, but thanks to those who have supported me this far,
sorry that I can't continue, good luck to you all, hope you enjoy
yourselves. If and when I feel that c.o.l is a dwellable place again,
and/or I cool down a bit and grow a thicker skin, I may become more
active again. If not, well, it isn't my loss (if it is a loss at
all).
Goodbye friends.
No longer at your service,
Lasu.
***** A few editorial words from Denise Tree
Goodbye Lars ... and thank you for all your work and committment. I
promise to do my best to add something to Linux until I too, become
gloomy (or until my grades slip).
It was almost exactly one year ago that I put a "rawwrote" floppy into
the A: drive of my '386 and was amazed to see a new OS actually
booting. Like many people I suppose, I didn't like MS-DOS or any of the
commercial schemes available to simulate real multitasking. I wanted
to run Unix on my own computer! I had read with anticipation about the
port of BSD by the Jolitz's and of Hurd, but since they seemed long in
arriving I had resorted to using a DOS clone of the Bourne shell and a
mess of Unix-like DOS utilities in a free package called dosnix. Linus
Torvalds version of the 0.11 kernel made such kluges unnecessary.
Since then I have been an evangelical Linux Activist (I ended up
changing my major from biology to COSC).
So what... some might say. I'll bet the story I've told could be told
with minor variations by almost everyone with a Linux partition.
That's just the point of course. There have been many posts (some of
which have contributed to Lars' gloomification) and even some really
extended pontification about how Linux should be "handled" or whether Linux
will be a "success" or what should be done to "improve" Linux....
blah blah woof woof. Well, it has already been said but I think it
bears repeating:
1. Linux _is_ a success.
2. Decisions about Linux will be handled by those who
do the work.
3. Linux will be improved by those who do the work and
the beta testers who test it.
I will try and continue Linux News much as Lars did and if I have the
time I will try and do some new things which I hope will be of value
to the Linux Community (and fun for me).
Happy New Year and Happy Hacking!
Please send Lars some more post cards!
If you have praise, criticisms, suggestions, virtual beer or pizza or
postcards send to:
tree@midget.towson.edu
Denise Tree
348 Ilchester Ave.
Baltimore, MD. 21218
***** Announcements
- December 21 Linus released the first patch for the 0.99 kernel which
changed the following:
1. Configuration script debugged
2. inode.c initializaion changed (missing NULL and minor
fixes)
3. SCSI tape patches by Kai M{kisara
4. tcp/ip patches by Ross Biro and Linus
5. keyboard patches to eliminate lockups
6. completed /proc-fs (Michael Johnson)
7. other minor fixes
8. support for extended VC switching in support of future X11
which will understand VC's. Linus say's "Wait for Xfree-1.2
to be able to switch VC's while under X (yes, including several
X-sessions active at the same time..).
FTP: nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/testing/Linus (cd blind)
tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/sources/system
- December 21 Michael Caro uploaded xxgdb.bin.TZ and xxgdb.info.TZ to
sunsite.unc.edu. Xxgdb is the X interface for gdb, the Gnu debugger.
It was compiled with libc.so.4.2
FTP: sunsite.unc.edu:/(???)
- December 21 Michael Johnson announces that he is writing a
/proc-based ps which does not depend on /dev/kmem for process status
information. It will eliminate the need for recompiling ps with
every kernel change and he hopes to have it completed in time for
the 1.0 kernel release.
- December 23 Olaf Kirch sent a patch to tsx-11 to help in compiling
GWM-1.7n, the generic window manager. Look for gwm-patch.tar.Z.
FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: (probably in pub/linux/sources/usr.bin.X11)
- December 23 David Peterson announces new binaries of tinymush 2.0.9
and tinyfugue 2.0.b2 (mud's?) compiled with libc4.1 jump tables and
4.0 libm.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu: tinymush-2.0.9-bin.tar.Z
- December 25 Rik Faith released a large collection of Gnu binaries
compiled with libc 4.1 jump tables and gcc 2.2.2d7 ( tested with
0.99 kernel and libc 4.2). Included are:
*.Notes - Instructions for installation, ftp sites for src, patches
for compilation
*.taz - tarred, compressed binaries, COPYING, README's, man and info
pages
*.dist - used to build the *.taz file
*.Unins file - will uninstall binaries and leave src intact
This package includes the Gnu shell, file and text utils plus MANY
more FSF and Gnu utilities.
Bug reports and comments to: faith@cs.unc.edu
FTP:*.Notes files are in the following places:
ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/FSF
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils
*.taz files are in the following places:
ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/FSF
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils
The hard to find (i.e., non-GNU) sources are in the following places:
ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils/sources
tsx-11.mit.edu:?
sunsite.unc.edu:?
Source for FSF utilties are in the following places:
prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/FSF/from_prep
- December 26 M. Saggaf released version 1.6 of Seyon, the X based
communication program. Seyon uses Xterm ( or any other X terminal
emulator ) and has auto-detect zmodem download, mouse aware dialing
directory and transfer protocol selection. NOTE: Be sure and get the
source for zmodem, rzsz9202.tar.Z, and patch with Xrz3D.tar.Z (at
sunsite.unc.edu: pub/Linux/X11/utils) for a really nice graphical
download status display.
FTP: sipb.mit.edu: pub/seyon
- December 27 Michael Johnson announced improvements to his /proc
based ps and some new programs including: free, uptime, and tload.
FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/BETA/procps/procps.tar.Z
- December 28 Geoffrey S. Knauth posts an announcement for a
conference on free software to take place in Moscow on March 19 to
23. Exerpted from Geoffrey's post:
The conference is hosted by SUUG, the Society of Unix User Groups
(formerly the Soviet Unix Users Group), the Russian Center for Systems
Programming, the Russian Chapter of the Free Software Foundation, and
the International Center for Scientific and Technical Information.
Participant specialists are coming from North America, Europe and
Japan. We have just learned that Richard Stallman, founder of the
Free Software Foundation, and recipient of the ACM Admiral Grace
Hopper Award and MacArthur Fellowship, will attend.
The main topics of the Workshop include:
- the current state of the GNU project and other FSF projects;
- "free" software means information freedom and sharing;
- free software portability in Open Systems environments;
- user experiences with free software;
- free software in education and training;
- legal aspects of free software;
- relevance of free software to NIS modernization and democracy;
- how NIS scientists can contribute to free software.
(.. stuff deleted ..)
The precise location of the conference will be announced in the
coming months.
For further information, you may contact any of the following
members of the program committee:
Name Telephone E-mail
========================== ================= ======================
Moscow
Sergei Kuznetsov (Chair) +7 (095) 272-4425 kuz@ivann.delta.msk.su
Peter Brusilovski +7 (095) 198-7055 plb@plb.icsti.su
Dmitry Volodin +7 (095) 231-2129 dvv@hq.demos.su
Boston
Geoffrey S. Knauth +1 (617) 891-5555 gsk@marble.com
- December 29 Rik Faith re-announced his release of the Gnu (and more)
utilities for Linux and also notes:
WHY SOME OF THE BINARIES DUMP CORE:
All of the recent binaries were linked with gcc 2.2.2d7/jump 4.1, but on a
system with libc.so.4.2 installed. In particular, the rcs56A.taz files
will dump core *unless* you have libc.so.4.2. On the other hand, if you
just recompile the source distribution, it appears that it will work fine
on your system with libc.so.4.2. Please report other problems so that I
can update the solutions.
- December 29 Pat Mackinley sent his ALPHA-4 XT controller drivers to
tsx-11.mit.edu and nic.funet.fi. These drivers let you use XT (8
bit) controllers under Linux in conjunction with normal 16 bit AT
interface cards. These cards use different IO ports and IRQ's so
they will not conflict with AT hardware, thus allowing two more
drives to be used (a pretty neat wat to utilize older hardware).
FTP: filename not given yet
- December 30 H.J. Lu announced the availability of gcc2.3.3 at
tsx-11. It requires the libc4.2 library installed to run.
FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/gcc233.TZ
- December 30 H.J. Lu announced Linux C Library version 4.2.
From H.L.'s post:
This is the release of the Linux C library 4.2. You have to
install the source code of 0.98 pl5 to use it since fd_set is changed
and it needs . You don't have to use 0.98 pl 5 kernel.
But 0.98 pl 4 kernel is necessary. You also need gcc 2.3.3 or above to
use it.
Since kernel now has the 387 emulation, we don't need soft math library
anymore.
I was told this shared image work with older kernel (newer than 0.97
pl4). I have put libnet.a and librpc.a back into libc.a.
Please get the latest binutils.TZ from tsx-11.mit.edu if you cannot
get your binaries linked with the shared libraries.
You can get them from tsx-11.mit.edu under pub/linux/GCC. The
file names are image-4.2.TZ, extra-4.2.TZ, gxx-2.3.TZ, inc-4.2.TZ,
jump-4.2.TZ and libc-4.2.TZ.
- December 30 H.L. Lu has made a new bootable rootdisk for the 0.99pl1
kernel using a lite version of libc.so.4.2 which does not have
curses, sun rpc or gdbm. The Image has SCSI, tcp/ip and 387
emulation.
FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk/3rootdisk.Z (for 3.5")
tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk/5rootdisk.Z (for 5" )
Please forgive me if any announcements have been missed. I missed a
few days of mail ( I have no Netnews at my school) and I have lost
some older mail... send mail to tree@midget.towson.edu if you would
like me to include something in Linux News #10 ....
From owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Sun Jan 10 19:50:51 1993
Status: RO
X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]
["17225" "Sun" "10" "January" "1993" "19:31:17" "+0200" "Denise Tree"
"tree@midget.towson.edu " nil "379" "Linux News #10" "^From:" nil nil "1"])
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA23981
(5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4 for < arl@cs.hut.fi>); Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:50:41 +0200
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by niksula.hut.fi id <61479-5>;
Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:50:20 +0200
Received: from midget.towson.edu ([131.118.70.11])
by niksula.hut.fi with SMTP id <61479-2>; Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:33:14 +0200
Received: by midget.towson.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C)
id AA26110; Sun, 10 Jan 93 12:31:45 -0500
X-Note1: Remember to put 'X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS' to your mail body or header
Message-Id: <9301101731.AA26110@midget.towson.edu>
Sender: owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
From: tree@midget.towson.edu (Denise Tree)
To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
Subject: Linux News #10
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:31:17 +0200
X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS
L i n u x N e w s
A summary of the goings-on in the Linux community
Issue #10 Jan 1 to Jan 10
Unser Motto: "Hacken und Helfen"
***** Contents
- My Two Cents ....... blah blah woof woof from the editor
- Announcements ....... the week++ in c.o.l. and c.o.l.a.
- How Jump Tables Work .. Eric Youngdale
- Good Answers ....... to questions in and out of the FAQ
***** My Two Cents
Well, it's been ~one week since my first issue of Linux News and I've
received no exploding binaries or redirected output from "worms" or
"rain" in my mailbox .. so here is another issue. In fact, all the
mail I received was helpful and encouraging, particularly that from
Arnd Gehrmann, who provided the German translation of "our motto", and
Bernie, another German Linux Activist. Thanks guys and thanks to Eric
for his short tutorial on jump tables. Because there are now many
channels available for Announcements, I would like to include useful
and informative "articles" in Linux News. If you have written, or
would like to write, anything on the technical, theoretical, or
practical nature of Linux ... send me mail! Success stories, porting
sagas, interviews, "Where Were You When 0.10 Was Released", "How
Hacking Made My Girl/Boy Friend Leave/Marry Me" ... all are welcome.
I've also started a little section for answers to questions posted
which seem as though they would be worth repeating; either because
they are in the FAQ and are _STILL_ posted or because they are
interesting and not answered in the FAQ.
Special Request: Would readers in non-English speaking countries (like
Denmark, Finland, Italy and Baltimore) please send me translations of
"Our Motto: To hack and to serve"?
- Denise Tree
tree@midget.towson.edu
tree@cs.jhu.edu ( a real special thank you to
hometown Activist Bill Bogstad, at J.H.U.,
for this account, no more will "less" be my
news reader)!
***** Announcements
- Linux-0.99 patchlevel 2 kernel ready
- Settime source and binary at sunsite
- XpoolTable-1.2 at export.lcs.mit.edu
- ANNOUNCE channel: New at Linux-Activists
- New extended file system programs efsck and mkefs released
- Dmalloc.taz (debugging malloc package) uploaded
- New SLS expected soon
- Seyon 1.7
- Glib and adagio (patch editor and score player for Soundblaster) at tsx-11
- Mailpak-1.4 is available
- Lilo 0.8 released
- Zip 1.9pl1 and Unzip 5.0 binaries at sunsite and tsx-11
- Ncurses ... new BETA curses library available for use
- New alt newsgroup - alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions
- QIC -02 driver release 2d is out
- Binary of Seyon 1.7 is available
- Linux FAQ now in a Latex version!
- Network suite new at sunsite
- New curses lib expected soon from Ed Carp
- BSD C shell for Linux
- SUIT works with Linux!
- SUIT is explained!
***** Announcements
- January 1 Linus sent out the 0.99pl2 kernel today with the request:
"Please try out 0.99.2: the more feedback (hopefully positive) I get
on it, the faster 1.0 will be out".
Linus lists the following changes:
- pretty much rewritten low-level keyboard handling IO - this time
actually trying to do it by the book. It now handles resend requests
from the keyboard etc.
- you can run executables from filesystems without bmap support. This
mainly means NFS and msdos. Note that while it's possible, it's
slower and less memory-efficient than using a "normal" linux
filesystem, and should generally be avoided.
- /proc filesystem changes: /proc/kmsg can be used to log the kernel
messages under X11 (instead of using the older system call to do the
same), and there are changes to the statistics routines (WCHAN).
+ various minor fixes (non-existent devices are handled better, some
changes to socket bind behaviour etc).
Linus
- January 1 John Turnbull announced binaries and source for
settime, a utility to set the system clock with the NIST clock in
Boulder, CO. and display the time. Binaries compiled with jump
tables and tested with libc 4.2.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu: pub/Linux/Incoming/settime.tar.Z
- January 1 Arit Ismail has uploaded version 1.2 od XpoolTable
to export.lcs.mit.edu and notes that it will compile out of the box
for Linux
FTP:export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/XPoolTable-1.2.tar.Z
- January 2 Matt Welsh has created the ANNOUNCE channel on
Linux-Activists to mirror comp.os.linux.announce. To join the
channel send mail to linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi and put
"X-Mn-Admin: join ANNOUNCE" in the message body.
- January 2 Remy Card will make new versions of the extended file
system utilities, efsck and mkefs, available at tsx-11. These
versions are compatible with gcc 2.3.3 and libc 4.2.
FTP: to be released soon as:
efsprogs12.tar.Z - source and binaries
efsprogs12.bin.tar.Z - binaries
efsprogs12.src.tar.Z - source
efsprogs.p12.Z - patch against ver. 11
- January 4 Peter MacDonald says that is "ironing out a few last
wrinkles before I can cut a set of disks for a new version of SLS".
From Peter's post:
First though, I have had some reports of people with some SCSI drives
still having to use an older kernel to boot, because they can not boot
.99p[012] successfully. Anybody else?
Now to the serial ttys. Unless someone comes up with the equivalant
of a grand unified forces theory to explain why I can't, I plan
on renaming the serial devices in the next SLS release to
ttyS0, ttyS1 and ttyS2. This because between Xwindows, emacs,
screen, and tcpip, psuedo ttys are getting pretty much in
demand. I am not worried about running out of them, so much
as I am about applications trying to grab ttys0, and do
funny things with it.
This came clear to me when I was revising the MAKEDEV script to
generate the 64 pty pairs. No can do using pqrs.
The ps2 mouse device will also be renamed back to ps2aux (as
it is not a busmouse) from bmouseps2. I hate changing device
names, but can't be helped.
I also want to have a post install script in place, to be
run after logging in the first time. This can set things
to be a bit more generic. Like /dev/mouse.
I noticed that the uugetty program in getty_ps2.04 does lose
chars, but it does it for me sporadically. If I am using
kermit, for example, I can usually fix it by exiting,
and restarting kermit a few times. Also, when I am
dialing from kermit, the first char is not echoed (ie, the
'a' from 'atdt').
There will be a very large number of changes to the next
release, all of it in series 'a', 'b', and 'c'.
So much so, that upgrading will not be practical. You
will have to download the entire three series (16 disks).
This will include the new compiler and libraries, and
a number of new packages, as well as many fixed binaries
and new versions.
This upgrade will go smoother, because I will not release
it until I am satisfied. So don't ask when. I will
give a days notice (more if possible).
Peter.
- January 4 Muhammad Saggaf has updated Seyon, the X based
communications package, to version 1.7. There are many changes,
including: updated man page (note: FAQ is outdated), revised popup
window location - no more "dangling" windows, new resource
dialAutoClose - closes the dialing directory window after a succesful
connection, case sensitive script commands and keywords, new
configuration script, and much more.
FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon/
- January 5 Greg Lee has made sound tools for the Soundblaster or
compatible available at tsx-11. They are glib, a patch editor, and
adagio, a music score player.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/incoming/glib18.tar.Z and adagio01.tar.Z
- January 7 Ed Carp has uploaded an abbreviated version of mailpak to
sunsite which contains taylor-uucp-gamma 1.04,elm-2.4pl17 patches,
uustatus, and sample uucp system files. As Ed explains, much of the
functionality of mailpak-1.3 is now included in newspak-1.2.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/mailpak-1.4
- January 7 Werner Almsberger has announced the latest release of Lilo
for Linux which includes: quick installation script, serial line
operation, scsi disk parameter detection (except for Seagate and
Ultrastore controllers).
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ and
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/lilo:lilo.8.tar.Z and
lilo.8.ps.Z (postscript docs)
- January 7 Rick Sladkey has uploaded new networking programs to
sunsite. New versions of ftp, ftpd, rshd, rlogin, rlogind, finger,
fingerd, talk, ntalkd, tftp and tftpd are included. Libc 4.2 must be
present to utilize these binaries and rlogind will only work with
0.99pl2 kernel.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/net-0.2README
net-src-0.2.tar.Z
net-bin-0.2.tar.Z
- January 7 Greg Naber has put newest versions of Zip and Unzip at
tsx-11 and sunsite
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu: unzip50.tar.Z (source)
unzip50.zip (source?)
- January 7 A new BETA version of Curtis Pavel's ncurses has been
uploaded to sunsite by Zeyd M. Ben-Halim. Ncurses is a SYSV com-
patible curses which supports keypad and terminfo; Zeyd has also
added ALPHA color support! This is a testing release and it is
requested that people tinker, test, and make bugs and comments
available for improvements. Docs are there too.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ncurses.lzh
- January 8 Jyrki Kuoppala announced the new Usenet University
newsgroup alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions - the Q&A column.
For more info see the FAQ in alt.uu.announce and alt.uu.future
- January 8 Hennus Bergman has uploaded the new QIC-02 tape driver.
It requires ~0.99pl1 kernel to run.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/QIC-02/tpqic02-2d.tar.Z
- January 8 In order to make Seyon a little more accessable for those
who are unfamiliar with X compilation/configuration, Muhammad Saggaf
has put together a binary distribution with an install script for
his version 1.7pl2 of the X comms program. The binaries are made
with libc4.2 and X libs 2.1: these must be installed correctly on
your system in order to use the binary.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/Seyon-1.7-linux-bin-tar.Z
- January 8 Pepe Flores Peters has uploaded Latex source and .dvi file
for the Linux FAQ. It's the most beautiful FAQ he's ever seen :).
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/docs/linux-faq.tex.Z
linux-faq.dvi.Z
- January 8 Ed Carp has announced that he is working on a pre-ALPHA
release of the Linux curses library with support for function and
arrow keys (hooray!) and ACS support (???). Send mail to Ed at
erc@apple.com if you would like a source copy ( ~100k compressed).
- January 8 Robert Chen has ported the standard BSD C shell to Linux
for those who don't like bash, tcsh, zsh, rc, pdksh or ...
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/csh526a.tar.Z
- January 9 Bradley E. Smith announced that he was able to get SUIT up
and running under Linux and asks if anyone is interested in having
him upload it to a Linux site.
- January 9 Bradley E. Smith posts README for SUIT - The Simple User
Interface Toolkit (thanks Bradley!)
"SUIT is a library of interface tools developed at the University of
Virginia to help C programmers create sophisticated mouse based
interfaces without the lengthy learning period associated with
traditional user interface toolkits. Ease of learning and fast ramp up
time is central to SUIT's design. The SUIT tutorial is designed to
make the user productive in under two hours".
/* ---- How Jump Tables Work, by Eric Youngdale ----- */
Question:
What's the business with jump tables? I think jump tables refer to
indirect addressing so that you can have fixed entry points to libraries
while still be able to change the implementation. Why is there the other
alternative, and is it still supported?
The kernel reserves the address space from 0x60000000 to 0xc0000000 for shared
libraries and each library is assigned an address ahead of time. At the start
of each shared library is basically a series of jump instructions and these
jump off to each of the routines within libc. When there is an upgrade to
libc, the jump instructions remain at the same address even though the actual
functions move around as required.
Before we had the jump tables, programs were linked in such a way that you
would call the function directly. The problem with this was that with each new
version of the library the functions would be at different addresses, and you
had to relink when you went to a new version of the library. These are called
"Classic" libraries, and are still supported and used (X11 libraries for
example). X was too hard to jumpify with the old library building tools, and
the libraries change fairly infrequently so at the time it was decided that X
remain a classic library.
Question:
What is the shared library resolution mechanism? I would think that at
run time the the library with matching major number and highest minor
number would be selected. Seeing people link and copy the libraries to
different names and having had problems with programs that required 4.1,
not 4.2, it seems this isn't the case. Why? What's the use of jump
tables, if you cannot use old programs with newer libraries? How do I
know, if a new library is compatible with an older one (modulo bugs)? Is
there some internal version number in the library, or is it all in the
name?
Each library reference contains a couple of bits of info.
First of all there is a filename that will be opened and is assumed to
contain the library. Secondly, the version number of the library that
the program was linked to is also stored. At startup time, kernel
maps the image of the sharable library into your address space, and
then it compares the version numbers to make sure that everything is
compatible. For a jump table library, the startup code verifies that
the major number is the same, and that the minor number is >= the
minor number of the library that the program was linked to. If there
are changes in the jump table library library that would make it
impossible to have binary compatibility, then the major number should
have been incremented and the minor number should be reset to 1 (0?).
The filename to be opened is usually in the form /lib/libc.so.4 in the
case of libc, and standard usage is that libc.so.4 be a symlink or a
copy of the version of libc that you want to use.
In the case of classic libraries the version number matching
is a little different. Since there is no binary compatibility from
one version to the next, both the major and number of the versions
must match.
If there are images out there that explicitly ask for /lib/libc.so.4.1
instead of /lib/libc.so.4, then I think that this is in error. The image was
probably linked to some prototype version of libc before the final release.
It turned out that there were some changes in libc 4.2 to regex which
broke sed, recompiling sed seemed to fix the problem.
The future of sharable libraries under linux looks rosy indeed. A new
set of tools has been developed which makes the generation of a sharable
library pretty foolproof, and it is possible that these will be used to jumpify
the next version of the X libraries. Once this has been done you will simply
be able to slip in a new version of the shared X library and you will still be
able to run your old programs, except this time using the new library.
Consideration is also being given to some form of dynamic linking, and
It is possible that at some point in the future this will be a part of the
standard linux libraries. There is a working prototype which is currently
being evaluated which may be used, or it may take the form of some other scheme
that has yet to be developed. With the prototype of dynamicly linked
libraries, the changes are piggybacked on top of the existing jump table
libraries, so it may be possible for old binaries to run with the new libraries
(without any dynamic linking, however).
***** Good Answers
I think that the MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION is
probably "Where is /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm?" or "Why
won't my new kernel source compile without errors?", etc.
Answer: These directories exist as symbolic links to the online linux
kernel source found (usually) in /usr/src/linux/include/linux/* and
/usr/src/linux/include/asm/*. Do:
ln -fs /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/linux
ln -fs /usr/src/linux/include/asm /usr/include/asm
to create the symlinks. OR ELSE! It's a good idea to keep kernel
source on your system because the header files are needed for
compilations other than the kernel.
From owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Sun Jan 17 20:22:05 1993
Status: RO
X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]
["9747" "Sun" "17" "January" "1993" "20:04:58" "+0200" "Denise Tree"
"tree@midget.towson.edu " nil "223" "Linux News #11 ASCII" "^From:" nil nil "1"])
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA12713
(5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4 for < arl@cs.hut.fi>); Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:22:02 +0200
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by niksula.hut.fi id <61772-12>;
Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:20:28 +0200
Received: from midget.towson.edu ([131.118.70.11])
by niksula.hut.fi with SMTP id <61772-1>; Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:07:02 +0200
Received: by midget.towson.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C)
id AA09163; Sun, 17 Jan 93 13:05:26 -0500
X-Note1: Remember to put 'X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS' to your mail body or header
Message-Id: <9301171805.AA09163@midget.towson.edu>
Sender: owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
From: tree@midget.towson.edu (Denise Tree)
To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
Subject: Linux News #11 ASCII
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:04:58 +0200
X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS
L i n u x N e w s
A summary of the goings-on in the Linux community
Issue #11 Jan 10 to Jan 17
Mottomme: "Hackeroida ja Auttaa"
***** For ASCII Readers
This ASCII version of Linux News was produced by running the TeX
version through detex.el. I'm sorry if it seems a little rough...
I put all my efforts into the typeset copy! I have a couple of ideas to
improve this .... I think I'll do the ASCII first and paste it into
the TeX wrapper. I tried dvi2tty but I think it may have become
confused by the double column stuff: it wasn't as good as the detex
method. Lastly, the best idea may be to write a good awk filter, but I
must find time to learn awk. Any suggestions are welcome of course.
***** My Two Cents
Well it's here and it's cool it's the TeX LiNuX NEWS!
As Linus said about the "Loading...." display incorporated in the
0.12 kernel, "Run, don't walk to see this". I've been playing around
with TeX for a little while and now with Linux News I have a
wonderful excuse to really dig in and learn it. The two column format
and lots of great macros are all from Hunter Goatley's sample newsletr.tex
file and the sample newssamp.tex which is included in the
/usr/TeX/lib/tex/inputs directory of the distribution. These
formatting macros and examples make it simple to produce a pretty nice
looking newsletter without really knowing TeX. My other reference
is Michael Doob's Gentle Introduction to TeX, which is just
great for getting started and, very importantly, it's free. I
recommend using emacs and Kresto Thorup's auc-tex elisp package from
the elisp archive at Ohio State. If you use X then you can use xdvi to
preview documents and voil'a.... typeset quality hardcopy.
TeX is one of those things that people like to get religeous about it
seems; they either love it or they hate it. I love it. Non-programmers
may gasp when they see the source to a document but I don't
think it's any more bewildering than any of the large wysiwyg
packages. Of course, I admit to having a marked aversion to word
processors in general, when I was a MS-Dos user I did all my
work with a nice little editor called Qedit and a bunch of add--in
macros. The point I'm making (Ah hah!) is this: if you
are new to text manipulation under *nix, go ahead and try TeX, it's
really not all that hard to get started, despite what you may have heard.
Be careful to use 's flexibility and fonts with moderation
though or you'll end up sounding like Haley Mills on a capucino bender.
***** Announcements
- January 7 Overlooked last issue was Anthony Rumble's
announcement of a new modem server which sports modem initialization,
binary lock files, locked speed connection or follow connect speed,
etc.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/
Incoming/mdm.2.05.sh.Z
- January 10 -- Muhammad Saggaf announced Seyon 1.74 today, a
BETA version which supports speeds up to 115200 bps.
FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon/new-beta
- January 10 -- Mika Liljeberg has uploaded binaries and diffs
for tcsh-6.03, the enhanced C type shell for Linux. A patch is
included to help with problems with POSIX job control. Compiled with
gcc2.3.3
FTP:nic.funet.fi, tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu
- January 10 The new net FAQ is now available. Phil says he
will revise to include setup for standalone sans network card.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/
faq-net-0.99.2
- January 11 -- Rik Faith has uploaded new manpages to tsx-11
including fdisk.8, login.1, rdev.8, shutdown.8, update.8, and others.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu: rik-man.tar.Z
- January 11 Peter MacDonald announced a new SLS 99pl2 which will
completeley upgrade parts 'a', 'b' and 'c' of the distribution. Peter
remarks that this is a massive upgrade which includes gcc2.3.3 and
libc 4.2. Lpr, fixed Minicom, system V init, emacs info, and shadow
passwd are also there.The kernel includes the selection patches to
enable mouse cut and paste in virtual consoles and also the ipcbeta
patches for interprocess communication and shared memory. X11 will not
be upgraded until Xfree86 1.2 is ready.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/SLS
- January 12 -- Mike Jagdis has uploaded bootsys3.taz, a SYSV
boot environement and init which supports run levels, ctrl-alt-del
trapping, and more. Needs libc 4.2. Docs, manpages and the all
important example scripts are provided!
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu, nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu:
bootsys3.taz
- January 12 Lars Wirzenius reminds us one last time that the
crossposting of articles from comp.os.linux.announce to comp.os.linux
will cease ``around thursday (in some unspcified timezone)''. If you
don't have news access and can't improve the situation, join the
ANNOUNCE channel on linux-activists. C.o.l.a is gatewayed to Fidonet
as the LNXMANAGE area.
- January 12 Nigel Gamble announced that he has written an
interrupt-- driven printer driver.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA
/lpirq.1.tar.Z
- January 12 Muhammad Saggaf has released Seyon 1.8 which
incorporates a revised transfer, protocol window, dialing directory,
fallback resources (no app-defaults file needed), complete and updated
man page and speed support for 56700 and 115200 bps. Many other
improvements!
FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon
- January 13 Rick Sladkey has uploaded a new mount package for
Linux. Doug Quale's mount/umount supports NFS and understands how to
deal with non-device mounts like the /proc fs. An NFS man page is also
included.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/
mount-0.99.2.tar.Z
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/NFS/
mount-0.99.2.tar.Z
- January 13 Tommy Frandson has released version 1.1 of VGAlib - the VGA
graphics library for Linux. Supports 16 and 256 color modes,
alternates between text and graphics mode, text mode restorationn,
tseng et4000 color modes and monochrome 640x480 mode. Note: the
included { runx/} program may be used by those who have text mode
restoration problems after X is quit.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/(???)
January 13 Thomas Dunbar announced hp2xx binary and docs:
``The `hp2xx' program is a versatile tool to convert vector-oriented
graphics data given in Hewlett-Packard's HP-GL plotter language into a
variety of popular both vector- and raster-oriented graphics formats.
The various supported output formats include Encapsulated PostScript
(EPS), MetaFont, PCX, IMG, and several formats intended to facilitate the
generation of graphics within TeX documents. In addition, `hp2xx'
output is printable on the HP Laserjet/Deskjet printer series, and it
may be used as a HP-GL previewer on many platforms, e.g. X11.''
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/TeX/
hp2xx.taz
- January 13 Linus sent 0.99 patchlevel 3 to nic.funet.fi:
"Still no 1.0 - I have had a couple of reports of problems, so I'll make
yet another 0.99 release. The diffs (against 0.99.2) and complete
source can be found at nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus as usual,
and will probably show up at the other sites pretty soon.
0.99.3 contains no real new features, but the diffs are pretty big
anyway (100kB+ compressed): various things have moved around a bit and
there are a lot of minor changes. The changes include (but are not
limited to):
- the math emulator code now also understands the unofficial codes (in
case somebody followed the ML math emulator thread). I'd be
interested to hear whether ML now works with the emulator.
- various SCSI driver changes
- some re-organization of the tty open/close code to remove a few race
conditions.
- interrupt handling rewrites (two-level interrupt code cleanups)
- the serial drivers are tytso's alpha-drivers: they aren't quite
completed, but as they need the interrupt handling patches to get
ready, this is probably the least traumatic way of doing it.
- some more minor keyboard driver changes (mostly taking advantage of
the two-level interrupts)
+ a lot of other minor changes. I once more hope people will try it
out, and report any problems or successes to me.
Known problems:
- there seems to be something weird going on in the ST-0x driver with
some scsi disks.
- tcp/ip is reportedly still not quite stable, and I can't even test it
out.
NOTE! The DMA functions have changed for the high DMA channels - all DMA
functions now take their arguments as the number of bytes instead of the
old way of using bytes for ch 0-3 and words for ch 5-7. This might lead
to problems with the SoundBlaster driver, which may need editing. ''
- Ed Carp has uploaded a patch to Mailpak-1.4 that fixes a
problem with { cu/} not setting the ports correctly with the
``--e'' or ``--o'' switches.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/
/mailpak-1.4/uucp.patch.1
- January 14 Kenneth Osterberg has a new XView port ready which
are compiled with gcc2.3.3 and libc4.2. The Open Look Virtual Window
Manager is also now included (!!!) and DIRMENU and WINMENU are now
fixed. UIT, the tool/class library for C++ programmers is there also.
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/
/usr.bin/usr.bin.X11/xview3L3.tar.Z
- January 16 Bradley E. Smith has uploaded SUIT 2.3 to sunsite.
It is an interface toolkit for X.
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming
***** Bye
I'm amazed at the popularity of Linux News... thanks to
all who sent mail, motto translations and even postcards. I spent so
much time on this I wasn't able to answer everyone and there are some
missing articles in this issue. All in all though, I think it turned
out positively swimmingley! As usual, comments, submissions,
suggestions etc. to:
{tree@cs.jhu.edu}
{tree@midget.towson.edu}
{{--- { Happy Hacking} ---}
{to everyone!}}
From owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Sun Jan 17 20:46:37 1993
Status: RO
X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]
["12437" "Sun" "17" "January" "1993" "20:08:18" "+0200" "Denise Tree"
"tree@midget.towson.edu " nil "282" "Linux News #11 TeX" "^From:" nil nil "1"])
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA12768
(5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4 for < arl@cs.hut.fi>); Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:46:34 +0200
Received: from joker.cs.hut.fi by niksula.hut.fi id <62109-6>;
Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:45:11 +0200
Received: from midget.towson.edu ([131.118.70.11])
by niksula.hut.fi with SMTP id <61772-9>; Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:10:12 +0200
Received: by midget.towson.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C)
id AA09167; Sun, 17 Jan 93 13:08:46 -0500
X-Note1: Remember to put 'X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS' to your mail body or header
Message-Id: <9301171808.AA09167@midget.towson.edu>
Sender: owner-linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
From: tree@midget.towson.edu (Denise Tree)
To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi
Subject: Linux News #11 TeX
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:08:18 +0200
X-Mn-Key: LINUXNEWS
------------------------------ cut here --------------------------
%% -------------------- Linux News # 11 TeX version ------------ %%
% Hunter Goatley's fine NEWSLETTER_FORMAT.TEX macros were used to %
% do the fancy stuff in this newsletter... check it out. %
% --------------------------------------------------------------- %
\ifx\undefined\eoa\input newsletr \fi
\font\titlefont=cmr17 scaled\magstep 5
\font\mottofont=cmr12
\font\littlefont=cmbx5
\pageheaderlinefalse \pagefooterlinetrue % I want a header line but
% not on the title page
\evenpageheader{}{}{}
\oddpageheader{}{}{}
\evenpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.11}{January 17, 1993}
\oddpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.11}{Vol.\ 2\ \ No.\ 3}
% Linux script thingey made from the Latex script thingey
% Couldn't resist this, I'm sure Haley would really like it
\def\LiNuX{{\rm L\kern-.15em\raise.8ex\hbox{i}\kern-.11em
N\kern-.1667em\lower.5ex\hbox{U}\kern-.125emX}}
%% --------headline for non-titlepage from Gentle Intro --------- %%
% I want to make this a box with the \LiNuX NEWS logo CENTERED but I
% couldn't get it to work right. :-(
\def\linheading{%
\vbox {\hrule%
\line {\strut \vrule \quad {Linux News \farright
January 17, 1993}
\hfil
\quad
\vrule}%
\hrule}%
}
\newif \iftitlepage \titlepagetrue
\headline=
{\iftitlepage \hfil \global\titlepagefalse \else \linheading \fi}
\titlepagetrue
%% -------------------- headline for titlepage ------------------ %%
\newspage % setup macro for the page
\vskip 3pt
\noindent
{\titlefont L i n u x \hskip .2 in N e w s}
\vskip 3pt
\hrule width 7 in height 1 pt
\smallskip
\hrule width 7 in
\vskip 4 pt
\centerline{\mottofont Mottomme: ``Hakkeroida ja Auttaa''} %
\vskip 4 pt
\hrule width 7 in
\vskip 2 pt
\noindent
Linux News Number 11 \farright {January 17, 1993}
\vskip 2 pt
\hrule width 7 in
\vskip 7pt
\begindoublequotes % Handle double quotes
\ignoreunderfill % Ignore undervfill errors
\parskip=0pt % Don't skip between paragraphs
\parindent=18pt % Indent paragraphs 18pt
\rm % Use tenpoint roman
\begincolumns{2} % macro for double columns
\definefigs{3} % Reserve boxes for up to 3 pages of figures.
%% ------------------------- first article --------------------------- %%
\centerline{\bf My Two Cents}
\vskip 4 pt
\noindent
Well it's here and it's cool \dots\ it's the \TeX\ \LiNuX{} {\sl NEWS\/!}
As Linus said about the ``Loading \edots\/''\/ display incorporated in the
0.12 kernel, ``Run, don't walk to see this''. I've been playing around
with \TeX\ for a little while and now with {\sl Linux News\/} I have a
wonderful excuse to really dig in and learn it. The two column format
and lots of great macros are all from Hunter Goatley's sample newsletr.tex
file and the sample newssamp.tex which is included in the
/usr/TeX/lib/tex/inputs directory of the \TeX\ distribution. These
formatting macros and examples make it simple to produce a pretty nice
looking newsletter without really {\it knowing\/} \TeX{}. My other reference
is Michael Doob's {\sl Gentle Introduction to \TeX\/}, which is just
great for getting started and, very importantly, {\it it's free\/}. I
recommend using emacs and Kresto Thorup's auc-tex elisp package from
the elisp archive at Ohio State. If you use X then you can use xdvi to
preview documents and voil\'a \edots\/typeset quality hardcopy.
\TeX\ is one of those things that people like to get religeous about it
seems; they either love it or they hate it. I love it. Non-programmers
may gasp when they see the source to a \TeX\ document but I don't
think it's any more bewildering than any of the large wysiwyg
packages. Of course, I admit to having a marked aversion to word
processors in general \dots\/when I was a MS-Dos user I did all my
work with a nice little editor called Qedit and a bunch of add--in
macros. The point I'm making ({\it Ah hah\/!}) is this: if you
are new to text manipulation under *nix, go ahead and try \TeX{}, it's
really not all that hard to get started, despite what you may have heard.
Be careful to use \TeX's flexibility and fonts with moderation
though or you'll end up sounding like Haley Mills on a capucino bender. \eoa
\articlesep
\coltitle{\centerline{--- Announcements ---}\break
\centerline{The week in c.o.l. and c.o.l.a}}
%% ------------------------ announcement stuff ---------------------- %%
% Use dotitem macros to format Announcements
\bgroup % Start a new group to keep local
\listindent{2pt}\beginlist
\dotitem January 7 Overlooked last issue was Anthony Rumble's
announcement of a new modem server which sports modem initialization,
binary lock files, locked speed connection or follow connect speed,
etc. \par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/ \par
\farright Incoming/mdm.2.05.sh.Z
\dotitem January 10 -- Muhammad Saggaf announced Seyon 1.74 today, a
BETA version which supports speeds up to 115200 bps. \par
FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon/new-beta
\dotitem January 10 -- Mika Liljeberg has uploaded binaries and diffs
for tcsh-6.03, the enhanced C type shell for Linux. A patch is
included to help with problems with POSIX job control. Compiled with
gcc2.3.3 \par
FTP:nic.funet.fi, tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu
\dotitem January 10 The new net FAQ is now available. Phil says he
will revise to include setup for standalone sans network card. \par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par
\farright faq-net-0.99.2
\dotitem January 11 -- Rik Faith has uploaded new manpages to tsx-11
including fdisk.8, login.1, rdev.8, shutdown.8, update.8, and others.
\par FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu: rik-man.tar.Z
\dotitem January 11 Peter MacDonald announced a new SLS 99pl2 which will
completeley upgrade parts 'a', 'b' and 'c' of the distribution. Peter
remarks that this is a massive upgrade which includes gcc2.3.3 and
libc 4.2. Lpr, fixed Minicom, system V init, emacs info, and shadow
passwd are also there.The kernel includes the selection patches to
enable mouse cut and paste in virtual consoles and also the ipcbeta
patches for interprocess communication and shared memory. X11 will not
be upgraded until Xfree86 1.2 is ready. \par
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/SLS
\dotitem January 12 -- Mike Jagdis has uploaded bootsys3.taz, a SYSV
boot environement and init which supports run levels, ctrl-alt-del
trapping, and more. Needs libc 4.2. Docs, manpages and the all
important example scripts are provided! \par
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu, nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu: \par
\farright bootsys3.taz
\dotitem January 12 Lars Wirzenius reminds us one last time that the
crossposting of articles from comp.os.linux.announce to comp.os.linux
will cease ``around thursday (in some unspcified timezone)''. If you
don't have news access and can't improve the situation, join the
ANNOUNCE channel on linux-activists. C.o.l.a is gatewayed to Fidonet
as the LNXMANAGE area.
\dotitem January 12 Nigel Gamble announced that he has written an
interrupt-- driven printer driver. \par
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA \par
\farright /lpirq.1.tar.Z
\dotitem January 12 Muhammad Saggaf has released Seyon 1.8 which
incorporates a revised transfer, protocol window, dialing directory,
fallback resources (no app-defaults file needed), complete and updated
man page and speed support for 56700 and 115200 bps. Many other
improvements! \par
FTP:sipb.mit.edu:/pub/seyon
\dotitem January 13 Rick Sladkey has uploaded a new mount package for
Linux. Doug Quale's mount/umount supports NFS and understands how to
deal with non-device mounts like the /proc fs. An NFS man page is also
included. \par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par
\farright mount-0.99.2.tar.Z \par
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/NFS/ \par
\farright mount-0.99.2.tar.Z
\dotitem January 13 Tommy Frandson has released version 1.1 of
VGAlib - the VGA
graphics library for Linux. Supports 16 and 256 color modes,
alternates between text and graphics mode, text mode restorationn,
tseng et4000 color modes and monochrome 640x480 mode. Note: the
included {\it runx\/} program may be used by those who have text mode
restoration problems after X is quit.\par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/(???)
\dotitem January 13 Thomas Dunbar announced hp2xx binary and docs:
``The `hp2xx' program is a versatile tool to convert vector-oriented
graphics data given in Hewlett-Packard's HP-GL plotter language into a
variety of popular both vector- and raster-oriented graphics formats.
The various supported output formats include Encapsulated PostScript
(EPS), MetaFont, PCX, IMG, and several formats intended to facilitate the
generation of graphics within TeX documents. In addition, `hp2xx'
output is printable on the HP Laserjet/Deskjet printer series, and it
may be used as a HP-GL previewer on many platforms, e.g. X11.'' \par
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/TeX/ \par
\farright hp2xx.taz
\dotitem January 13 Linus sent 0.99 patchlevel 3 to nic.funet.fi:
``Still no 1.0 - I have had a couple of reports of problems, so I'll make
yet another 0.99 release. The diffs (against 0.99.2) and complete
source can be found at nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus as usual,
and will probably show up at the other sites pretty soon.
0.99.3 contains no real new features, but the diffs are pretty big
anyway (100kB+ compressed): various things have moved around a bit and
there are a lot of minor changes. The changes include (but are not
limited to): \par
- the math emulator code now also understands the unofficial codes (in
case somebody followed the ML math emulator thread). I'd be
interested to hear whether ML now works with the emulator.
- various SCSI driver changes
- some re-organization of the tty open/close code to remove a few race
conditions.
- interrupt handling rewrites (two-level interrupt code cleanups)
- the serial drivers are tytso's alpha-drivers: they aren't quite
completed, but as they need the interrupt handling patches to get
ready, this is probably the least traumatic way of doing it.
- some more minor keyboard driver changes (mostly taking advantage of
the two-level interrupts)
+ a lot of other minor changes. I once more hope people will try it
out, and report any problems or successes to me.
Known problems:
- there seems to be something weird going on in the ST-0x driver with
some scsi disks.
- tcp/ip is reportedly still not quite stable, and I can't even test it
out.
NOTE! The DMA functions have changed for the high DMA channels - all DMA
functions now take their arguments as the number of bytes instead of the
old way of using bytes for ch 0-3 and words for ch 5-7. This might lead
to problems with the SoundBlaster driver, which may need editing. ''
\dotitem Ed Carp has uploaded a patch to Mailpak-1.4 that fixes a
problem with {\it cu\/} not setting the ports correctly with the
``--e'' or ``--o'' switches. \par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par
\farright /mailpak-1.4/uucp.patch.1
\dotitem January 14 Kenneth Osterberg has a new XView port ready which
are compiled with gcc2.3.3 and libc4.2. The Open Look Virtual Window
Manager is also now included (!!!) and DIRMENU and WINMENU are now
fixed. UIT, the tool/class library for C++ programmers is there also. \par
FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/ \par
\farright /usr.bin/usr.bin.X11/xview3L3.tar.Z
\dotitem January 16 Bradley E. Smith has uploaded SUIT 2.3 to sunsite.
It is an interface toolkit for X. \par
FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming
\endlist
\egroup
% -------------------- end Announcement stuff ------------------------%
\articlesep
\noindent
I'm amazed at the popularity of \LiNuX{} {\sl NEWS \/} \dots thanks to
all who sent mail, motto translations and even postcards. I spent so
much time on this I wasn't able to answer everyone and there are some
missing articles in this issue. All in all though, I think it turned
out {\sl positively swimmingley\/!} As usual, comments, submissions,
suggestions etc. to: \break
\centerline{tree@cs.jhu.edu} \par
\centerline{tree@midget.towson.edu}
\articlesep
\coltitle{\centerline{--- {\bf Happy Hacking} ---}\break
\centerline{to everyone!}}
\bye