Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.announce,news.answers,comp.answers Distribution: world Followup-To: poster From: corsini@labri.greco-prog.fr Reply-To: linux@numero6.greco-prog.fr Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France Subject: Linux Frequently Asked Questions 1/4 [monthly posted] Summary: Linux, a small and free unix-like for 386-AT computers. Archive-name: linux-faq/part1 Last-Modified: 93/03/28 Version: 1.17 ********************************************************* * * * Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux * * * ********************************************************* This post contains Part 1 of the Linux FAQ (4 parts) Hi Linuxers! The original FAQ 1st version was posted on Dec. 19, 1991 by Robert Blum. Most credits to Linus, Robert and Ted for the departure point of this work. The first X11 section was written by Peter Hawkins, the rest was either on the list posted by many (real) activists, not me ;-), either in some other news groups, or else by direct posting to me (thanks Humberto, Dan, Michael, Drew, Audoin). I haven't systematically copyrighted them, so thanks to every one who participated even indirectly to this FAQ. Since September 1992, the FAQ is co-written by: WHO (WHAT) E-MAIL ============================================================================= Matt Welsh (META-FAQ) mdw@tc.cornell.edu Mark Komarinski (DOS) komarimf@craft.camp.clarkson.edu Matt Welsh (GENERAL INFO) mdw@tc.cornell.edu Matt Welsh (INSTALLATION) mdw@tc.cornell.edu Drew Eckhardt (SCSI) drew@headrest.woz.colorado.edu Hongjiu Lu (GCC) hlu@eecs.wsu.edu Krishna Balasubramanian (X11) balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu Zane Healy (BBS INFO) healyzh@holonet.net Philip Copeland (NET INFO) p_copela@csd.bristol-poly.ac.uk Rick Miller (DEVICE INFO) rick@ee.uwm.edu Peter MacDonald (SLS INFO) pmacdona@sanjuan.uvic.ca Rick Sladkey (EMACS) jrs@world.std.com Dirk Hohndel (PROOF READER) hohndel@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.dbp.de Marc-Michel Corsini (FAQ collector) corsini@{labri,firmin}.greco-prog.fr ============================================================================= If anyone is interested in participating with this FAQ, just send me a note with: your name/e-mail and the section you want to maintain. Many of the questions could be avoided, if people had read the FAQ of the following newsgroups: news.announce.newusers, comp.lang.c, gnu.emacs.help, comp.unix.questions, comp.windows.x.i386unix. [The last-change-date of this posting is always "two minutes ago". :-)] This is the introduction to a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ for short) about Linux with answers (Yeap!). This article contains a listing of the sections and queries. This FAQ is supposed to reduce the noise level ;-) in the comp.os.linux newsgroup, and spare the time of many activists. I will cross-post it each month to news.answers. This FAQ is NOT an introduction to UNIX, there are many books for unix, and there is *also* a FAQ for unix (it's the one of comp.unix.questions which contains things such as "How do I remove a file named -". I DO NOT WANT TO ADD SUCH THINGS IN THIS FAQ DEVOTED TO LINUX. Some books to read: The C Programming Language: Kernighan & Ritchie POSIX Programmer's Guide: D. Lewine Unix System Administration Handbook: Nemeth, Snyder & Seebass. Unix for the Impatient: Abrahams & Larson Unix System V Release 4, An Introduction, by Rosen, Rosinski and Farber; Publisher Osborne MacGraw-Hill. The X Windows System in a Nutshell: O'Reilly. ..... This FAQ is available at the main Linux sites in the doc directory, the addresses are given in section II. of this FAQ. There is also an archive of (all) FAQs at rtfm.mit.edu [18.172.1.27]. Have a look in the anonymous ftp directory: /pub/usenet/news.answers/linux-faq. If you do not have anonymous ftp access, you can access the archive by mail server. Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the words "help" and "index" in the body on separate lines for more information. The information in this multi-parts FAQ is likely to change relatively quickly. If this is more than two months old (it was released on February 1993) then you should obtain a new copy. See the paragraph above for details of where to find a more recent version. Please suggest any change, rephrasing, deletions, new questions, answers ... Please include "FAQ" in the subject of messages sent to me about FAQ. Please send them to linux@numero6.greco-prog.fr whatever will be the >From part of this message. Finally discussion about the FAQ can be done on the DOC Channel (see section II). Thanks in advance, Marc The FAQ can be found in LaTeX version, thanks to Pepe Flores Peters. Future Plan: - provide FAQ as diff too, since it seems to stay stable except for very few sections. - perform automatic post to c.o.l, c.o.l.a, c.a and n.a every month as I promised long time ago. ================================8<=====8<============================== CONTENTS (of this part) 0. WARNINGS (part1) I. LINUX GENERAL INFORMATION (part1) II. LINUX USEFUL ADDRESSES (part1) ================================8<=====8<============================== 0. WARNINGS =========== The FAQ contains a lot of information sometimes I've put it down in 3 different ways because people seems not to understand what they read (or what I wrote, you know I'm just a froggy and english is not my natural language). What I mean is that not all is in the FAQ but many things are there, so please just take time to read it this will spare a lot of the other linuxers [and if you think I should rephrase some Q/A just drop me a note with the corrections]. As the Linux kernel changes monthly (and even more ...), I define 2 pseudo variables a la C one for the version, and one for the date of the release. #define CURRENT_VERSION 0.99 /* the current version */ #define PATCH_LEVEL pre8 /* the patch level */ #define KERNEL_DATE 31, Mar. /* Date of the CURRENT_VERSION */ In what follows I'll consider CURRENT_VERSION as the current version. > From: Linus Torvalds > Subject: I'm back: new ALPHA-diffs on nic.funet.fi > Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1993 20:44:44 +0300 > > > I'm back in circulation (although "somewhat" behind with news: 980 > messages to go), and I have already uploaded new kernel diffs to > nic.funet.fi. The directory is the same old pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus, > and the files are called ALPHA-diff.z (diffs against clean 0.99pl7, not > the "7A" version), or linux-0.99.pre8.tar.z (for the full sources). > > Changes relative to pl7A: > - fixed a silly (and major) bug in the keyboard driver which can result > in problems under some circumstances (among them X11 crashes) > - changed the way signals are handled: I don't like the idea of doing > signals in a pre-determined order, so I decided to try to fix some > other problems with signal-handling instead. The fixes should > hopefully be enough to remove the problems with bash: if they don't, > I'd call it a bash bug. > - upgrading the ext2fs to the newest version: this fixes problems with > named pipes on ext2fs partitions. I also did some additional changes > to the named pipe code, mostly due to comments from Bruce Evans. > - Another fix suggested by Bruce: the minixfs rename() call should > finally work correctly under all circumstances (ie renaming > directories over each other etc). > - I did some final coding to try to remove the old race-condition where > the same name can occur multiple times in a directory. The problem > probably exists in all other fs's, though. > - SCSI patches from Eric Youngdale. These should recognize the new > AHA-1542C controller as well as fixing some other problems. > - I'm trying out a different way of recovering from 387 errors: there > are timeouts and some resetting code in the kernel now, and it might > be enough.. It will result in problems, but at least it should work > most of the time at full speed, and if the 387 fails, you should get > an appropriate error message.. > - FPU emulation patches from Bill Metzenthen. They fix the problems > with v86 mode as well implementing the full rounding control > functionality. > > As always, the more alpha-testers, the merrier... And problem- or > success-reports are always welcome. > > Linus I. LINUX GENERAL INFORMATION ============================= *** This section is maintained by Matt Welsh (mdw@tc.cornell.edu). Mail *** him if you have corrections, additions, other questions, etc. *** Last update March 1993. I.01) What is linux? ANSWER: Linux is a small unix for 386-AT computers, that has the added advantage of being free(*). It is still in beta-testing, but is slowly getting useful even for somewhat real developement. The current version is CURRENT_VERSION, date: KERNEL_DATE. (*) Free means that you may use it, change it , redistribute it, as long as you don't change the copyright. Free does not mean public domain. Linux is a freely distributable UNIX clone. It implements a subset of System V and POSIX functionality, and contains a lot of BSD-isms. LINUX has been written from scratch, and therefore does not contain any AT&T or MINIX code--not in the kernel, the compiler, the utilities, or the libraries. For this reason it can be made available with the complete source code via anonymous FTP. LINUX runs only on 386/486 AT-bus machines; porting to non-Intel architectures is likely to be difficult, as the kernel makes extensive use of 386 memory management and task primitives. I.02) Does Linux support GCC, TCP/IP, X-Windows, MGR, etc.? ANSWER: Linux currently supports and uses a large amount of the GNU software (i.e. GCC, bison, groff, etc) so all of that functionality is there. X-Windows is also available, along with many client applications. MGR is there too. TCP/IP is in testing, and is available for you to try out. (Dirk Hohndel:) TCP/IP is available. I use Linux boxes as Xterminals and my "own" asterix has mounted half a Gig via NFS. Mitch DSuoza is running an anonymous FTP server on his Linux box. This is definitely more than testing. The newest SLS has a TCP/IP kernel by default. See section VIII of this FAQ ("Features")! In short, Linux supports many, many features and programs. One of the biggest questions is: "Does ***** work on Linux? Does Linux have *****?" The answer, usually, is "yes". Just check out the rest of this FAQ, the newsgroup, as well as the files on the FTP sites. I.03) What is the current state of Linux? ANSWER: read the comp.os.linux newsgroup, where the INFO-SHEET is periodically posted. You can also read comp.os.linux.announce. I.04) I've just heard about linux, what should I do to get it? ANSWER: FIRST read this FAQ, and especially section III (installation). Choose a "release" of Linux (such as MCC, SLS, bootdisk/rootdisk, etc). Download from your nearest FTP site, use the "rawrite" program as needed to write the images to high-density floppies (5.25 or 3.5). Specific instructions are given in section III and in the README files for each release. Note that some releases only give you the kernel and a few utilities, and others give you everything you need (including X11, GCC, and more) in that latter case the downloading is close to a douzen of SOFT. Just check out section III for more info. I.05) Does it run on my computer? ANSWER: Linux has been written on a clone-386, with IDE drives and a VGA screen. It should work on most similar setups. The harddisk should be AT-standard, and the system must be ISA. (though *some* EISA success has been reported [T. Koenig], Linux doesn't take advantage of the EISA structure). A high density floppy drive -- either 5.25" or 3.5"-- is required. {Drew's information: Linux supports anything that's register compatable with a WD1003 MFM disk controller (ie, the original PC-AT disk controller.) Most AT MFM, RLL, ESDI, and IDE setups look like this. XT compatable disk controllers won't work. Generally, the rule is if you have the disk configured into the CMOS setup of your machine, it will work (because the BIOS is talking to a WD 1003 compatable board), otherwise it won't.} IDE and MFM seem to work with no problem. It works, also, for some ESDI drive (you might have to comment out the "unexpected hd interrupt"-message from hd.c). There exists a high-level SCSI driver, under which low-level drivers are placed; a ST-01/ST-02 low driver has been completed see the FEATURES and the USEFUL ADDRESSES sections. Otherwise the requirements seem relatively small: a 386 (SX, DX or any 486). Any video card of the following: Hercules, CGA, EGA, (S)VGA. It needs at least 2M to run (with SWAP), and 4M is definitely a plus. It can happily use up to 16M (and more if you want). BTW There are problems with some MAXTOR drives on high speed machines (sometimes switching off "turbo" helps). There may also be a problem with "slow" memory (under 60ns) on fast machines. Again, the solution is to turn off "turbo". Mixed SIMMs (3 and 9 chip versions) have also reported to be problematic. NOTE1: It doesn't run (yet?) on a MCA machine NOTE2: There is a driver for XT but not tested by me (see below) NOTE3: There is also a support for 8514 and S3. > From: smackinla@cc.curtin.edu.au (Pat Mackinlay) > Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce > Subject: New version of XT (8 bit) HD driver > Keywords: XT disk driver > Date: 18 Mar 93 15:09:14 GMT > This is post to announce the newest (and hopefully last) version of the > XT hard disk driver for Linux. This version will only work with Linux 0.99p7 > or better due to a couple of kernel changes. The files should be available > on tsx-11, nic and sunsite FTP sites as soon as the administrators process > their incoming data. The files are: > > tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/xtdisk/xtdisk6.tar.z > nic.funet.fi:/pub/OS/Linux/BETA/xtdisk/xtdisk6.tar.z > sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/ALPHA/xtdisk/xtdisk6.tar.z > > and there's the complete README in those directories too. > > Note that this will probably be my last version of this driver because I'm > upgrading to a 200 meg SCSI drive and don't have any more room in my machine. > I'll be listening out for volunteers to take over the code , although > the only changes needed now will be to keep up with rest of the kernel. > > What follows is an extract from the README: > > INTRODUCTION > ------------ > This is version BETA-6 of the XT hard drive driver for Linux. The patch is > for Linux 0.99p7, and will not work for earlier kernels. > > First, a quick introduction to the reason for this driver. There are, in > general, three different types of hard disk controller: > > a. Generic AT style controllers (includes IDE drives) - all 16 bit > b. SCSI style controllers - all incompatible > c. XT style controllers - all 8 bit > > Each of these three different types of controllers has to be programmed in > it's own way, and they use different DMA channels/IRQ lines etc. in order to > communicate with the computer. Generic AT and SCSI controllers are already > supported in the "stock" Linux kernel, but XT controller are not. This driver > will allow you to use one of these older controllers in your machine running > Linux. > I.06) How much space will Linux take up on my hard drive? ANSWER: It depends on which release you choose. See the section INSTALLATION below. Usually it's somewhere between 10 megs (for a nominal system+swap space) and 30-40 megs (for everything plus space for user directories, etc.). BTW the full SLS needs around 60 MB (including TeX and other goodies). I.07) Will Linux run on a PC or 286-AT? If not, why? ANSWER: Linux uses the 386 chip protected mode functions extensively, and is a true 32-bit operating system. Thus x86 chips, x<3, will simply not run it. I.08) Will Linux run on a 386 Laptop? ANSWER: It works, including X on most of them. I.09) Why the suggested 4Meg, for Linux? ANSWER: Linux uses the first 640k for kernel text, kernel data and buffercache. Your mother board may eat up 384K because of the chipset. Moreover there is: init/login, a shell, update possibly other daemons. Then, while compiling there is make and gcc (2.01 ~770k). So you don't have enough real memory and have to page. I.10) How would this operate in an OS/2 environment? ANSWER: Linux will coexist with *ANY* other operating system(s) which respects the "standard" PC partionning scheme - this includes Dos, Os/2, Minix etc. WARNING: Linux and OS/2 *can* co-exist on the same machine. BUT, you cannot use Linux's fdisk to make Linux partitions! See the warnings in section III about Linux and OS/2. I.11) (Dan) How long has Linux been publicly available? ANSWER (partial): Few months, v0.10 went out in Nov. 91, v0.11 in Dec. and the current version CURRENT_VERSION is available since KERNEL_DATE. But even it is pretty recent it is quite reliable. There are very few and small bugs and in its current state it is mostly useful for people who are willing to port code and write new code. As Linux is very close to a reliable/stable system, Linus decided that v0.13 will be known as v0.95. Believe it or not: the whole story started (nearly) with two processes that printed AAAA... and BBBB... BTW consult the digest#136 Vol2 for a complete story. I.12) What is the proper pronounciation for "Linux"? ANSWER: (Linus himself) 'li' is pronounced with a short [ee] sound: compare prInt, mInImal etc. 'nux' is also short, non-diphtong, like in pUt. It's partly due to minix: linux was just my working name for the thing, and as I wrote it to replace minix on my system, the result is what it is... linus' minix became linux. I originally intended it to be called freax (although buggix was one contender after I got fed up with some of the more persistent bugs :) and I think the kernel makefiles up to version 0.11 had something to that effect ("Makefile for the freax kernel" in a comment). But arl called the linux directory at nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux, and the name stuck. Maybe just as well: freax doesn't sound too good either (freax is obviosly free + freak + the obligatory -x). (Rick's note for English speakers: Linux - "LIH-nuhks".) I.13) What's about the copyright of linux? ANSWER: This is an except of the RELEASE Notes v.095a: Linux is NOT public domain software, but is copyrighted by Linus Torvalds. The copyright conditions are the same as those imposed by the GNU copyleft: The GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 is part of the source tree. I.14) Should I be a UNIX and/or a DOS wizard to install/use Linux? ANSWER: Not at all, just follow the install rules, of course it will be easier for you if you know things about Unix. Right now Linux is used by more than BIGNUM persons, very few of them enhance the kernel, some adds/ports new soft, most of us are only (but USEFUL) beta testers. Last but not least, various Linuxers work on manpages, newuser_help, file-system organization. So join us and choose your "caste". It is even used in production environments (Dr. G.W. Wettstein) I.15) Does Linux use TSS segments to provide multitasking? ANSWER: Yes! I.16) If my PC runs under Linux, is it possible to ftp, rlogin, rsh etc.. to other Unix boxes? ANSWER: Kermit and ka9q have both been ported to Linux. Also, TCP/IP is quite reliable, only a few clients are missing. Read section XI. devoted to Ethernet and Linux. I.17) Does linux do paging? Can I have virtual memory on my small machine? ANSWER: Yes, it does. Generally you set up a swap file or partition, and enable it with the "swapon" command. Voila! Virtual memory. I.18) Can I have tasks spanning the full 4GB of addressable 386 memory? No more 64kB limits like in coherent or standard minix? ANSWER: Since 0.97 it uses 4 GB Process Space, 3 for userspace and 1 for the kernel space. I.19) Does the bigger program sizes mean I can run X? ANSWER: Yes! See section XII below for details on X11. I.20) What are the differences, pros and cons compared to Minix ? ANSWER (partial): Cons: - Linux only works on 386 and 486 processors. - Linux needs 2M of memory just to run, 4M to be useful. - Linux is a more traditional unix kernel, it doesn't use message passing. Pros: - Linux is free, and freely distributable, BUT copyrighted. - Linux has some advanced features such as: - Memory paging with copy-on-write - Demand loading of executables - Page sharing of executables - Multi-threaded file system - job control and virtual memory, virtual consoles and pseudo-ttys. - Linux is a more traditional unix kernel, it doesn't use message passing. I.21) What are the pros and cons compared to 386BSD ? ANSWER: Linux and 386BSD started out as completely different projects, with completely different goals and design criteria in mind. there are newsgroups devoted to 386BSD : comp.os.386bsd.* - I haven't seen a recent FAQ for 386BSD :). Nevertheless the Linux FAQ is not bug free, and contains some outdated information. - 386BSD can do POSIX and BSD - Linux can do POSIX, SYSV and some BSD stuff For most of the *nix* users both systems are fairly usable, but none of them are bug free. I.22) Why can't we split comp.os.linux ? ANSWER: (Ian Jackson) There is a procedure for creating new newsgroups, involving discussion periods and votes; it can be found in news.announce.newgroups. In November last year I (Ian Jackson) started a formal discussion under that procedure and duly held a vote for four new groups, comp.os.linux.announce (moderated), comp.os.linux.questions, comp.os.linux.bugs and comp.os.linux.misc. There was quite a heated argument, with many people (esp from Fidonet and the news->mail gateway) complaining that if the group split they wouldn't be able to read it. At the end of the vote the results were as follows (culled from the announcement at the end of the voting period): yes no abs diff ratio result why to change .announce 479 131 3 348 3.6564885 PASS 249 .questions 380 217 16 163 1.7511521 FAIL (ratio) 54 .bugs 390 212 11 178 1.8396226 FAIL (ratio) 34 .misc 390 207 16 183 1.8840580 FAIL (ratio) 24 diff = number more yes than no votes - this must be >=100 for a group to pass. ratio = ratio of yes to no votes - this must be >=2 for a group to pass. to change = the minimum number of votes which would have been required to change the result (if they were all "yes" or "no" as appropariate). The guidelines say that unless a group gets at least twice as many "yes" as "no" votes and at least 100 more "yes" than "no" votes it won't be created. Hence all the new groups except .announce failed. The guidelines also say that you have to wait at least 6 months after a failed vote before trying again - this to stop the obvious problem of failed groups coming back over and over again. Hence any more discussion of proposed splits is futile until at least very late in June. In any case, such a discussion should take place in the group reserved for that purpose, news.groups, not in comp.os.linux. II. LINUX USEFUL ADDRESSES ========================= II.A. LINUX ON THE NET: ftp, mailing-list II.B. OBTAINING LINUX FROM BBS'S: everything about bbs II.A. LINUX ON THE NET ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ II.01) Where can I get linux? ANSWER: Linux (all the software, binaries, sources, releases, and so on), can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from : [ Major sites ] EUROPE: nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100): directory /pub/OS/Linux ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de (131.159.0.110) directory /pub/Linux US: tsx-11.mit.edu (18.172.1.2): directory /pub/linux sunsite.unc.edu (152.2.22.81): directory /pub/Linux [ Mirroring sites (some of them, there are lots now) ] AUSTRALIA: kirk.bu.oz.au (131.244.1.1) directory /pub/OS/Linux EUROPE: src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.2.1): directory packages/Linux ftp.mcc.ac.uk (130.88.200.7): directory pub/linux ftp.dfv.rwth-aachen.de (137.226.4.105): directory /pub/linux ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (137.226.112.172): directory /pub/Linux ftp.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (134.169.34.15): directory /pub/os/linux JAPAN: kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp (130.54.20.1): directory /Linux /Linux/mirror (for the tsx mirror) KOREA: cair.kaist.ac.kr (143.248.11.170): mirror of sunsite; directory pub/Linux US: wustl.wuarchive.edu (128.252.135.4): directory /pub/mirrors4/linux ftp.eecs.umich.edu (141.212.99.7): directory linux You might want to check out which of these is the most up-to-date. > (From: Lee M J McLoughlin ) > src.doc.ic.ac.uk: > > We are also on Janet (the main UK academic network) as > uk.ac.ic.doc.src (000005102000). > > More useful perhaps is we are the only big archive available via FTAM, > the ISO equivalent to FTP. We can be reached either over the > internet or janet (see above addresses) or via the European IXI > network on 204334504108 If you have no FTP capability, you are in trouble. See the next Q/A. Also, you'll need the "UNCOMP.EXE" and "RAWRITE2.EXE" programs for DOS (to make your install disks). These are usually found in the Linux directories on the above FTP sites. II.02) I do not have FTP access, what can I do to get linux? ANSWER: You can either read the next subsection related to BBS's otherwise, read the following. The SLS release is distributable by snail-mail on floppies for those without net access; see the SLS section in section III of this FAQ for more. Try to contact a friend on the net with those access, or try mailserver/ftpmail server otherwise contact tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU. You might try mailing "mailserver@nic.funet.fi" with "help" in the body of the mail. If you choose ftpmail server (example: ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk, ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com), with "help" in the body, the server will send back instructions and command list. As an exemple to get the list of files available at tsx-11 in /pub/linux send: mail ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com subject: anything reply connect tsx-11.mit.edu chdir /pub/linux dir -R quit In Europe ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de is accessible via e-mail (send "help" in the body to ftp-mailer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de) II.03) Is there a newsgroup or mailing-list about linux? ANSWER: The comp.os.linux newsgroup is literally *teeming* with postings. So, to the first question, yes. :) The older newsgroup, alt.os.linux, is being phased out and shouldn't be used anymore. If you don't have news access you can get the digest of postings via e-mail from: Linux-activists-request@news-digests.mit.edu. This list is gatewayed to the newsgroup as well. Only use the 'request' address for subscribe/unsubscribe messages; don't post those to the newsgroup or to the actual mailing list. And last but not least there is the original mailing-list, which is now a multi-channel list. contact linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi II.04) Where can I get my questions answered? How about bug-reports? What do I put into a post to comp.os.linux? ANSWER: (Paul Gortmaker pg@cain.mmtc.rmit.oz.au) You can post your problem to the above group, comp.os.linux. BUT, BEFORE YOU DO THIS, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING GUIDELINES. If you have read the FAQ, man pages, etc, and you still haven't solved your problem, then check to make sure you have got the latest version of whatever it is that you are working with. Check the dates and revision numbers of your versions with the versions on your local ftp site (tsx-11.mit.edu , sunsite.unc.edu ?). This includes (most importantly) the kernel itself. Make sure you have applied the latest patches and recompiled the kernel, or have got the kernel "Image" from someone who has done so. And, of course check comp.os.linux for info too. If you have a genuine problem, chances are that you aren't the first one to find it. So it has probably already been reported (...and fixed???). For example, if you are having trouble with say Xconfig for some strange VGA card, and you use nn to read comp.os.linux, then you could invoke nn as follows: nn -x -s 'config' comp.os.linux and it will find all the latest articles with the word config in their subject for you. This will be one of the most up to date sets of information that you can get -- DON'T OVERLOOK IT !!! (You can check the man pages of your news reader to determine the options that do the same as the above.) OK, so you've done all the above, spent 40 hours trying to figure it out, have had a nervous breakdown, your girlfriend/boyfriend has stopped talking to you, and you decide that you will turn to the Linux community for help. Here are some guidelines on posting that will ensure that you get a quick response, and that you hopefully don't get flamed. 1) Choosing a Subject: It is important to try and squeeze as much information into as few words as possible. If you can manage it, try and put the package name, version, and problem into the subject. But don't make it too long, or the middle will get chopped out. For example "I'm having problems with poeig-1.1.tar.Z on my 486 with 0.99p6" will probably appear to everybody as "I'm having prob <> ith 0.99p6" Not very useful... What should have been used was something like: "poeig-1.1 w 99p6 wont compile" would be much better, and relays that you are having trouble with getting it to compile. (Note that this is just an example, I have no knowledge of problems with poeig!) Also, (unless you like bugs -> getting flamed!) DON'T claim you have found a bug, unless you are ABSOLUTELY SURE! Nothing p***es developers off more than erroneous bug reports. 2) Keywords: If your news poster program asks for keywords, try and put in some useful descriptive words, so that others can use them for a meaningful search. 3) Body of the Article: There are some key things that need to be included in the body of the article. (a) The name and version of the thing that you are having the problem with. (b) The type of problem, ie compilation, execution, etc. -- (c) versions of related software, ie if compilation is the problem, then the version of GCC you are runnning is relevant. If you are having trouble with a program that uses X, then the version of X you are using is relevant. (d) The version and patchlevel of the kernel you are using at present. (ie. 0.99p7 or whatever) (e) the type or brand of any related hardware, ie. if you are having problems with networking, then you would want to say that you are using a Western Digital SMC Elite 16 or whatever your ethernet card is. (f) Any relevant error messages that were reported by the system during the problem. And, of course, there are some things that one should NOT put in the article. For example, don't post a 30 page configuration file and expect anybody in their right mind to look through it. And similarly for any HUGE files. If they are relevant to your problem, then someone will respond by asking you something like "Did you check line 32 in file such and such???" And try to avoid negative comments like "The documentation isn't fit for my dog." If you have a bone to pick, do it via e-mail, so the rest of us don't have to read a flame war! It just adds to the amount of useless noise on comp.os.linux, which already takes too long to scan through. Besides, the developers are doing this FOR FREE. THEY ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO DO ANYTHING. DON'T ABUSE THEM!!! (Or they might just go away, which hurts us all.) Well, with all this in mind, hopefully you will get a quick response to your problem, and maybe someday you will be able to answer someone else's problem from the experience you gain! II.05) Could you be more explicit about the multi-channel list? ANSWER: Well, there are many things to say: - these channels are rather devoted to hackers - the ones I am aware of are: GCC, MGR, X11, SCSI, NEW-CHANNELS, MSDOS (emulator discussion) , NORMAL, KERNEL, FTP, LAPTOP, DOC, NET, CONFIGS, LINUXNEWS ... - whenever you want to JOIN or LEAVE a channel you have to contact the request address - you have to use special header (X-Mn-Key and Mn-Admin); X-Mn-Key is *ONLY* for regular post, the X-Mn-Admin is for *REQUEST* (Ari Lemmke: 1 Nov. 1992): Hmmm.... It seems our list has now about 1500 users in 21 channels (mailing lists). 3960 without uniq. "echo foo | mail linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi" to get the Mail-Net User Guide. II.06) How can I join the channel XXX on the linux-activists mailing list? ANSWER: just send a mail to the request address with help in the body; you will get back a mail which gives you the list of channels and the way to join/leave them. Basically you send mail to the request address with the line: X-Mn-Admin: join II.07) How can I leave the channel XXX on the linux-activists mailing list? ANSWER: Same as above, basically. You send mail to the request address that contains the line: X-Mn-Admin: leave II.08) I'm not an hacker, what are the channels I could be interested in? ANSWER: Probably these are the most interesting for you (IMHO) Channel NORMAL: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Channel normal is the former Linux-Activists mailing list (all the people who were on the old Linux-Activists list are moved to this channel). Channel DOC: ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This channel is for Linux document "project". Discussion about Linux documents, manuals, papers, etc. Channel CONFIGS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This channel will be devoted to send submissions of systems that have Linux already running, AND those that, for any reason, can't get it to work yet. Mainly, what it's need from all the channel users is to send their hardware configuration list (as complete as possible). Include anything that you feel pertinent for information: CPU, motherboard, RAM amount, HD & floppy controller, BIOS, monitor, video card & memory, network adapter, etc. If you are having trouble with your current system, or you find out that a program doesn't work properly on your system due to a HARDWARE problem, it may be useful for us to know your configuration; maybe you can get a lot of help. Channel LINUXNEWS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The LINUXNEWS channel will be used for distribution of Linux News, a weekly (if I can find the time) summary of things that happen in the Linux community. Discussion is not encouraged, if you have complaints or suggestions, send them directly to me (Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi). Channel NEW-CHANNELS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On the future users on this channel get the information about new channels created. By this way you can join the channels you want, and do not need to send mail to Mail-Net info server or listen rumours. II.09) Does there exist a place where the traffic of the newsgroup is kept? ANSWER: Yes, on nic and tsx-11 (see the ftp addresses above), and since 12th March, a Gopher server is up at beryl.daimi.aau.dk (130.225.16.86). The archives go back to Nov. 18. 91. Also recently a WAIS server for the linux mail archive has been setup at fgb1.fgb.mw.tu-muenchen.de. Contact tw@fgb1.fgb.mw.tu-muenchen.de for more info. All back issues of the Digest are available on tsx-11.mit.edu [18.172.1.2] in the following place(s): pub/linux/mail-archive ~/Volume? /* where '?' in volume # ~/digestnnn.Z * and nnn is issue # */ II.B OBTAINING LINUX FROM BBS'S ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *** This section is maintain by Zane Healy (healyzh@holonet.net) *** Last Update November 1992. II.10) I don't have access to FTP, how can I obtain Linux? ANSWER: Linux is available from various BBS's around the world. II.11) I got this FAQ from a local BBS, or a friend, and I see there is a newsgroup called comp.os.linux . I don't have access to USENET or mail, so how can I get the messages? ANSWER: Some of the BBS's on FidoNet carry comp.os.linux as a FidoNet conference. Also some of the other BBS's carry it in some form or other. II.12) Do BBS's offer anything that the Internet does not? ANSWER: Yes, on the information side there are the UNIX conferences on both the RIME network and FidoNet. Although they are not dedicated to linux, a large amount of the messages are linux related. Also at least one software package being developed for linux, and also one port is available via BBS's long before they are available via anonymous FTP. II.13) What is a BBS? ANSWER: A BBS is a Bulletin Board System, it let's you transfer message's and file's via your phone line and all you need is a computer with communications software and a modem. Some BBS's transfer message's among each other forming large computer network's similar to USENET. The most popular of these in the US are FidoNet and RIME. II.14) How can I get a (Near) complete list of BBS's that carry Linux? ANSWER: I (Zane Healy) post a list of all known BBS's that carry Linux to comp.os.linux as well as the RIME and Fidonet UNIX conferences on the 1st and 15th of each month. II.15) Now that I have a phone number, how do I go about accessing a BBS? ANSWER: 1. You need a computer equipped with communications software and a modem. 2. For ALMOST all BBS's you will need to set the comm software up for: 8 - Data Bits N - Parity 1 - Stop Bit Although certain BBS's and Communication services require that the software be set for: 7 - Data Bits E - Parity 1 - Stop Bit You will also need to set the comm software for the correct speed, either the top speed, or the max speed for your modem. 3. Using the comm software, call the BBS. Once you connect with the BBS (this may take awhile, as other people are likely to be using it), you will be asked some questions. If you are a registered user of the BBS it will normally only ask for your name and password. However if you are not a registered user, it will most likely require that before you do anything, you register. The method of registration varies from BBS to BBS. Normally the first thing that will happen is, you sign on to the BBS, and tell it your name. It will then check it's list of user's and see that you are not one of them. At which time it will ask you if you are a new user, or if you wish to re-enter your name. When you tell it you are a new user, it will then ask you some questions about yourself, such as where you are calling from and your phone number. A lot of BBS's will want some statistical info such as what type of computer you are using, your communications software, your age, etc, etc. After this, most BBS's require some sort of validation, this is for the System Operator's (SysOp's) protection. One type is where you give the BBS software your phone number, hang up, and the BBS calls your computer to verify that you gave it legitament phone number. Some BBS's require that you mail the SysOp a postcard. Most, however just require that you give the SysOp the request info and then he upgrades your level of access a couple of day's later. For the most part you will find that the registration process is easy to follow and well documented. II.16) There is a local BBS that carries Linux, but it isn't on the latest Linux BBS List. How do I go about submitting it for inclusion in the list? ANSWER: Send the following information on the BBS to me: BBS Name: Phone Number: Modem Speed: City and State/Country: Whatever Network it's on (i.e. FidoNet, RIME, etc.): First Time access to D/L Linux Files (Y/N): Free Access to Linux Files (Y/N): Allow File Requests (Y/N): BBS Rating (1-5): I can be reached at one of the following E-Mail Addresses: Internet -- healyzh@holonet.net CompuServe -- 70332,14 Prodigy -- SCNN49A Fido NetMail -- Zane Healy at 1:109/615 RIME UNIX Conference -- Zane Healy II.17) What can I do to help ensure the continued development of Linux? ANSWER: PLEASE UPLOAD FILES TO BBS'S I would like to point out that a very large number of the Linux enthusiasts don't have FTP access. In fact it is possible that by now most of the Linux fan's don't. So I would like to suggest that those of us that do, find at least one BBS to post the Linux file's to. I, for one post every file that I get to at least one of the local BBS's, and from there they the file's tend to find there way to other local BBS's. I've seen posts about the future of Linux etc., well here is a way to help guarantee it. I think it's safe to assume that most people with FTP access also have a modem. So how about doing other Linux fan's a favor and finding a BBS to upload the Linux files to. II.18) How do I read the data contained in the Linux BBS List? ANSWER: The list uses the following format: State YYY BBS Name Phone Number Modem Speed Rating City Other data The BBS's are rated by the number of Linux related file's that they carry. This is so you can choose one's that has a better chance of carrying the file's you are looking for if you are calling long distance. The BBS's are rated on a scale of one to five. 1 -- Only enough the most basic of files 2 -- The basics and a little more 3 -- So, so 4 -- A respectable amount 5 -- Pretty much everything you need Information about the boards access policies can be obtained by checking a three digit field. YYY -- Either a Yes/No/? answer to the question ||| ||Free access to Linux files |Allow file requests (FidoNet) First time D/L of Linux related files NOTE: Just because a board has N's in the first two fields does not mean that it is a board to stay away from. A lot of boards require that you register and be verified before you can access most of their features, hence the first N. The second field is, to the best of my knowledge, limited to BBS's that are part of FidoNet. II.19) What are some of the best BBS's to check out? ANSWER: In the US: CA YNY hip-hop 408-773-0768 14.4k V.32bis/HST 5 Sunnyvale Login: guest (no password) DC NNY When Gravity Fails 202-686-9086 14.4k 5 Washington FL ??? Slut Club 813-236-1232 14.4k 5 Tampa/St.Pete Fidonet 1:377/42 GA YYY Information Overload 404-471-1549 9600 HST 5 FidoNet 1:133/308 ID ??? Rebel BBS 208-887-3937 9600 5 Boise IL YYY EchoMania BBS 618-233-1659 14.4k HST 3 Belleville Fido 1:2250/1 (f'reg LINUX) F'reqs from unlisted nodes, online callback verifier (works L.D.) MD ??? Brodmann's Place 301-843-5732 14.4k 5 Waldorf RIME ->BRODMANN NC ??? MAC's Place 919-891-1111 DS modem 5 Dunn RIME ->MAC NY YYY Prism BBS,Middleton 914-344-0350 9600 HST/v.32 5 Middletown, NY Fidonet 1:272/38 NY YYY The Laboratory 212-927-4980 16.8k HST, 14.4k v.32bis 3-4 FidoNet 1:278/707 OR YYY Intermittent Connection 503-344-9838 14.4k HST v.32bis 5 Eugene, Ore 1:152/35 TX YYY Advanced BBS 512-578-2720 9600 5 Victoria, TX Fidonet 1:3802/215 VA ??? VTBBS 703-231-7498 5 Blacksburg WA YYY S'Qually Holler 206-235-0270 9600 5 Renton Fidonet 1:343/34 And here are all the known BBS's outside the US: AUSTRALIA: NSW YYN Linux-Support-Oz +61-2-418-8750 2400 2-3 Sydney Intlnet, SBCNet ? ??? 500cc Formula 1 BBS +61-2-550-4317 V.32 ? (2-3) CANADA: ON ??? EX-10 Kitchner 519-725-4400 ? ON ??? Ned's Ottawa 613-739-1591 2 ON ??? Bytown 613-236-1232 2 SmartNet PQ ??? Synapse 819-246-2344 819-561-5268 5 Gatineau RIME->SYNAPSE GERMANY: ??? bakunin.north.de 00 49 421 870532 9600 ? D 2800 Bremen kraehe@bakunin.north.de ??? ?????????????? +49-40-735-5349 14.4k 1 ??? Hipposoft's Mail Server +49-241-875090 14.4k V.32bis/HST 3 D-W5100 Aachen Fidonet 2:242/6 IRELAND: ??? TOPPSI +353-1-711047 or 773547 9600 ? Fidonet 2:263/151 NORWAY: ??? Thunderball Cave 472567018 ? RIME ->CAVE ? NETHERLANDS: ??? DownTown BBS Lelystad, Linux Support BBS 14.4k ? +31-3200-48852 FIDONET SOUTH AFRICA: ??? Andre Skarzynski - Linux Activists of Southern Africa ? +27 2231 78148 (Is this voice or data?) UNITED KINGDOM: NYN The Purple Tentacle +44-734-590990 HST/V32bis 3-4 Reading Fidonet 2:252/305 ??? A6 BBS +44-582-460273 14.4k ? Herts Fidonet 2:440/111 II.20) What are File Requests? ANSWER: FidoNet BBS's with the right type's of front-end mailer's can call other Fido BBS's and request their front-end mailer to send them files that they want. All this can be done automatically. File Requests (freqs) are basically the FidoNet equivallent to UUCP. ===================8<==========>8================ Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.announce,news.answers,comp.answers Distribution: world Followup-To: poster From: corsini@labri.greco-prog.fr Reply-To: linux@numero6.greco-prog.fr Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France Subject: Linux Frequently Asked Questions 2/4 [monthly posted] Summary: Linux, a small and free unix-like for 386-AT computers. Archive-name: linux-faq/part2 Last-Modified: 93/03/28 Version: 1.16.1 ********************************************************* * * * Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux * * * ********************************************************* This post contains Part 2 of the Linux FAQ (4 parts). It must be read *after* the first part. ================================8<=====8<============================== CONTENTS (of this part) III. INSTALLATION, and COMMON PROBLEMS (part2) IV. SOME CLASSICAL PROBLEMS (part2) V. LINUX and DOS (part2) ===================================8<====>8============================ III. INSTALLATION, SETUP, and COMMON PROBLEMS ============================================= *** Note: this FAQ section should be kept up-to-date, and should *** be the most 'reliable' source for installation info. Please mail *** any corrections or changes to this section's coordinator, *** Matt Welsh (mdw@tc.cornell.edu). Last update March 93. III.A. WHERE TO START: What are the reliable sources of information III.B. LINUX PACKAGES: Where and how install a complete Linux package III.C. SOME COMMON PROBLEMS: Simple problems and simple solutions III.A. WHERE TO START ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ III.01) I want to install Linux on my machine. Where do I start? ANSWER: The first thing you should do is read through the various introductory files, and ESPECIALLY the FAQ (this file). Especially this section :). A lot of effort has been done on these intro files, but note that some of them conflict with each other and cover older versions of Linux. When in doubt consult this file. These files are all found on tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/docs... FAQ The Linux Frequently Asked Questions list It's sitting in your hands now. This section is probably the best place to start to get the most up-to-date Linux installation information. INFO-SHEET Linux Information Sheet, by J. Winstead/L. Wizenius This is a collection of general info about Linux. It's a good place to start if you've never heard of the package before. README.kernel Kernel compilation README file, by L. Wirzenius This is the README notes for recompiling the Linux kernel from the sources. You don't need it unless you're planning to upgrade your kernel by compiling it yourself. Others Every "release" of Linux (such as SLS, boot/root, HLU's disks, etc., see below) has its own up-to-date README files and docs that explain how to install that release. This FAQ section summarizes, but for more info on how to install Linux, read the READMEs and docs for the release that you choose. Old docs There are a number of obsolete, old docs lying around. Most of these tell how to install Linux from the old boot/root disk combo. I DO NOT SUGGEST that you use these docs unless you know what you're doing-- the best thing for beginners to do is read this FAQ and install the SLS release (using the docs and READMEs for the SLS release). These old docs are things like "install.txt", "guide.txt", "RELNOTES", "CHANGES", and so on, and are all geared towards old versions of the boot/rootdisk. They are *NOT* relevant to current versions of Linux. III.02) Is there some kind of limit on how large my Linux partitions and/or filesystems can be? ANSWER: There's no limit on partition size (just the size of your drive), but Linux mainly uses the minix filesystem which limits filesystems to 64 megs each. You can also use the extended filesystem (which is still in testing, but has been included with recent kernel versions) which has a limit of 4 terabytes. Probably enough unless you have a disk array. :) See section III.C below on creating partitions and filesystems for more info. III.B. LINUX PACKAGES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This section contains information about *SOME* of the current Linux packages available. III.03) Does there exist a way to get all (or nearly all) of the Linux stuff? ANSWER: Yes. To install Linux, you're going to want to choose one of the "releases" of Linux, all of which have a different method of installation and set up. Each release also has its own README and installation docs, which you'll want to read first. But I'll summarize here. The major releases are: * The "Softlanding Linux System Release" Also known as the "SLS" release, consists of 14 disks for Linux and 8 for X11. The nice thing about this release is that you can pick and choose which disks and packages you want to install. The first 2 disks must be "rawritten" (using rawrite.exe) on floppies, and the rest of the images are put onto DOS format floppies. Contains all of the softs you'll ever need, and is easy to install for newcomers. This is the release that I suggest everyone new to Linux should install. It's the most complete and up-to-date package. HLU's disks, below, are good for upgrading, and (unfortunately), the MCC-interim is quite dated at this point. If you install SLS you'll save yourself a lot of trouble. * The "TAMU" (Texas A&M University) Linux Release This release is supposedly like the SLS release, but has some different softs and a different installation procedure. From Dave Safford, "The installation procedure is the main difference from SLS. A single boot diskette is used, and it boots directly into an automated installation program." This installation program asks a few questions about the desired configuration, and sets up everything, including your filesystems, booting from the hard drive with LILO (see section III.C below), and a simplified X-Windows configuration. This humble author has never installed the TAMU release but I've heard good things about it. * H.J. Lu's "bootable rootdisk" This is a release of the Linux kernel and basic binaries on a single floppy. It, along with HLU's 'gccdisk', 'libdisk', and so on, are good for upgrading or installing basic Linux system by hand. It's not reccommended for newcomers, because there's no real install script, it's mostly meant as an upgrade of the basic system software. Beginners should install SLS or MCC-interim (see below) instead. The images and docs are found at tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux. * Others but OUTDATED There are other releases and distributions of the Linux software, such as the "MCC-Interim" and "MJ" releases. There is also an older "boot/root" disk combo (0.98.1) which is like HLU's bootable rootdisk, above, but it's no longer supported (as far as I know). The MCC-Interim release (the previous de facto Linux standard) isn't going to be updated anymore, according to Owen LeBlanc. So if you install it, be warned that you'll have to upgrade it all in some other way (the last version of MCC-Interim was 0.97.2, quite dated). The "MJ" release, according to Martin Junius, is no longer maintained. The last version was 0.97.1. III.04) Where can I get these versions of Linux? ANSWER: The SLS release is at tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/SLS and sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/SLS. H.J. Lu's "bootable rootdisk" release is found at tsx-11.mit.edu: /pub/linux/packages/GCC, as well as the mirror sites. TAMU.99p4 is available from sc.tamu.edu in pub/free_unix/TAMU.99p4. III.05) What should I do to install the SLS release? ANSWER: Basically all of the releases are alike. You need to get the DOS program 'rawrite.exe' (or 'rawrite2.exe'). This program takes a binary file and writes it, block by block, to a blank formatted floppy. This is the way to take a Linux floppy image and put it onto a disk from DOS. For the SLS release, you need to get the files in the a1, a2, a3, and a4 directories at least. You also need the README's there. Basically, you use rawrite to copy the a1 and a2 images onto floppies. Or, you can use 'dd' on your UNIX system to transfer the files directly to floppies (assuming you have a floppy drive on your UNIX system) in place of rawrite. The rest of the files all go onto DOS-formatted floppies, just using DOS copy. The SLS release is nice because it reads the DOS floppies during installation, so you don't have to rawrite all of those disks. Once you have these 4 disks, you're ready to go. You can also get all of the files in the b1-b7 directories (for extras, like man pages and emacs), c1-c4 directories (for the GCC compiler and libraries), the x1-x8 directories (for Xwindows), and so on, but they're all optional. I suggest at least getting the files in the a, b, and c directories. Remember that only the a1 and a2 images need to be rawritten, ALL of the other files just do onto the floppies in DOS format. First you boot the a1 disk. It will load up Linux, and will ask you to put in the a2 disk at some point. You'll be left with a prompt... from here you want to look at the SLS README file on-line (it tells you how). Then you'll run 'fdisk' to create your Linux partition(s), (see section III.C, below, for info on making partitions), and then reboot the a1 disk again (putting in the a2 disk, again, when asked). Then you'll run 'mkfs' and 'mkswap' to make your filesystems and swap space. Then you're ready to install the software-- type doinstall /dev/PART where PART is the main Linux partition you created with fdisk, above. >From here on it's pretty automatic-- you simply flip disks while it installs the software. First it will ask you how much software you plan to install-- just choose the correct option depending on which sets of disks you got. You will need to have a blank DOS-formatted floppy on hand. The installation procedure makes a Linux kernel boot disk out of it. III.06) What's about SLS ? ANSWER: (this is part of the FAQ written for SLS 0.98p5 by Peter MacDonald). SLS (Softlanding Linux System) Copyright 1992, Softlanding Software. which is NOT just an image dump of someones Unix system. Also note that in the interest of preventing ftp storms, the version of SLS that appears on the internet, is not quite the same as the version distributed by Softlanding. Softlanding regularly gets a whole new version which has the changes integrated. But the updates to the Internet version are tailored to minimize the amount that has to be downloaded to become current. That is why bugs manage to creep in on me. I am not installing and testing the Internet version, although, functionally, it should be quite close to the Softlanding one. So, why am I telling you this? After the next period of stability (few changes to SLS), I will be uploading the Softlanding version of SLS to tsx-11.mit.edu. This distribution is freely available if you have internet access, or an obliging friend with access to it. The purposes of the SLS are the following: 0) provide an initial installation program (for the queasy). 1) utilities compiled to use minimal disk space. 2) provide a reasonably complete/integrated U*ix system. 3) provide a means to install and uninstall packages. 4) permit partial installations for small disk configs. 5) add a menu driven, extensible system administration. 6) take the hassle out of collecting and setting up a system. 7) give non internet users access to Linux. 8) provide a distribution that can be easily updated. SLS is a binary mostly distribution (except for the kernel), and is broken into multiple parts, or series, each of which is denoted by a letter followed by the disk number as follows: a1-aN: The minimal base system b1-bN: Base system extras, like man pages, emacs etc. c1-cN: The compiler(s), gcc/g++/p2c/f2c x1-xN: The X-windows distribution i1-iN: Interviews (doc and idraw) t1-tN: TeX (document processing) This scheme allows new disks to be added to the distribution without changing the disk numbering. Also, the sysinstall program doesn't have to be changed when new disks are added as the last disk is marked by the presence of the file "install.end". And when interviews is added, say as a new series "i", it can be installed with: sysinstall -series i Highlights of the base are: gcc/g++, emacs, kermit, elm/mail/uucp, gdb, sc (spreadsheet), man pages, groff, elvis, zip/zoo/lh and menu. Highlights of X are: X, programmers libs, 75 dpi fonts, games (spider, tetris, xvier, chess, othello, xeyes, etc) and utilities like xmag, xmenu, xcolormap and ghostscript. Approximate usage is as follows: Tiny base system: 9 Meg (Series 'a') Main base system: 25 Meg (Series 'a', 'b' and 'c') Main base system + X11: 45 Meg (Series 'a', 'b', 'c' and 'x') Please read the file COPYING which outlines the GNU copying restrictions. The linux kernel is copywrite Linux B. Torvalds. Various other copywrites apply, but the upshot is that you may do whatever you like with SLS, except restrict others in any way from doing likewise, and you must leave all copywrites intact, and you can not misrepresent or take credit for others work. AVAILABILITY SLS is available from the address: Softlanding Software 910 Lodge Ave. Victoria, B.C., Canada V8X-3A8 (604) 360-0188 More details about SLS can be asked to pmacdona@sanjuan.uvic.ca III.07) What should I get to install the bootdisk/rootdisk combo release? ANSWER: Essentially it's a lot like the SLS installation, above. You get the boot disk and root disk, and use rawrite to transfer them to floppies. Then you boot the boot disk, and put in the root disk when asked. At this point you login as 'install' to install the software. III.08) How do I get and install H.J. Lu's "bootable rootdisk" release? ANSWER: It's just like the boot/root disk and the SLS release. Just get the bootroot disk image and use rawrite to transfer it to a floppy, and then boot it. You'll probably want to get the 'gccdisk' and 'libdisk', etc. images and rawrite them to floppies as well. Note that this release doesn't have a user-friendly installation script, it's meant mostly to upgrade or install the system by hand. Unless you're familiar with Linux this may prove difficult. :) III.09) What is the MCC interim version of Linux? ANSWER: The MCC-Interim release of Linux was put together by Owen LeBlanc of the Manchester Computing Centre. Unfortunately, it's quite dated, and isn't going to be updated anymore. :( III.C. SOME COMMON PROBLEMS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ III.10) What filetype is the extension ".z"? What about ".taz", ".tpz", and ".tgz"? I see these files on the archives but I don't know how to unpack them. ANSWER: Here's a list of common filename extensions on the archives. Extension Used by --------- ---------------------------------------------------------- .Z compress/uncompress. Use "uncompress foo.Z" to uncompress the file. .z gzip. Gzip is now used by many archive sites instead of compress; if you don't have gzip on your system, get it! To uncompress one of these files use "gzip -d foo.z". .tar Tar file. Use "tar xvf foo.tar" to unpack it. Or, you can fo "tar tvf foo.tar" to get an index listing of the tarfile. .taz Compressed tar file. You can do something like "zcat foo.taz | tar xvf -" or "tar xvfz foo.taz" to unpack it (some versions of tar don't have the z option). .tpz, .tgz Gzipped tar file. If you have gzip, zcat is linked to it, so you can do "zcat foo.tpz | tar xvf -" to unpack it. .tpz is the old extension; all gzipped tar files should now end in .tgz instead. The SLS distribution uses gzipped tar files (.tgz). III.11) How do I make partitions and/or filesystems for Linux? ANSWER: For most Linux installations (such as SLS) you'll need at least two partitions: one for swap space (used as virtual memory) and another for your "root filesystem" (that is, the actual Linux software itself). You can also make seperate partitions for your /usr filesystem, etc. (however, the SLS doinstall program, at this point, mounts your root filesystem for you before installing, thus, you can't have a seperate /usr filesystem to start out with). But that's beside the point. First thing you need to do is resize the existing partitions on your drive (if any) to make space for Linux; for example, if you have a DOS partition taking up all of your drive, you need to use FDISK under MS-DOS to delete it and recreate it with a smaller size. Of course, in so doing you'll lose everything on that DOS partition-- just back it up first and reinstall after you've recreated and reformatted the partition. That's life! :) Now you can boot up Linux (say, from SLS, or from the boot/root disks). >From there you run 'fdisk' to create your partitions: it's very self- explanatory. If you make a swap partition you need to change it's type to "Linux swap" with the fdisk 't' command. And, if you want a Linux partition larger than 64 megabytes, you'll need to use the extended filesystem[*] (as opposed to the default, the Minix filesystem). The extended filesystem ("extfs" for short) has a 4 terabyte size limit (and lets you have filenames longer than 14 characters). If you want to use it just set the type of the partition to "Linux extfs" with the fdisk 't' command. [*] You can also use the Xia filesystem (xiafs) or ext2fs (better version of the extended filesystem). These two filesystems are proving to be more widely used as both the extfs and the Minix filesystem are being phased out. Both of them are now included in SLS. Use "mkxfs" to create Xia filesystems, and "mke2fs" to make Extdended 2 Filesystems. As most installations are phasing out the Minix and Extended filesystems I suggest using xiafs or ext2fs. NOTE: "Extended filesystem" does NOT equal "extended partition". An extended partition acts as a "container" for logical partitions, which is nice because you can have many logical partitions inside the extended partition, and only use up one of your four available primary partitions on the drive. (You can have only one extended partition per drive). Extended partition can't hold data on their own: you need to create logical partitions on top of it first. They are numbered /dev/hda5, /dev/hda6, and so on. The extended FILESYSTEM on the other hand has nothing to do with extended partitions. It's just the name of another filesystem used by Linux which lets you have larger filesystem sizes and other features. Once you've got your partitions created, you need to reboot the system so that changes to your partition table are picked up. Then you need to 'format' the partitions (i.e. create filesystems on them). For your swap partition, use the command 'mkswap '. For example, if you have a swap partition on /dev/hda2 with a size of 8208 blocks (about 8 megs), use the command mkswap /dev/hda2 8208 If you have a partition set up for a Minix filesystem (the default type) use the command 'mkfs '. If however you're going to use the extended filesystem (a must for partitions over 64 megs) use the command 'mkefs '. (Note: If you use the ext2fs, you'll have to use mke2fs, and if you use Xia filesystem, you'll have to use mkxfs when creating the filesystems). III.12) Why does fdisk say "Linux cannot currently use XXXX sectors of this partition"? ANSWER: Fdisk is an older program which expected all filesystems to be Minix fs, which limited filesystems to 64 megs. You can ignore this warning because the extfs, xiafs, and ext2fs don't have this limit. III.13) What does the message "MINIX-fs: Magic match failed" on bootup mean? ANSWER: Basically, this means that you're trying to mount a non-Minix filesystem as a Minix filesystem, and mount is croaking on it because the type is wrong. If you use a root filesystem type other than Minix fs (i.e. if you use the extfs, ext2fs, or xiafs) you'll probably see this message: the kernel tries to mount root as Minix, then extfs, then ext2fs, and so on... every time it fails for one type it tries the next type. In most situations, this can be ignored, if the kernel is able to mount your root partition as any one of its known types. However, if you have the root device set to the wrong partition, for example, then the kernel should hang at this point and you'll have to use "rdev" to set it correctly. III.14) Linux mkfs doesn't accept the size I give the device, although I double-checked with fdisk, and it's correct. ANSWER: Be sure you give the size in Linux BLOCKS (1024 bytes), not sectors. Also make sure that you have the right partition: partitions are numbered "/dev/hda1", "/dev/hda2", and so on (and "/dev/hdb1", "/dev/hdb2" for the second hard drive)... DON'T use "/dev/hda" or "/dev/hdb" as they correspond to the entire disk, not just single partitions. Also remember that SCSI drives use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2... and /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb2, and so on for their partitions. III.15) How can I get mkfs/mkefs to check for bad blocks? ANSWER: Unfortunately the -c option on mk(e)fs does not work; it cannot detect bad blocks on the drive, and thus if you create a filesystem over a part of your hard drive with bad blocks, things will eventually go wrong. So you need to generate a bad block list (in a file) and use the -l option on mk(e)fs so it will flag those blocks when making a filesystem. NOTE: This is only needed for older RLL and MFM drives. SCSI and IDE drives have bad block logic on-board. Generating a bad block list for mk(e)fs ======================================= Nov 11, 1992 Gerhard Kircher (kircher@neuro.tuwien.ac.at) Introduction ------------ First of all: the -c option (check bad blocks) of mk(e)fs does not work (the code used cannot detect any bad blocks). Fortunately there is another option -l to tell mk(e)fs where the bad blocks are. SCSI and IDE drive users do not need any bad block management - the drive logic does it for them. However, users of old MFM or RLL drives do need it. 1 Where are my bad blocks ? --------------------------- Every MFM or RLL drive is tested by the manufacturer and the locations of bad blocks are usually printed directly on the drive case. If you cannot find any bad block information on your drive, you can use the common disk test software (Norton,...) to check your drive and obtain a defect list. Locations of bad blocks are given in terms of cylinder and head coordinates. Cylinder and head together specify a certain track. Some manufacturers are more specific about the location of the bad spot within the track but if you know how to use this information you probably do not need to read this guide. So if we know the track where the bad spot sits, we declare the entire track as bad (even experts do this). What we have now is a table of the form CYLINDER HEAD ... ... ... ... ... ... 2 calculating all bad sectors ----------------------------- Each sector on the drive can be addressed by three cordinates: Cylinder = [0..CYLINDERS-1] Head = [0..HEADS-1] Sector = [0..SECTORS-1] where CYLINDERS ... total number of cylinders HEADS ... total number of heads SECTORS ... number of sectors per track The absolute address of a sector on the disk is then calculated according to the formula Abssector = HEADS*SECTORS*Cylinder + SECTORS*Head + Sector. We can now calculate the absolute addresses of all sectors of every bad track on our disk according to for each bad track given by Cylinder and Head do begin for Sector=0 to SECTORS-1 do begin Abssector = HEADS*SECTORS*Cylinder + SECTORS*Head + Sector end end obtaining a list of all bad sectors. 3 Converting absolute sectors to partition relative sectors ----------------------------------------------------------- Partitions are like separate disks, that means that sector counting starts with 0 for each partition. So what we have to do next is to generate a bad sector list for each partition we want to use for linux. To do that, we must know where each partition starts and ends. We can get this information from fdisk. When we start fdisk and type 'p' to view the partition table, the begin, start and end information will be given in terms of cylinders. When we type 'u' to toggle the units, an then again 'p' we get what we need: Start and End of each partition in terms of absolute sectors. Here is what I see on my system (I use my second disk for linux): # fdisk /dev/hdb Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hdb: 8 heads, 17 sectors, 1024 cylinders Units = cylinders of 136 * 512 bytes Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 1 1 963 65483+ 81 Linux/MINIX /dev/hdb2 964 964 1024 4148 82 Linux swap Command (m for help): u Changing display/entry units to sectors Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hdb: 8 heads, 17 sectors, 1024 cylinders Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 1 1 130967 65483+ 81 Linux/MINIX /dev/hdb2 130968 130968 139263 4148 82 Linux swap Sector counting (as counting always should do :-) starts with 0. The first partition begins with sector one, as sector 0 is always the boot sector. This is how we calculate the addresses for one partition: a) From the list obtained in section 2, cancel all addresses that are not in the range [Start..End] (including limits) shown by fdisk. b) Subtract Start from each remaining entry. 4 Converting to blocks ---------------------- A disk sector has a length of 512 bytes (this is the usual size BIOS/DOS can handle). Linux groups two sectors to an entity called block. A block therefore consists of two physical sectors and has a size of 1024 bytes (I read somewhere that larger blocks will be supported in the future). The mk(e)fs program wants to know the addresses of bad blocks, not sectors. So we convert our partition relatve sector addresses to partition relative block addresses by dividing by two and taking the integer part. Doing that we certainly get a lot of duplicate addresses which we have to get rid of, so we simply delete redundant entries. What we have now is a list of bad blocks for each partition. Mk(e)fs likes to get this information from a file, one address per line, one file for each partition. 5 Automating the process ------------------------ Doing all the calculations by hand is tedious and error prone. So we may decide to automate the whole thing. We can do everything in dos when we use the proper utilities (see later) 5.1 The Input File We need a single file containing the coordinates of all bad tracks of one entire disk. Each line of the file consists of two fields, the first of which is the cylinder number and the second is the head number. These are the first few lines of the file for my second disk: 48 0 105 4 150 2 224 1 380 2 427 6 435 1 5.2 An AWK script for doing all the calculations In the following we present an awk script that does all the work for us. We just have to plug in the correct values of the partition and drive parameters and off we go. I use gawk211.zip and sort03.arc which I downloaded from a simtel20 mirror. Sort is used to remove the duplicates. #---the awk script starts here # generates linux bad blocks file (starting count with 0) # for partition ONE # for micropolis drive 8 heads, 17 sectors # input file: cyl[0.. ] head[0.. ]\n # stdout: abs blocks of corresponding partition\n BEGIN { start = 1; end = 130967; sectors = 17; heads = 8; } { sec=$1*sectors*heads+$2*sectors; if (sec>=start && sec<=end) for (i=0; i badblk1.lst This is the file we need. 5.3 Making the file system What we must do now is to have this file accessible for linux during installation. There are several ways to do this. You can either mount your DOS partition and copy the file over to Linux, or use mtools (as in 'mcopy c:badblk1.lst /user/badblocks'). Now we can make the file system. In this case the bad blocks file is in /user/badblocks, and the partition we're making a filesystem on is /dev/hdb1. We're making an extended filesystem with a size of 65483 blocks: mkefs -l /user/badblocks /dev/hdb1 65483 Thats it! Bugs ---- I only tried mkfs but I'm rather convinced that it works with mkefs as well. III.16) How can I boot Linux off of my hard drive? ANSWER: You need to install the "LILO" program which changes the boot sector of your hard drive to allow you to choose between a DOS or a Linux partition to boot from. These programs are provided with most major releases, or you can get them seperately from one of the FTP sites. As of LILO version 8 there is a "quick install" script available which should make LILO installation quick and easy. See Section VII for LILO information. III.17) Cripes! I tried to install LILO, but screwed up somehow, and now can't boot anything from the hard drive. How can I fix this? ANSWER: Simple. First you need an MS-DOS 5.0 (or OS/2) bootable floppy with FDISK.EXE on it. Boot it and run the command FDISK /MBR which will (hopefully) restore your hard drive's master boot record to a standard MS-DOS (resp. OS/2) boot record. Now you can go back and reinstall LILO. :) III.18) When installing SLS, I get the error "You may have inserted the wrong disk" when putting in the next disk in a series. What's going on? ANSWER: Each disk has a small file on it which contains the name of the disk. For example, the SLS a3 disk has a file on it called "diska3". If it doesn't exist, or is named something else (like "diska3.z"), then just create it/rename it. Also, the last disk in a series (i.e. the a4 disk, b5 disk, etc.) has a file on it called "install.end". You need this file as well. These files are used by the SLS doinstall program to keep track of where it is. III.19) When installing SLS, the installation script creates a "boot floppy" for me to boot Linux with. How can I make these myself (or fix problems with them?) ANSWER: The SLS install scripts just copy the kernel image to a blank floppy for you to boot Linux with. When SLS is installed, a copy of the kernel is stored in the file /Image on your hard drive: since you use the kernel on your boot floppy to boot, this file isn't used during the bootup process (unless you install LILO). To make a boot floppy yourself, you must do two things: 1) Run 'rdev' (a.k.a. 'rootdev') on the kernel in the file /Image to set the root partition it uses. For example, if your root partition is /dev/hda3, run the command rdev /Image /dev/hda3 2) Copy the kernel to a new floppy. You may need to DOS format the floppy first(*). Then run the command cp /Image /dev/fd0 if the floppy is in /dev/fd0 (the first floppy drive). You can use a command like dd if=/Image of=/dev/fd0 bs=16k as well; they should accomplish the same thing. (*) (From: "Michael L. Kaufman" kaufman@delta.eecs.nwu.edu) Formating the floppy lays down the track/sector information. If you have a completely unformated floppy, dd can fail in interesting ways. Many folks have problems with their SLS boot disks made in this manner because they forgot to run 'rdev' on the kernel image before copying it to the floppy. III.20) How can I set the default video mode used by Linux? Do I have to recompile the kernel to do this? ANSWER: No, you don't have to recompile the kernel. Just use "rdev" with the "-v" switch to set the video mode in the kernel (either on your hard drive (if booting from LILO) or on your boot floppy). For example, to change the kernel in /Image to prompt for the videomode on bootup, do rdev -v /Image -3 to change the kernel on your boot floppy do, rdev -v /dev/fd0 {video-mode} III.21) How else can I use rdev? ANSWER: rdev is very handy and also is used to set the root and swap partitions, ramdisk size, and more, in a compiled kernel. It means you don't have to recompile the kernel to make these changes. Use "rdev -?" for a list of options. III.22) When I login as non-root, I get tons of errors about "shell-init: permission denied". Also, some things work as root but not as a normal user. What's the deal? ANSWER: This is a really common problem which comes from not having permissions set right and a misunderstanding of some UNIX terms. Some installations won' t have the file permissions set correctly on the various directories that normal users (i.e. non-root) will use. For example, if your user directories are in /home, then /home must be of mode rwxr-xr-x, or 'chmod 755 /home'. Also, a home directory must be owned by the user who it belongs to (i.e. /home/mdw must be owned by 'mdw'... just 'chown mdw /home/mdw', for example). Also, the permissions must be set correctly for / (the root directory). Here's a list of permissions that should work (although you can use other permissions, these are just suggestions that shouldn't cause trouble): permissions (chmod) owner file ----------- ------- ----- --------------------------------------------- rwxr-xr-x (755) root / rwxr-xr-x (755) root /home rwxr-xr-x (755) mdw /home/mdw rwxr--r-- (744) mdw /home/mdw/.profile (or other startup files) rwxr--r-- (744) mdw /home/mdw/foo (normal files) In most cases the group of the file doesn't matter, but in general most files are set to group 'root' (except for binaries which are group bin, and so on) and user files are set to group 'user' (or whatever group users are in). In general you want directories that everyone can access to be rwxr-xr-x (chmod 755). Files that everyone can read are rwxr--r-- (chmod 744), and programs that everyone can run are rwxr-xr-x (chmod 755). Thus /bin, /usr, /usr/bin, /etc, and so on, should all be rwxr-xr-x. All binaries should be rwxr-xr-x (unless, of course, they're setuid programs). For UNIX newbies, setuid programs run under the user id of the owner, thus programs owned by root which have a permission of rwsr-xr-x (note the 's') run as root, with root's priveleges. So before changing permissions on a program check to see if it's setuid first. To make a program setuid prepend a '4' to the permissions you give to chmod, i.e. rwsr-xr-x is 'chmod 4755'. Here's a list of common uses for permissions: permission effect on files effect on directories ---------- ----------------------- --------------------------------- read lets you look lets you see what's in the directory at a file, lets you with ls run a shell script write lets you edit a file or lets you create or delete a file from copy over it the directory (*) execute lets you run a binary or lets you cd into the directory shell script (*) Note that you can delete a file from a directory even if you DON'T have write access to the file itself! Write access to the DIRECTORY that the file is in will let you delete any file in that directory. The permissions of the file itself have nothing to do with being able to delete a file. This is standard across all UNIX systems, nothing new with Linux. III.23) I have the previous version of the Linux kernel, how can I upgrade it? ANSWER: If you've never done this before, get the kernel sources from your nearest FTP site (in a file named something like linux-*.tar.Z) and unpack them into /usr/src/linux. As of Linux-0.99 there is a script to autoconfigure your kernel, and you need at least GCC version 2.3.3. You unpack these sources in /usr/src/linux. Make sure you have the logical links for /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm as described below. First run 'make config' and answer the various questions. Then edit /usr/src/linux/Makefile to set the root partition, keyboard, etc. Finally, do a 'make dep' (to set dependencies: VERY important!) and finally 'make'. Assuming you have GCC installed correctly, the kernel should compile and you'll be left with a new "Image" which is your new kernel: if you boot from harddrive, copy the Image to wherever you told LILO to look for it, or if you boot from floppy dd the Image to a new floppy. Make sure that you run "rdev" on the Image to make it look for the correct partition for your root filesystem (if you specified this correctly in the Makefile you don't need to do this). ** Make sure you read /usr/src/linux/README, which explains in detail ** what to do when recompiling the kernel. If you HAVE done this before, you can just apply the source patches to your old sources and then recompile (i.e. you don't have to get the entire kernel sources all over again). Use the "patch" program to do this. Before you recompile the kernel do a 'make dep' to set dependencies and a 'make clean'. III.24) Where is /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm, or, Why won't the kernel compile correctly? ANSWER: The files /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm are symbolic links to /usr/src/linux/include/linux and /usr/src/linux/include/asm, respectively. In other words, all of the Linux include files are actually under /usr/src/linux/include, but to access them you need two symbolic links in /usr/include: /usr/include/linux -> /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/asm -> /usr/src/linux/include/asm To make these, run the commands ln -sf /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/linux ln -sf /usr/src/linux/include/asm /usr/include/asm NOT the other way around. :) If you dont have these links then many compilations will surely fail. III.25) How can I upgrade to the newest version of GCC and/or libraries? ANSWER: See section IX on GCC for more information, but essentially all you need to do is FTP to sunsite.unc.edu (or one of the other Linux FTP sites) and look in /pub/Linux/GCC. You'll see a number of .tar.Z files there (often abbreviated .TZ). The names change from time to time: you need to get the compiler (often in a file such as 'gcc233.TZ'), header files, and library files. At this point, the compiler lives in /usr/bin, the compiler's setup files are under /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux, and the libraries (shared, jump table, and static) are all in /usr/lib. It's all very straightforward once you actually unpack the tar files and everything falls into place. III.26) What's the deal with these things called "jump tables"? ANSWER: There's more information in section IX and VII, but to be brief: There are three kinds of libraries for Linux. As of gcc v2.3.3 they all live in /usr/lib. The files are... /usr/lib/*.a static (non-shared) libraries (use gcc -static ...) /usr/lib/*.sa jump table shared lib stubs (use gcc -jump ...) There is an older form of the shared libraries which is no longer widely used. Nonetheless, you may run across it from time to time. /usr/lib/*.ca classic shared lib stubs When you compile a program, depending on the options you give gcc (-jump is the default) it will link it against one set of these libraries. The static libs contain all of the code and thus make your executable very big; no shared code is used. The classic shared libs were actually 'stubs' which reference the shared code in /lib/libc.so.VERSION (where VERSION is a number like '4.2'). /lib/libc.so.VERSION is a file which contains the actual code of the library, which is accessed at runtime by your executable. The jump-table library stubs are also shared libs, but they are built in such a way that you can upgrade the /lib/libc.so.VERSION file without having to recompile the programs that use it. So when we say "uses Jump Tables version 4.2" we mean it uses the actual library itself, /lib/libc.so.4.2. To compile programs that use jump tables version 4.2 you need the right version of /usr/lib/*.sa installed, but you don't need them to RUN programs that use jump tables. However programs that are compiled to use, for example, jump table version 4.2 (in the file /lib/libc.so.4.2) won't work if you only have libc.so.4.1 installed. They're only backwards-compatible. If you get errors about 'can't find /lib/libc.so.4.1' then the executable you're using is looking at runtime for a jump table version that you don't have. Basically you're safe if you have the most recent version of the /lib/libc.so.VERSION file installed (which is found on sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/GCC and comes with the GCC stuff). You should always have a symbolic link with the major version number of the library in /lib, because that's what's actually read. For instance, if you have /lib/libc.so.4.2 installed, then you need the symbolic link /lib/libc.so.4 -> /lib/libc.so.4.2 Make this with the command ln -s /lib/libc.so.4.2 /lib/libc.so.4 III.27) How to upgrade jump tables? (Without hanging my system) ANSWER: Be careful! If you upgrade your /lib/libc.so.VERSION file and either remove the symlink or delete the old libc.so.VERSION file before the new one is in place (and the link points to it), then more than likely all of your binaries like "cp", "mv", "ls" and "ln" use the library, so they'll all stop working once you kill the link or the library file. So to upgrade the file, copy the new version to /lib and switch the link in one step with a command such as ln -sf /lib/libc.so.NEW_VERSION /lib/libc.so.4 where NEW_VERSION is the new version of the library you're installing. This will switch the link in one step and everything should work. You just can't copy over the old file because the old version is in use by 'cp', 'mv', and so on. BTW you get new versions of GCC, jump tables, libraries, include files, etc. from tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/GCC. III.28) How can I be sure I won't be writing over anything important when installing Linux? I have to use DOS on my machine, and I don't want to lose any files. ANSWER: Back up everything. Just in case. As long as your DOS and Linux partitions don't overlap you should be okay. III.29) I just rebooted my machine, and now Linux dies with a "panic: trying to free unused inode". What's going on? ANSWER: You probably forgot to "sync" before rebooting, which stores on the disk physically the contents of the kernel buffers. You can either run "fsck" on the partition to TRY to correct the problem (it might fail), or re-mkfs and re-install the software on that partition. For the extended filesystem use "efsck" instead. The best way to shutdown your system is the "shutdown" command. To shutdown and reboot the system, use shutdown -r now or substitute a number of minutes in place of "now". Leave off the "-r" switch if you just want to shutdown and not reboot. III.30) Can I use both OS/2 and Linux on my machine?? ANSWER: Yes! See the following two Q/A's about getting your OS/2 Boot Manager to work. But, be warned: IF YOU USE OS/2, DO NOT USE LINUX's FDISK TO CREATE LINUX PARTITIONS!! The problem is with a bug/feature in OS/2's fdisk that tries to correct 'errors' in partitions that it doesn't like... Linux partitions included. The solution: make your Linux partitions with OS/2's fdisk, then use Linux's fdisk to change the partition ID's to the right values (this is self-explanatory with Linux's fdisk). If you made your Linux partitions with Linux's fdisk, and OS/2 sees them, it will think they have errors and end up trashing them. III.31) I use OS/2's Boot Manager on my hard drive. How can I get it to recognize Linux? ANSWER: To do this, install LILO on your Linux root partition, NOT on your hard drive's master boot record. The lilo command for this would be (if /dev/hda3 is your Linux root partition, and your Linux kernel is in /Image): /etc/lilo/lilo -c -b /dev/hda3 -v -v /Image Then use OS/2's fdisk to add it to the Boot Manager. III.32) When I run Linux's fdisk it says "OPUS" for OS/2's Boot Manager partition. Is this right? What's OPUS? ANSWER: It's correct. OPUS is BBS software that used partition type 0x0A long before OS/2. IV. SOME CLASSICAL PROBLEMS =========================== IV.01) While running du I get "Kernel panic: free_inode: bit already cleared". Also, du produces a ENOENT error for all the files in certain of my directories. What's going on? ANSWER: These are both consistent with a bad file-system. That's relatively easy to produce by not syncing before rebooting, as linux usually has 1.5MB of buffer space held in memory (unless you have <=4M RAM, in which case the buffers are only about 0.5MB). Also linux doesn't do anything special about the bit-map blocks, and as they are used often, those are the thing most likely to be in memory. If you reboot, and they haven't been written to disk ... Just do an fsck on the device, the -a flag might repair it otherwise, the only thing to do is to reinstall the filesystem from the Images. A sync is done only every 30 seconds normally (standard unix practice), so do one by hand (some people think you should do 3 syncs after each other, but that's superstition, you just have to give time to the first sync to finish), or by logging out from the startup-shell, which automatically syncs the system. Unmounting a filesystem also syncs it (but of course you can never unmount root). Another (sad) possibility is that you have bad blocks on your disk. Not very probable, as they would have to be in the inode-tables, just a couple of blocks in size. Again there aren't programs available to read a disk for bad sectors and put them in some kind of "bad-sector-file". On IDE drives this is no problem (bad sectors are automatically mapped away). IV.02) How can I partition my hard-drive to use Linux? ANSWER: See section III of the FAQ on installation. IV.03) I heard something about repartition a hard disk without deleting everything on it, any clue? ANSWER: It's not a program but a partition procedure which requires a) a partitionning program b) a sector editor The procedure itself can be found (at least) in digest#132 Vol2. IV.04) What must I do to mkfs a floppy? ANSWER: blocks are of size 1K so 1.44 floppy is 1440 blocks. The floppy has to be formatted before this will work (e.g., fdformat can do this from within Linux). IV.05) I have some trouble with tar/untar; any clue ? ANSWER: The tar provided on .96 and later is Pax (don't know for CURRENT_VERSION) which does not accept the z flag. You can download the GNU tar at tsx-11 in /pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin IV.06) I can do this as root but not as non-root, is it a bug? ANSWER: Except for an early make utility, the problem is caused by an incorrect permission flag. The most common problems are about /tmp which should be 1777 and /dev/ttys? which might be 766. So as root do chmod 1777 /tmp ; chmod 766 /dev/ttys? IV.07) "du" reports twice the size showed with "ls -l", is it a bug? ANSWER: No it is not, the report is 512 bytes multiple (due to POSIX requirement), for KB you just add the -k flag. You can add a du function in your .profile which does this automatically, something like du(){ /usr/bin/du -k $* } IV.08) Sometimes, I get "mount can't open lock file"; what does this means? ANSWER: This can happened for two reasons: A) You try to mount something as non-root. In that case you can either retry as root, or set the setuid bit to mount as follows: - be sure that mount belongs to root, if not do 'chown root /bin/mount' - set the setuid bit with 'chmod u+s /bin/mount' BTW you have to do the same with umount (in order to be able to unmount) Remark that it is NOT safe to allow anyone to perform mount/umount. B) You are root. mount wants to open /etc/mtab and /etc/mtab~ - the first one for reading, the second as lock file. If there is already a mtab~ remove it. This can happen if you used once gnuemacs on mtab. To forbid that case, just add the following entry in your /etc/rc file: rm -f /etc/mtab~ IV.09) When I try "mount /dev/hd?? /user", I get error 2. ANSWER: Be sure, that your mount point /user does exist; if not perform a "mkdir /user". BTW the error numbering is explained in /usr/include/errno.h IV.10) Since I have upgrade my Linux kernel, ps won't work anymore, why? ANSWER: Each time you upgrade (or re-compile the kernel), you should perform a 'ps -U' (-U is for update the /etc/psdatabase). Every time you boot a new kernel you have to do a 'ps -U' to update the psdatabase, after doing this you can remove the system file or even have to patch the ps-suite. BTW: sometimes a patch makes recompiling ps necessary. Sometimes you do a make clean. NOTE: As of 0.99 there is now a ps package which uses the "/proc filesystem". This is a meta-filesystem which has an entry for each process that's running... create the directory /proc and do a 'mount -t proc /proc /proc' to see it, or else add the following entry in your /etc/fstab: none /proc proc You can get the "procps" package from tsx-11.mit.edu in /pub/linux/BETA/procps. The nice thing about this is: you don't have to upgrade it for every kernel version (and thus ps -U is meaningless if you use procps). MKJ wrote in c.o.l.a: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/procps/procps.tar.Z is the latest version of procps. Most of the reported bugs (i.e. all I can remember at the moment ;-) have been fixed, a man page for ps has been added, and several new programs have been added and/or fixed. A list of the stuff provided: ps free (a real one, from Linus) uptime (this needs work to be good, mine is a hack) tload (a hack, but who cares?) xload (from drew) fuser (perl script prototype, hopefully the real thing in a later release) IV.11) Since Linux 0.96b I have a lot of core file all over my disk. How can I sweep them away ? ANSWER: Use the following command find / -name core -exec rm {} \; BTW: think twice before using this command, there might be a John Core user on your system; this command will erase his mail :) If you never want to see another core file, put this line into your /etc/rc file: for a bash user ulimit -c 0 for a csh or tcsh user limit coredumpsize 0 IV.12) I can only log-in as "root", is it normal ? ANSWER: No, add "rm -f /etc/nologin" in your /etc/rc.local file IV.13) Sometimes my Linux virtual console get messed up when I cat a binary file. The characters shown are above ascii 127, any clue ? ANSWER: (J. Stuckey stuckey@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu) It's a vt-100 thing I think. echo "^V^O" should fix it. Control-V is the literal-next character that stty reports for me, and Control-O is the "magic" character that returns you to livability. V. LINUX and DOS ================= *** This section is co-written by Mark Komarinski, A. V. Le Blanc and *** MM. Corsini. The official maintainer is Mark, if you have *any* *** questions, mail him at komarimf@craft.camp.clarkson.edu *** Last Update 03.08.93 V.01) Is is possible to access DOS from Linux? ANSWER: Yes. (1) The mtools package allows you to access DOS files; it emulates the DOS commands CD, COPY, DEL, DIR, TYPE, and others. (2) Since approximately version 0.97 of the kernel, you can mount DOS file systems as part of your Linux directory tree, providing you have an appropriate mount command. (3) A DOS emulator is in alpha test, which will allow some DOS programs and utilities to run under Linux. V.02) Why use mtools if you can just mount a drive? ANSWER: Mtools is good if you want to do something quickly. For example, if you want to get directories on a bunch of floppies. The mount procedure requires you to mount the drive, get a directory, then umount it. Mtools lets you get the directory with one command. (Dirk Hohndel:) Mtools is really fast when copying disks. I mount the SLS directory of my SUN to my linux box and use mcopy to get the files on the disks. 3 times faster than using xcopy under DOS V.03) How do I get the mtools package set up correctly? ANSWER: The mtools package is available in source form on most Linux ftp sites. The most recent version (As of Sept 1992) is mtools.n2, and there are linked binaries and library (.a) files available as well (for example, as part of MCC interim releases of Linux). In the n2 release of mtools, there is only one executable binary which works differently depending on its name: you can create hard or symbolic links to it named mcopy, mdel, mdir, mtype, etc; this is how the Makefile in version n2 of mtools does it, and it saves several hundred kilobytes of disk space. Finally, you need the correct information in the file /etc/mtools, which is described below. Mtools also comes with the SLS release of linux. V.04) What is the format of the file /etc/mtools? ANSWER: A complete entry in the file /etc/mtools contains the following fields: drive, device, fat, cylinders, heads, sectors, offset. Two examples of entries from /etc/mtools are A /dev/fd0 12 80 2 15 C /dev/hda1 16 0 0 0 which defines the DOS disk A: as accessible through the device /dev/fd0, having a 12-bit FAT, 80 cylinders, 2 heads, and 15 sectors per track; DOS disk C: is accessible through the device /dev/hda1, has a 16-bit FAT, and its geometry is simply that of the hard disk where it lives. The last three numbers can be 0 if you wish; this allows mtools to try to figure out the disk's geometry itself, and perhaps to fail. A 12-bit FAT is common for floppies, but may occur in small hard disk partitions. A 16-bit FAT is common for hard disks. This is an extract of my /etc/mtools file: A /dev/fd0 12 0 0 0 # 3.5 1.4 Meg (autodetect) B /dev/fd1 12 0 0 0 # 5.25 1.2 Meg (autodetect) C /dev/hda1 16 0 0 0 # 1st partition of my Disk V.05) Where can I find out more about mtools? ANSWER: There are two detailed README files in the mtools.n2 distribu- tion. These files treat compiling and using mtools. There is a file README.mtools which treats only using mtools, which is a part of the MCC interim version of Linux. V.06) How do I use the DOS file system? ANSWER: The DOS file system is part of the kernel. If you have a kernel of level .97.1 or above, and an appropriate mount command, type mount -t msdos [-o conv=text] /dev/hda1 /dos to mount the partition /dev/hda1 as an MS/DOS file system on the directory /dos. You'll need a recent mount command, from at least release 97 or later of the root disk. Recent mount commands also accept the options conv=binary|text|auto (default is binary) to specify that text end-of-lines in DOS files are to be converted to UNIX end-of-lines (by omitting carriage return characters) in no cases (binary) or in all cases (text) or in cases that don't have 'well- known binary extensions' (e.g., .EXE or .COM) (auto). V.07) When I mount an MS-DOS disk, I get two lines of what seem to be error messages and the message: No bmap support. Is my disk bad? ANSWER: No. Since the dosfs is still in ALPHA mode, the two lines are used for displaying information about the disk that was mounted, just in case you have problems. The 'No bmap support' message means that you cannot run linux programs from that partition. This has been fixed in the latest release (alpha.9) V.08) I want to use the DOS file system with either conv=binary or conv=auto, but I want to convert text files from DOS to UNIX format, or from UNIX to DOS format. ANSWER: Use the utility todos/fromdos which comes as part of the dosfs package, currently (Sept 92) in released in version 8, or use the flip utility by Rahul Dhesi. V.09) Where can I find out more about the DOS file system? ANSWER: There is a README file included in dosfs.XX.tar.Z (the current value of XX is 10) V.10) This sounds me like a chicken and eggs problem, how can I install the mtools package at the very beginning. ANSWER: You have to use rawrite or the mount procedure. V.11) Could someone explain how to use rawrite? ANSWER: Rawrite is a DOS util which write sequential sectors of a formatted disk/floppy. When a floppy has been rawritten, you can (under Linux) untar it (use x, v, z and f flags). As an example: a) under Dos use rawrite rawrite source: kermit.z destination: a b) boot under Linux, and perform a tar tar zxvf /dev/fd0 tar zxvp < /dev/fd0 You DO NOT NEED TO MOUNT a rawritten disk V.12) What is as86.tar.Z ? ANSWER: It's the port of Bruce Evans' minix assembler, you need it to be able to recompile Linux at your convenience. In fact this is ONLY used for boot/setup.S and boot/bootsect.S they create 80x86 REAL mode code. V.13) Turbo (Microsoft) Assembler won't compile the Linux boot code. In fact, some of the opcodes in these files look completely unfamiliar. Why? ANSWER: The Linux boot codes are written in Bruce Evans' minix assembler, which has the same opcodes as the original minix assembler ported to linux get as86.tar.Z There are a few differences between these and normal DOS assemblers. V.14) What about the dos emulator (dosemu)? ANSWER: Dosemu is in alpha testing now, so it is very unstable and crashes easily. Some programs (such as earlier versions of Turbo Pascal; TP 5.5 too) seem to work fine, but other programs such as dir /p will crash the emulator. Look in your favorite FTP site for the dosemu kit. For a semi-complete list of programs that do and do not work under the emulator, get the file /pub/Linux/docs/emusucc.txt at sunsite.unc.edu or tsx-11.mit.edu. V.15) I have a Stacker volume on my hard drive. Can I access that? ANSWER: Yes, but you will have to do that through the dosemu program. For more information on it, check out the file /pub/Linux/docs/stacker.doc at sunsite.unc.edu V.16) How about OS/2 HPFS partitions, or MacIntosh/Amiga floppies? Can I mount any of them? ANSWER: There is no support for any of those filesystems yet. ===================8<==========>8================ Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.announce,news.answers,comp.answers Distribution: world Followup-To: poster From: corsini@labri.greco-prog.fr Reply-To: linux@numero6.greco-prog.fr Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France Subject: Linux Frequently Asked Questions 3/4 [monthly posted] Summary: Linux, a small and free unix-like for 386-AT computers. Archive-name: linux-faq/part3 Last-Modified: 93/03/28 Version: 1.17 ********************************************************* * * * Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux * * * ********************************************************* This post contains Part 3 of the Linux FAQ (4 parts). It must be read *after* the 2 first parts. ===================================8<====>8============================ CONTENTS (of this part) VI. MISCELLANEOUS HINTS (part3) VII. MORE HINTS (part3) VIII. FEATURES (part3) ===================================8<====>8============================ VI. MISCELLANEOUS HINTS ======================= *** This section is maintained by Matt Welsh (mdw@tc.cornell.edu). Please *** mail me if you have any changes/updates/questions. Thanks -mdw Special gcc information are located in section IX. A special section is devoted to it since it's *the* compiler of Linux. I have subsectionned this part in 3 subsections: Misc/Device Major-Minor/Serial Information. VI.A. Misc information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ VI.01) It seems that $#@! ported on linux don't run correctly, what do I do about reporting bugs? ANSWER: (Matt Welsh) It's possible that either the program itself has a bug or that Linux has a problem that this program brings out. :) But first check that the size of the file(s) corresponds that of the files(s) on the FTP sites where it's available. If they're different, either you downloaded them incorrectly (i.e. you forgot to turn on "bin") or whoever put them on the FTP site uploaded them incorrectly. If that's not the problem, then post to comp.os.linux asking about the program, to verify that it is a bug. PLEASE: when posting possible "bug reports" include all error and output information from running/compiling the program. Just saying "it doesn't work" isn't very helpful. Also mention your specific setup, Linux version, GCC version, etc. Some of these things depend on running under certain versions and you may have missed that information. Note that my "ml-linux-bugs@dg-rtp.dg.com" bug reporting list has been phased out. It turns out that Linux has so few bugs, most of which are resolved on the newsgroup or through Linus before I can accumulate them and post. :) In short: if there's a bug in Linux or in Linux-ported software, it will usually be fixed in the next patchlevel or version. VI.02) Has $#@! been ported to Linux? ANSWER: First check out the FTP sites and read the monthly INFO-SHEET, as well as the new "Linux News" and the META-FAQ's (all of which are either available on the FTP sites and/or posted to the newsgroup as they're written). Also check out the "Linux Project Registry" (posted to the newsgroup and on the FTP sites) which lists ongoing/current Linux projects. Also look in the "old" Linux digests and mailing-list archives, kept on tsx-11.mit.edu and nic.funet.fi. Also, see if there's a GNU(*) version of the program you're looking for (which are available everywhere). Since Linux uses GCC as its native compiler, most GNU software ports directly to Linux without problems. If all else fails, ask on the mailing list or newsgroup if the program is ported and where it's available. (*) GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, which (besides being a recursive acronym) is a project started by the Free Software Foundation (the FSF) to write a freely distributable version of Unix. The GNU kernel is named HURD, and is based on Mach. It is currently being written, and is not yet done. Many of the GNU utilities, however, are completed and are much more functional than the original Unix utilities. Since they are freely available, Linux is using them as well. VI.03) I've ported $#@! to Linux, what should i do to add it in the standard distribution? ANSWER: (Matt Welsh) First read the previous Q/A, then talk to the maintainers of the various releases (MCC interim, SLS, and so on) about including your program with those releases. The best way to make programs available to the rest of the world is to upload it to one of the Linux FTP sites (such as tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/incoming or sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming). BTW Whenever you submit binaries, please think that if you link them with shared libraries, this might cause problems for those who (gasp!) don't have the shared libraries installed. You can either link them using -static, and if someone wants to build a shared version on their own machine they can get the sources (which you should also make available) and build it themself. Or else provide the shared lib. VI.04) I want to port $#@! to Linux, what are the flags? ANSWER: Recall that Linux implements subset of SYSV and POSIX, so -DUSG and -DPOSIX work in general. NOTE1: SIGBUS is not there, and can be safely commented out in general. NOTE2: see section related to GCC, in the third part of this FAQ, for more details. VI.B. Major/Minor device number ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *** This section is maintained by Rick Miller, any comments, *** suggestions, remarks should be mailed to him at *** Last Update: 17 Feb 1993 21:12:24 +0200 VI.05) What are the device minor/major numbers? The Linux Device List maintained by rick@ee.uwm.edu (Rick Miller, Linux Device Registrar) February 17, 1993 Many thanks to richard@stat.tamu.edu, Jim Winstead Jr., and many others. Majors: 0. Unnamed . (unknown) .... for proc-fs, NFS clients, etc. 1. Memory .. (character) .. ram, mem, kmem, null, port, zero, cmem 2. Floppy .. (block) ...... fd[0-1]<[dhDH]{360,720,1200,1440} or fd[01] 3. Hard Disk (block) ...... hd[a-b]<[0-8]> 4. Tty ..... (character) .. {p,t}ty<{S,[p-s][0-f]}><#> 5. tty ..... (character) .. tty, cua[0-63] 6. Lp ...... (character) .. lp[0-2] or par[0-2] 7. Tape .... (block) ...... t[0-?] (reserved for Non-SCSI tape drives) 8. Scsi Disk (block) ...... sd[a-h]<[0-8]> 9. Scsi Tape (block) ...... rmt[0-1] 10. Mouse ... (character) .. bm, psaux (mouse) 11. CD-ROM .. (block) ...... scd[0-1] 12. QIC-tape? (character) .. rmt{8,16}, tape<{-d,-reset}> 13. XT-disk . (block) ...... xd[a-b]<[0-8]> 14. Audio ... (character) .. audio, dsp, midi, mixer, sequencer Breakdown of minors by Majors: ------------------------------ 0. Unnamed . (unknown) .... for proc-fs, NFS clients, etc. Minors? 1. Memory .. (character) .. ram, mem, kmem, null, port, zero, cmem 0. /dev/ram 1. (block): RAM-Disk (character): /dev/mem 2. /dev/kmem 3. /dev/null 4. /dev/port 5. /dev/zero 6. /dev/cmem 2. Floppy .. (block) ...... fd[0-1]<[dhDH]{360,720,1200,1440}> Minors are [drive + [4 * type]] where drive 0-3 == A:-D: (floppy) and type is: 0: Autodetect 4: 720k in 3.5" 1: 360k in 5.25" 1.2M 5: 360k in 5.25" 1.2M 2: 1.2M in 5.25" 1.2M 6. 720k in 5.25" 1.2M 3: 360k in 3.5" 7. 1.44M in 3.5" 1.44 0. /dev/fd0: Autodetected first floppy. 1. /dev/fd1: Autodetected second floppy. 2. /dev/fd2: Autodetected third floppy. 3. /dev/fd3: Autodetected fourth floppy. 4. /dev/fd0d360: 360k in 5.25" 1.2M first drive 5. /dev/fd1d360: 360k in 5.25" 1.2M second drive (You can work out the rest of the intermediates...) 8. /dev/fd0h1200: 1.2M in 5.25" 1.2M first drive 12. /dev/fd0D360 (/dev/fd0H360): 360k in 3.5" first drive 16. /dev/fd0D720 (/dev/fd0H720): 720k in 3.5" first drive 20. /dev/fd0h360: 360k in 5.25" 1.2M first drive 24. /dev/fd0h720: 720k in 5.25" 1.2M first drive 28. /dev/fd0H1440: 1.44M in 3.5" 1.44M first drive Naming goes like this: fd[drive][type][size] where: [drive]=0-3: Just like DOS's "A:"-"D:". [type]={d,h,D,H}: Enlighten me. All I can tell you for certain is that the capital letters represent 3.5" drives. [size]={360,720,1200,1440} kilobytes. 3. Hard Disk (block) ...... hd[a-b]<[0-8]> 0. /dev/hda (/dev/hda0): The whole first HD, including its MBR. 1-4. /dev/sda{1-4}: Primary partitions on the first SCSI drive. 5-8. /dev/sda{5-8}: Extended partitions on the first SCSI drive. 64. /dev/hdb (/dev/hdb0): The whole second HD, including its MBR. 65-68. /dev/sdb{1-4}: Primary partitions on the second drive. 69-72. /dev/sdb{5-8}: Extended partitions on the second drive. Notes: BE *VERY* CAREFUL WITH /dev/hda AND /dev/hdb!! These two devices signify the *entire* *drive*, not just one partition. The only things that use /dev/hda or /dev/hdb are things that need to read/change the partition table (like fdisk). Linux doesn't order anything. It perceives partitions in the order in which they appear in the partition table. Thus, /dev/hd?1 may follow /dev/hd?2 in the cylinder numbering. The names of the hard drives are not the same as under Minix. 4. Tty ..... (character) .. {p,t}ty<{S,[p-s][0-f]}><#> 0. /dev/tty0: This is the currently active Virtual Console. 1-63. /dev/tty[1-63]: Specific virtual consoles. 64-127. /dev/ttyS[0-63]: Serial ports (dial-in mode). 128-191. /dev/pty[p-s][0-f]: PTY Masters. 192-255. /dev/tty[p-s][0-f]: PTY Slaves. ([0-f]=0123456789abcdef) Notes: There are several constants set in the kernel sources which can be changed to compile a more customized kernel. They're found in [/usr/src]/linux/include/linux/tty.h: NR_CONSOLES The number of virtual consoles. NR_SERIALS The number of serial lines. NR_PTYS The number of pty's. 5. tty ..... (character) .. tty, cua[0-63] 0. /dev/tty: the tty that owns the process calling it. 64-127. /dev/cua[0-63]: Serial ports (dial-out mode). 6. Lp ...... (character) .. lp{0-2} or par{0-2} Parallel (printer) ports. (Increasable in include/linux/lp.h) 0. /dev/lp0 1. /dev/lp1: Same as MS-DOS's "LPT1:" on my machine... 2. /dev/lp2 Notes: The number of line printers is defined by LP_NO which is found in [/usr/src]/linux/include/lp.h. Even if you only have one printer port, Linux may still call it /dev/lp1 (rather than /dev/lp0). Watch during boot-up to see how it recognizes your printer port. 7. Tape .... (block) ...... t[0-?] (reserved for Non-SCSI tape drives) This one's getting old. No minor numbers are yet assigned. It's not even in the source code. Maybe it never will be... 8. Scsi Disk (block) ...... sd[0-?] or sd[0-?][0-?] Minors numbers are [[16 * DiskNR] + partition] The system autoconfigures at boot time, and the kernel simply assigns numbers (DiskNR) to each disk as it finds them, starting with 0. 0. First HD (/dev/sda), whole drive including Master Boot Record. 1-4. Partitions on the first HD. 5-15. Logical partitions within an extended partition on first HD. 16. Second HD (/dev/sdb), whole drive including Master Boot Record. 17-20. Partitions on the second HD. 21-31. Logical partitions within an extended partition on second HD. etc. 9. Scsi Tape (character) .. st[0-?] For a SCSI tape, each physical device has two minor numbers that are associated with it. If you have two tape drives, then minors 0 and 1 will refer to the first and second drives and the tape will be rewound when the device is closed. Minor numbers 128 and 129 (i.e. 128+n) also refer to the first and second physical drives, but the tape will not be rewound after closing the device. If you have one tape, you could create the devices with the following commands: mknod /dev/rmt0 c 9 0 mknod /dev/nrmt0 c 9 128 10. Mouse (character) .. bm, psaux (mouse) (MGR may require that /dev/mouse be linked to one of these...) NOTE THE CHANGES TO DIFFERENTIATE MOUSE TYPES! (Please implement these in the distributions.) 0. /dev/logibm: (Logitec?) bus mouse 1. /dev/psaux: PS/2 mouse port 2. /dev/inportbm: MicroSoft "InPort" bus mouse 3. /dev/atibm: ATI XL bus mouse If you don't feel like re-configuring your applications, you can just leave the old "/dev/bm" lying around. 11. CD-ROM .. (block) ...... scd[0-1] 0. /dev/scd0: The first (detected) SCSI CD-ROM. 1. /dev/scd1: The second (detected) SCSI CD-ROM. ("There's not much more to it than that" says Eric Youngdale.) 12. QIC-tape? (character) .. rmt{8,16}, tape<{-d,-reset}> (I really don't have much info on this one... ) 6. /dev/rmt8: QIC-120 8. /dev/rmt16 (/dev/tape): QIC-150 136. /dev/tape-d: (It has something to do with being 128+8... ?) 255. /dev/tape-reset: For resetting only. 13. XT-disk . (block) ...... xd[a-b]<[0-8]> XT (8-bit) hard disk controller devices. Minor numbers are assigned in the same manner as for the normal Hard Drive devices ("/dev/hd*"). 14. Audio ... (character) .. audio, dsp, midi, mixer, sequencer 0. /dev/mixer: Mixer and Control Device 1. /dev/sequencer: FM-synthesizer and Midi 2. /dev/midi: (for future use) 3. /dev/dsp: Digitized voice (DAC/ADC) 4. /dev/audio: (Reserved for compatibility with Sun) NOTE: all the numbers given are in decimal form (the one you can see if you perform ls -l on /dev). VI.06) Could some one give me indication about the meaning of the IRQ's ? ANSWER: (alawrenc@sobeco.com:) Standard IRQ's : IRQ 0 - Timer IRQ 1 - Keyboard IRQ 2 - Slave 8259 (AT) IRQ 3 - COM 2 / COM 4 IRQ 4 - COM 1 / COM 3 IRQ 5 - (XT) Hard Disk, (AT) LPT2 IRQ 6 - Floppy Disk IRQ 7 - LPT1 AT only IRQ 8 - Real Time Clock IRQ 9 - Re-direct to IRQ 2 IRQ 10 - Not Defined IRQ 11 - Not Defined IRQ 12 - Not Defined IRQ 13 - 80287 IRQ 14 - Hard Disk (AT) IRQ 15 - Not Defined VI.07) (Chuck Boyer) Could some one clear up the devices meaning? ANSWER: (Jim Winstead Jr) >port This allows programs to access the hardware ports directly. Not something you generally mess around with much. >ptyp0-3 >ptypa...tty These are the pseudo-tty 'master' devices. Each pty connection uses a slave-master set of tty devices. >tty0... tty[1-8] are the virtual consoles associated with Alt-F[1-8]. tty0 is the current virtual console (so writing something to tty0 goes to the current vc). >tty64 I've figured out is the modem connection Yes, that would correspond to COM1 under DOS. However, the tty64 name is obsolete - ttys[1-4] should be used instead. >ttyp0... >ttypa... These are the pseudo-tty 'slave' devices. >ttys1... These are the serial devices. ttys1 corresponds to COM1 under DOS, ttys2 corresponds to COM2, etc. VI.C Special Serial ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *** This section is maintained by Jim Gifford *** (jgifford@attmail,world.std}.com *** Last update October 1992. Douglas E. Quale: This has come up a couple of times already (including the case of serial mice as well), but for the record stty acts on stdin not stdout. Old stty's (from V7 through BSD4.3) used stdout, but this is suboptimal and doesn't conform to POSIX. The GNU stty you are likely using on Linux uses stdin, as does the stty distributed with BSD Networking Release 2. (Also, ``stty -a'' is more informative about possible parameters, although it's pretty hard for me to remember what 90% of that stuff does without refering to the man page.) Jim Gifford: However, there are a few older (of mysterious origin) stty's that work on stdout(I have one myself!) VI.08) Is there a list somewhere where I can get help with serial communications under Linux? ANSWER: (Jim Gifford -- jgifford@world.std.com) There is a list for the discussion of serial communications under Linux. It is for problems, drivers, new developments, etc... with the Linux serial devices. The list is: linux-serial@stolaf.edu To join, send mail to linux-serial-request@stolaf.edu I hope that this list will prove beneficial to the improvement of Linux. This list is maintained by Michael K. Johnson as linux-serial-request@stolaf.edu VI.09) When I run kermit under Linux, I get "Warning, Read access to lock directory denied". What am I doing wrong? ANSWER: Nothing, you just need to create /usr/spool/uucp (kermit 4.6?) or /usr/spool/locks (this is for the kermit5A), which is where kermit like to lock files. VI.10) What are the major, minor numbers for the serial ports under linux? ANSWER: Major 4, Minor : 64 /dev/ttys0 - com1 65 /dev/ttys1 - com2 66 /dev/ttys2 - com3 67 /dev/ttys3 - com4 VI.11) can anyone give me a sample /etc/inittab entry for login from a pc attached to serial line /dev/ttys2? ANSWER: "Humberto speaking :), updated by Rick Miller" First set up the modem to turn off echo and enable auto answer, I do this in kermit by connecting to the modem and typing "ate0s0=1" followed by enter (w/o quotes). Then setup inittab to spawn getty on the modem ttys2:vt100:/etc/getty -m 1200 ttys2 (Replace "vt100" with the name of the /etc/termcap entry for the terminal type you will use, or use "dumb" if you don't have one.) Then it should work. Some modems can be permanently set to disable echo and set auto answer, see your manual. Jim Weigand says: disable all messages. This will prevent getty from hanging up your modem. Set For: ATE0 No echo ATQ1 No messages ATS0=2 Answer 2nd ring ATS7=60 1 minute to answer (shorter if 2400 baud) You can use kermit to set these. Do an AT&W to save for power-up. Michael K. Johnson says: If you would rather not save these commands as defaults to come up on power-up, perhaps because you want to use your current modem settings under a DOS communications package, you can also shove these command out ttys? from /etc/rc (or /etc/rc.local) using the command: echo "" > /dev/ttys? VI.12) How do I set parameters like parity for serial login? ANSWER: Use stty and redirect input from the serial line. ex: stty parodd < /dev/ttys2 which gives ttys2 odd parity. type stty -a to get an idea of possible parameters. Or 'man stty' as well :) VII. MORE HINTS =============== This part try to keep track of the different information that appeared in comp.os.linux and on the list since beginning of March. I tried to update it for KERNEL_VERSION, so there might be some mistakes. Moreover take care to use the correct library and include stuff, and the ad-hoc gcc you use !!! VII.01) How can I backup my Hd under Linux ? ANSWER: I know at least two ways. One possibility is tar and mtools, another possibility is the diskbackup/diskrestore of Diamano Bolla (digest37 vol. #2) which saves big hd to floppies using the stdin/stdout. These utilities have been uploaded to the major sites in file disksplit.tar.Z. An example usage (Roger Binns) is: tar cvf - bin dev usr etc .. | compress | diskbackup and to restore: diskrestore | uncompress | tar xvf - BTW: if you are on Ethernet you could send your files via tar..|rsh (tar...) or even via NFS to a host which is regularly backed up ! VII.02) Where is 'which' ? ANSWER: It depends on the sh you are running: in bash 'type -path' in tcsh it's a builtin for rc you can try the following (untested by me) script from Kevin Brown: #!/bin/sh for i in `echo $PATH | sed 's/:/ /g'` ; do for j in ""$@" ; do if test -x "$i/$j" ; then echo "$i/$j" fi done done VII.03) How to use setterm: for the novice? ANSWER:The setterm utility provides access to most of Virtual Consoles (VCs) functionality. You can set your screen up to blank at 10 minutes using: setterm -blank 10 You can set colors, and clear the screen. For a full list of commands, just type "setterm" with no arguments. There are a few tricks with the screen dumper can really make VCs go a long way. Here are a few of the common ones that I use: setterm dump Dumps the contents of the current VC to screen.dump (in the current dir). setterm dump 4 Dumps the contents of VC 4 to screen.dump setterm -file mydumpfile -dump 4 Dump the contents of VC 4 to the file mydumpfile setterm -file /dev/tty0 -dump 4 Dumps the contents of VC 4 to the current VC. setterm -file /dev/tty4 -dump Dumps the contents of the current VC to VC 4. setterm -file /dev/ttys1 -dump Dumps the contents of the current VC to the serial port. Handy if you are logged on and want to paste a screen full without having to resort to doing a file transfer. setterm -file mydumpfile -append 4 Appends to instead of overwriting the dump file. Useful if you have several screens you wish to concatenate. VII.04) I've tried clear/reset which exist on most of unix but it doesn't work, have I missed something? ANSWER: setterm -clear or setterm -reset will solve your missing. For clear, you can also write a small script (which use the cl: part of /etc/termcap wrt your TERM), or use bash where ctrl-l will do it for you. VII.05) I know there are VC, but where is the setterm stuff? ANSWER: It's in the current distribution (i.e. on the images), the source can be found in virtcons.tar.Z at nic. VII.06) I know there are shared libraries; does there exist an easy way to check an executable for sharing ? ANSWER: (Claude Morin:) There exists at tsx-11 ldd.tar.Z If you follow the instructions, you will be able to type "ldd " to List the Dynamic Dependencies of the executables. In other words 'ldd' prints the name of the shared libraries needed by the executable, nothing appears for static one. ANSWER: (Josh Yelon & HJ Lu) - very old binaries. (J.Y.) An executable which shares a library is linked with an (ordinary, non-shared) "stub" version of the library. One of the first thing this stub does (when the executable is run) is to ask the kernel to load the (big) "shared version" of the library (which is usually named /lib/lib.XX.XX) The upshot of this is that in the code for the stub (part of the executable), is the string "/lib/lib.XX.XX"; which can be searched by using 'strings' or 'grep'. (HJ. L.) if you have gcc2.11a or later the shared image is changed to /lib/libxxxx_vyy_zzz. And you should better use nm to find "__shared_lib" (nm failed on stripped executable). You can also write a function for "file", which can even check the version number .... VII.07) What is the rdev program provided in the images? ANSWER: It's a program from Werner Almesberger of ETH. With no argument it prints the first line of /etc/mtab. With one argument, a boot-image, it prints the device configured as the root device, and with two arguments, a boot image and a device, it sets the device as default root in the specified image. VII.08) How to start Linux from drive B? ANSWER: There is a DOS utility called boot_b.exe (look at DOS ftp). Another simple way is to open the box and invert the cables. VII.09) The program boot_b works fine /but/ once the first disk is read the system go back to the first drive, any hints? ANSWER: Yes, change the bootimage in just the same way that you change it to boot on the hard drive, execept that the major/minor pair is different. All these information are in the file INSTALL-0.10. Remember that if you use a sun or other endian machine, you will need to reverse the byte order when you run the filter program (also in the same file). VII.10) How can I get Linux to boot directly from the harddisk? ANSWER: (Rick) The best option right now is LILO version ALPHA.8. It has been generally agreed that the days of using "shoelace" are at an end. See Section III of this FAQ for LILO information. VII.11) I use shoelace, but I want to change my root partition, what is the process to get rid of it? ANSWER: With Norton utility you can put back a standard boot sector. Another possibility is to restore the old boot sector (the one you should have backup *before* installing shoelace). VII.12) Sometimes, when I want to remove a directory, I get an error message, is it a (known) bug? ANSWER: No, There is no bug at all, you probaly have another shell on another VC whose working directory is either the one you try to remove, either a subdirectory of it. VII.13) I'm looking for init, getty, login, passwd stuff, where can I find them? ANSWER: You should find it in shadow.tar.Z (only sources), at least at tsx in the usr.bin directory. Many people have reported some troubles with the *OLD* shadow-passwd (shadow-bin.tar.Z and shadow-src.tar.Z, so do not use them anymore); an alternative might be the mcc-interim which contains standard passwd binary. There is also the Peter Orbaek's admutil-1.?.tar.Z and poeigl-1.?.tar.Z which contains source for shutdown, su, chsh, passwd and a system V init compatible. VII.14) How can I setup a user account other than root ? ANSWER: You can either use the adduser program, either do it manually. In the later case, you have to: a) edit /etc/passwd as root and add a line of the following format: user:passwd:uid:gid:user name:home directory:login shell user is the login name; uid is the numeric user id, it should be unique; gid is the numeric group id, this number should correspond to an entry in /etc/group. The passwd field should be left blank 'cause it is stored in an encrypted form [to set this field just use the passwd program]. example faq::200:5:Marc-Michel:/home/faq:/bin/sh b) Still as root, you shoud now create the home directory and set the correct ownership. mkdir /home/faq chown faq /home/faq chgrp 5 /home/faq VII.15) I've been trying to get Linux to run on my [3/4]86 box. It can't even boot. Any suggestions? ANSWER: The most common error/problem is writing the bootimage to a low density disk. It fits, but the bootstrap code will only recognize high density disk. So try to format explicitely disk as high density: - for 3.5", 'format a: /n:18 /t:80 ' - for 5.25", 'format a: /n:15 /t:80 ' VII.16) Does there exist games, languages (other than C), and anything which make the system more friendly? ANSWER: Yes, among other things there are rogue and yahtzee; TeX; Prolog, Perl.. but in general, if you want some extra tool port it to Linux this is also a good beta-testing exercice. VII.17) Whenever I use uemacs 3.1X on a symlink, the symlink does not exist anymore, why? ANSWER: (Tristram Mabbs) Since ue3.10, uemacs uses 'safe save' mode, writing the file to a temporary and moving it OVER the original. In the process, this deletes the original. To prevent this just add the following in your emacs '.rc' file: set $ssave FALSE VII.18) I have an SVGA, but Linux detect an EGAc/EGAm; is it normal? ANSWER: (Jim Winstead) This is correct actually. You have an EGA+ card (SVGA) with a Color/Mono monitor. The only four possibilties are EGAc, EGAm, *MDA and *CGA (according to the code in kernel/chr_drv/console.c). The true test, if Linux detects your video card, is if you press at the "Press to see SVGA- ..." boot-time message. If you have a SVGA recognized card, it will ask you to choose a screen size. If not detected, the default is 80x50 mode. BTW if you have no SVGA, press the and you are in 80x25 mode. If you have dowloaded the kernel, you can automatically skip this query at boot-time if you set the SVGA_MODE variable in the main Makefile before compiling a new bootimage. VII.19) How can I change the keyboard repeat rate? ANSWER: (Michael K Johnson) In boot/setup.S there are the lines: ! set the keyboard repeat rate to max mov ax,#0x0305 mov bx,0x0000 int 0x16 If you don't want to change the repeat rate at all, just comment out these lines. If you want something in the middle, change the mov bx,0x000 by mov bx,0x??yy where ??yy is determined by (Ralf Brown's interrupt list) bh= delay value (0x00 = 250ms to 0x03= 1000ms (one sec)) this is the delay before the repeat is performed bl= repeat rate (0x00 =30/sec to 0x1f=2/sec; 0x0c=10/sec [default]) VII.20) I compiled fdformat.c and ran it on 1.44Mb and 1.2Mb, the results are unreadable, any clue? ANSWER: (M. Pereckas) fdformat only low-level formats the disk. to use the fdformatted disk with DOS filesystem, run mformat on the disk. Mformat writes DOS filesystem information but is unable to low-format :). In order to put a Linux filesystem on a (low)formatted disk you have to mkfs it. VII.21) Is it possible to disable the 3-fingers salute (ctrl-alt-del) ? ANSWER: Yes, in kernel/sys.c you can read the following: /* * this indicates wether you can reboot with ctrl-alt-del: the deault is yes */ static int C_A_D = 1; there is also a small utility written by Linus in digest242 vol#2 VII.22) Could some one explain the information provided at boot-time? ANSWER: (Jim Winstead Jr) > serial port at 0x03f8 is a 16450 > serial port at 0x02f8 is a 16450 (what's that the uart chip?) Right, the last number should either be 8250, 16450, 16550, or 16550a, and on the two 16550 models, it will report that FIFO's have been disable (16550) or enabled (16550a). > 8 virtual consoles (that's how many alt-F's I can get going? > but only F1-4 actually work) You can get sessions running on Alt-F[1-8], but the 'standard' /etc/inittab only runs getty/login on Alt-F[1-4]. You can start sessions on the other consoles by using 'doshell' or adding lines to /etc/inittab. > 4 pty's (are these the consoles F1-4?) No, those are 'pseudo' ttys, which programs like MGR use to simulate tty connections. That's probably a gross over-simplification, but it gives you the general idea, I think. :) > p_init: lp1 exists (0) (is that the (l)ine (p)rinter?) Right. VII.23) What is the meaning of files ended by .T.Z (or .taz) ? ANSWER: The suffix Z is for compressed files (to uncompress them use the command `uncompress file.Z`). The suffix T indicates a "tar file" the usual suffix is tar but, the 14 chars filename limit of the Minix filesystem makes it cumbersome to use .tar.Z (to untar a file ended by .T, use the command `tar options file.T` (see the man page for more details). For the .taz file, change them as .T.Z and go-ahead. VII.24) What is the meaning of files ended by .T.z (or .tpz) ? ANSWER: The suffix z is for files compressed with the gzip utility, which is being used more frequently because it provides better compression. These can be uncompressed with the `gzip -d file.z` command. VII.25) I have upgraded the kernel from XX to YY (XX > YY), however the login screen still says YY. ANSWER: Just change the message in one of these files: /etc/issue and /etc/motd. The former contains the message before the login, the later is the one after you are logged in. VII.26) What is doshell good for ? ANSWER: It's an old program provided in the early Linux version (0.12) when the getty was not already there, it spawns a shell on any tty's. (Mattew Gream): I do this quite often ( getty on tty1, 2, 3 and my rc.local spawns a shell on tty4 as follows '/usr/bin/doshell /dev/tty4 /bin/tcsh &' VII.27) I don't have the kernel sources, how can I change the keyboard language? ANSWER: You can use the fixkbd program written by Laurent JULLIARD (Laurent_JULLIARD@grenoble.hp.com). Its purpose is to fix the keyboard map used in your kernel image. It works more or less a la "rootdev" (or rdev). It can be found on tsx-11.mit.edu in /pub/linux/binaries/sbin/fixkbd.tar.Z. VII.28) Does there exist a possibility to track down the source of kernel pannic messages ? ANSWER: Here's info from Linus on how to track down the source of kernel panic messages. The values for EIP, address, and so on are JUST EXAMPLES: the EIP, EFLAGS, etc. can be anything. The lines after ">" were written by me; the responses by Linus. > Unable to handle kernel paging request at address C000000A This means something in the kernel tried to access kernel memory at address 0x00A (the C0000000 offset is due to the kernel starting at virtual address 0xC0000000). The first page of kernel address space is unmapped to find these kinds of incorrect references (it's probably a NULL dereference to a structure member at offset 0xA). > Oops: 0002 Error code. This tells you if it's a read or write (forget which ritgh now, and don't have any books handy) > EIP: 0008:000290D2 This is where it happened: segment 0008 (kernel code segment) and offset 0x290D2 into the kernel. So to find this, you generally do something like nm /usr/src/linux/tools/system | sort | less and search for the function that contains the address 0x290D2. > EFLAGS: 00010087 > fs: 0017 Eflags and fs when the exception happened. You usually don't need this. > base: C0000000, limit: 000A0000 > Pid: 0, process nr: 0 In what process the exception happened. This is the swapper, which also means the thing is fatal (other processes you can just kill). That it's in the swapper process probably means that it's an interrupt that did it, as the swapper doesn't really do anything. > 89 50 04 c7 03 00 00 00 00 c7 This is the instruction that resulted in the error. I usually disassemble them by hand and see what it is, then I try to find out exactly where in the function this assembly sequence comes up (probably by compiling the .c file to a .s file and looking around). Alternatively you can just run 'gdb' on /usr/src/linux/tools/system, but gdb has some problems. > task[0] (swapper) killed: unable to recover > kernel panic: Trying to free up swapper memory space > In swapper task - not syncing This is just to tell you not to expect anything from the kernel any more: linux cannot go on without the swapper task. > How can I decode the numbers in the message? > Also, note that sometimes the "Unable to handle..." > message is followed by the "Oops: 0002" block, but > the last message is sometimes something else (i.e. not > always a "task[0] (swapper)...." message, but something > from the TCP driver in this case. It depends on where it happened. If it's an interrupt, it can essentially happen in any task (all interrupts are handled in the task that happens to be currently active), while "normal" code happens in the task that calls it. VIII. FEATURES ============== VIII.01) I've read that linux has virtual consoles, what must I do to get them? ANSWER: Yes there are, you can access them with the left -key together with -key. With the Linux Images distribution, 4 consoles are available, getty runs on them. Notice that they are NOT accessible when running X (contrary to some commercial unices). VIII.02) When Linux boots, I get the following message "8 virtual consoles"; how can I acess to the 5-8 vc's ? ANSWER: If you want the getty to run on the 5-8, you should add the corresponding entries in /etc/inittab. You can also just run sh on them by using the doshell soft. And then in either case, the ALT-F[5-8] will access the corresponding vc. VIII.03) What kind of shell is /bin/sh ? ANSWER: It's the Bourne Again Shell, bash-1.12.3 and compilation was straightforward, just "make" that's all or nearly. BTW There does exist different shells for Linux, these are: bash, rc, zsh, tcsh and pdksh (a korn shell). VIII.04) Does there exist a man page for **** ? ANSWER: Download man.tar.Z from your favorite linux ftp site, there is most of the fileutils man page -- either **** or g****, example there is nothing on ld, but there is for gld :) --, check the whatis database provided. The files in the cat1 dir are pre-formatted man pages that the man program can use. Quite recently the man pages for section 2 have been written (thanks Drew) and can be found, at least at tsx-11 in /pub/linux/docs/man/man2.tar.Z Also manpages are in the SLS on the b? disks. BTW there is nroff and groff for Linux. Cawf 2.0 works just fine for simple man pages, and a partial ms support too. Moreover Michael Johnson is the coordinator for man pages under Linux, he is looking for volunteers, so contact the DOC Channel. VIII.05) Is there a simple man package (groff is too big): ANSWER: "Cawf -man" also "fm -m" (Al Clark) tsx-11 in /pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin/fm.tar.Z VIII.06) What are the editors available in linux? ANSWER: Right now there are uemacs-3.11, elvis-1.4 (1.5). Gnu Emacs is there, read the section devoted to it in the 4th part of this FAQ. Also the port of mg (micro gnu) has been done and can be found at least at athos.rutgers.edu (128.6.4.4) in pub/linux, mg is the binary and mg.tar.Z is the sources file. You can also find a PD ed, and elvis has an ex mode. Finnally there are joe, vile-3.11, elle (Elle Looks Like Emacs), Xedit and aXe. VIII.07) Does there exist a printer package for Linux? ANSWER: (R. Miller) Yes. The "plp" package is currently available under the directory [/pub/linux]/BETA/plp on tsx-11 and its mirrors. You may also print things manually like so: cat filename > /dev/lp1 (Note that though "/dev/lp0" exists, most people find that their printer is on /dev/lp1. Use whatever the kernel says that it detects in the boot-up messages.) VIII.08) Are uucp, mail, and/or USENET news available for Linux? ANSWER: (Vince Skakan) Yes !!! At this time, the following (at least) have been ported to Linux: Package name version ------------ -------- taylor uucp 1.03 elm 2.3-pl11 smail 3.1.28 C-news 12/22/91 tin 1.1pl4 trn 2.2 nn 6.4.18 [...coming soon - Expect an announcement in the near future concerning the packages above being made available in binary form in the SLS distribution and in source form from sunsite.unc.edu and other Linux archive sites...] If you are interested in the last uucp features, join the UUCP channel (see part1 of this FAQ for more details about the multi channels list). VIII.09) How do I make swapping work? ANSWER: Quite simply, you need the swapon and the mkswap binaries. Then you can choose between a swap partition or a swap file. The mkswap is used to write the "swap signature", whilst the swapon binary is to activate the swapping. First of all you need a partition :), I assume it's the second of your first disk namely /dev/hda2, and it's 10MB big A) swap partition: you have to indicate it's a swap area, this is done via mkswap (instead of mkfs) which needs the name of the partition and the size in blocks (a block is 1Ko big); the optional -c flag is for bad block checking. So for our example you should perform: mkswap [-c] /dev/hda2 10000 Then you need to indicate that you want linux to use the swap area, this is done via swapon. In general it is set in the /etc/rc file, just put the following entry: /bin/swapon /dev/hda2 It can also be achieved via the /etc/fstab file B) swap file: The process is quite close; you need a partition, and a swap file. Assume that I prefer a swap area of 4MB (I want to keep some place in /dev/hda2). I need first to "dd" the file. dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/swap_file bs=1024 count=4096 bs stands for block size, and count is the number of blocks then I have to put the "swap signature" on that file: mkswap /swap_file 4096 At this point, you should 'sync', just to be sure the signature is effective. And finally add an entry in the rc file: /bin/swapon /swap_file VIII.10) When I boot I get one of the following messages: "Unable to find swap signature" or "Bad swap-space bitmap" ANSWER: You probably forgot to make your swap-device, use the mkswap command. VIII.11) How do I know if it is swapping? ANSWER: You will notice it :)) First of all, Linux tells you at boot time, "Adding swap: XXX pages of swap space", and if you start running out of memory, you will notice that the disk will work overtime, and things slow down. Generally a 2Meg RAM will make the system swap constantly while running gcc, 4 Meg will swap occasionnaly when optimizing big files (and having other things active, such as make). Also, the command 'free' (from the ps package) reports total enabled swap space and current swap use. VIII.12) How is it possible to remove a swap file? ANSWER: Simply perform a rm on that file, and remove the swapon of your /etc/rc file. VIII.13) How is it possible to remove a swap device? ANSWER: mkfs the device, and remove the swapon of your /etc/rc file. VIII.14) How much swap space do I need ? ANSWER: Linux does not perform real swapping, it's rather paging (see below for a more complete explanation). The swap area is *added* to the memory and can be viewed as virtual memory, so choose the size you need, example: 8MB RAM + 6MB swap => 14MB virtual memory VIII.15) Could someone explain the swap process on Linux?, is it swapping or paging ? ANSWER: (Linus) Linux uses swap as /additional/ memory, one page of the swap-space is used for the good-page bitmap and the swapspace signature. In fact Linux does only paging, no swaping in the meaning "write out one whole process to disk". The reason it's called swapping is that Linux used paging for memory management on a low level since the very beginning, but didn't page to disk at all until 0.12. VIII.16) Is demand paging different from paging and How ? ANSWER: (Linus) Demand-paging is really "demand loading of executables" and is totally independent of the page-swapping algorithms, although they have similarities. When Linux strts up a process, no actual code space is loaded: I let the page exceptions load in the executable as needed. Thus Linux demand-loads the code and initialized data it needs. Demand-loading has very good points: (a) it simplifies the exec system call; (b) it means page sharing between that have excuted the same file is easy to implement; (c) it cuts down on the amount of memory required. When Linux runs out of real memory, it starts to lock for pages it can swap out, but if it notices that the page is clean, it just forgets about it, and demand-loads it when it's needed again. Thta means that swap-file isn't needed as much, especially when running big binaries such as gcc, where the code-pages can be demand-loaded as you wish. Point (c) means that even without any swap space, you can usually run slightly larger programs that your memory setup would actually permit. I've noticed this while running X and doing a kernel compilation + something else wshen I've forgotten to turn on swapping: free reports 0 page available but things still work, although performance is slightly down... VIII.17) Is there any way to tell how much swap space you are using or have left? ANSWER: The free program provided with the ps package handles this. VIII.18) I have a 2Megs box, but "free" reports only 1Meg why? ANSWER: (Linus:) "free" doesn't concern with the memory the kernel has allocated for itself. In other words what you see is the *user* memory available. The kernel has taken the low 1Meg for it's use (~250Ko for it and the rest for buffer cache and kernel data structures); for big memory machine it could be even 2Megs. VIII.19) What tape drives work with Linux ? ANSWER: (24 sept. P. Riipinen) - There is a working QIC-02 device driver for Linux, supporting (at least) Everex/Wangtek cards. - There are additional patches for the QIC-02 to support Archive SC402/499R. You can find them in /pub/linux/alpha/qic-02 at tsx-11 There are some bugs in the driver but you can backup. - Newer drivers are all SCSI, so check the SCSI section in this FAQ. VIII.20) Is there only the %$#@ keyboard ? ANSWER: There are Dannish, Finnish, French, German, Uk, US and DVORAK keyboards. Set it in the main Makefile of the kernel sources, then (re)compile the kernel again. Make sure the files in kernel/chr_drv directory are recompiled. VIII.21) (special FINNISH/US) I booteed up with the new image and everything work except that some keyboard keys produce wrong characters. Does anyone know what is happening? ANSWER: Since 0.95a images are US product (and so are US-keyboard oriented), BUT linux sources are FINNISH product, and so the default keyboard is set to be FINNISH. The solution is in the previous Q/A. VIII.22) Does there exist shared libs ? ANSWER: (H.J. Lu, hlu@eecs.wsu.edu, 09/01/92) The shared library under Linux started at 0.12. Peter MacDonald collaborating with Linus made the first generation of shared library, which is the base of the classic shared library which is no longer widely used. The kernel support of shared library under Linux is system call extern int uselib (const char *__filename); which loads an executable image with fixed entry point into memory, just like the ordinary executables. In crt0.s, a function which can find out if and which shared images are needed and loads them is invoked before `main ()' is called if necessary. David Engel and I developed a way to tell the loader which shared images have to be loaded, utilizing the similar technique used in global constructor in g++ 2.x with the help from GNU binary utilities. In the classic Linux shared library, we build a big executable image for several libraries and make sure no external variables outside of the participating libraries are referenced. Then we can get the absolute addresses of all the global variables defined in the libraries used to build that executable image. After that, we make a stub library for each participating library which just has the absolute addresses of all the global variable in it. For each shared image, there must be one and only one .o file, which defines a global variable containing version, name and entry point of the shared image, and a dummy global data. Among those libraries used to build the shared image, there must be one library which will always be referenced whenever any other library is referenced. We put this .o file into the stub library for that library and add a special symbol to each of the components of the stub library in order to make sure that this .o file is always linked in if any of the participating libraries are linked. In gcc 2.2.2d, jump table, developed by David Engel, was introduced in the shared library. At the beginning of each shared image, there is a table in which every library function has a fixed entry address and the instruction at that address is a jump which will lead to the real library function. So we can change the library function without changing the corresponding entry address of the jump table. For the global data we put them at the beginning of data section of the shared image. We have to separate them from text code and link them in fixed order. It is very hard to maintain the same addresses for the global data when library is changed. After the global data are set up properly and some spaces are left for possible future changes (that is a very tough procedure.), it isn't too difficult to maintain. Starting with libc.4.3, a form of dynamic linking developed by Eric Youngdale was introduced into the shared libraries. As part of this, the tools that were used to generate the sharable libraries were completely redone which made the job of building the libraries much easier, and thus the libX*.so.3.0 libraries were made as DLL jumptable libraries. VIII.23) Why do I need dynamic linking. ANSWER: The best way to illustrate this is with a simple example of what happens without dynamic linking. #include int errno; FILE * foo; main(){ foo = fopen("/usr/bin/foo","w"); printf("foo: %x errno: %d\\n",foo, errno); } Assume this program is run by a non-root user. Normally you would expect that the open will fail because the user does not have permission to write to /usr/bin - this means that fopen() would return NULL, and errno would contain 13, which means EACCES - Permission denied. If you link this to a normal jump table library, it prints foo: 0 errno: 0 Now consider the following nearly identical program: #include extern int errno; FILE * foo; main(){ foo = fopen("/usr/bin/foo","w"); printf("foo: %x errno: %d\\n",foo, errno); } The results for this program are: foo: 0 errno: 13 Why does this happen???. First of all you must realize that in the first program errno is not declared external, and thus storage will be allocated in the data segment for the variable. Unfortunately there is no way to tell libc this, and libc has it's own storage for errno. Thus libc writes the result in one location and you are looking in the other. In the second program errno is declared extern, and thus no storage will be allocated. The linker will see the need for a definition of errno, and it will find one in libc. Thus in the second example the user program is reading the same memory location that the library stored the answer in. This is of course a simple example. There are more complicated examples involving programs that want to redefine a library function and these can lead to quite bizarre behavior which is difficult to debug. With dynamic linking, both of the above programs yield the same (correct) result. VIII.24) How does dynamic linking work under linux? ANSWER: Basically, to implement dynamic linking we need to route all function calls to global functions through the jump table. We also need to make sure that all global data is accessed indirectly through a pointer. The actual libraries do not really look very much different from the actual jump table libraries that we are currently using, but there are additional pointers to the global data in the sharable image that are used internally by the library to access all global data. There are also additional symbols in the stub library that are defined as the address of the various pointers, and are used by the linker to help determine whether there is a pointer or a jmp instruction that needs to be fixed up. The linker has one new important task with dynamic linking. It watches for duplicate definitions of symbols, and if the second definition is in a sharable library, it makes a note of it as a conflict that needs to be resolved at run time. The linker puts a list of all of these conflicts into a table and makes it available to crt0 through the variable __SHARABLE_CONFLICTS_. At run time, crt0 (through the function __dynamic_resolve) will go through and fix up all of the pointers that need to be fixed. Let us say for example that you define your own malloc function in a program - in this case at run time the startup code will actually modify the jmp instruction in the jump table so that it points to the malloc function in your program, not the one in the library. The library will never refer to the malloc function directly, but it will always be referenced through the jump table - in this way we ensure that there will only be one function named malloc that is used by a given program. If you were to run the first example program in the "Why do I need dynamic linking" answer, then the pointer in the library that corresponds to the variable errno will be modified so that it points to the errno variable that is in your program. The library itself will never use errno directly - it will always use it via the special pointer variable. In this way we ensure that all references to the variable errno both in your program and in the sharable library will reference the same memory address. VIII.25) Does Linux work for SCSI drives? ANSWER: Yes since v0.96. At tsx-11.mit.edu in /pub/linux/ALPHA/scsi, you will find the last SCSI alpha/beta version and also a special SCSI FAQ, read it, it contains the latter information than the one provided in the SCSI section. You should, also, contact the linux-scsi list or directly drew@cs.colorado.edu VIII.26) Linux is supposed to work with ESDI drive. However I have trouble with my Magtron MT-4115E (Joincom controler), any clue? ANSWER: (Linus) Some harddisk don't like linux (even though they should). Maybe not a bug but a deficiency. (Mika) I had to remove the printk "unexpected hd interrupt" statement in hd.c because I was getting so many of those messages. Be warned that if there is any read error the system just hangs, even the ctrl-alt-del won't work. You should be able to use your ESDI drives if you could live with those nuisances. VIII.27) How does one go about applying a patch to Linux ? ANSWER: (Drew Eckhardt) In the unix world most of distribution are in source form. This includes the operating system. To apply a patch, you apply it with the 'patch' program to the affected sources. The patch program takes as input the differences between the old and the new version. After patching you need to recompile the sources. Assume I want to apply a patch enclosed in the file XXX. First of all I will look at the top of XXX, where the file affected is identified. This may have aleading path attached to it. Either cd out to the "root" of the patch, ie if I see linux/kernel/blk_drv/blk.h I would cd into /usr/src (assuming it's the place where I can find linux/kernel...) and then patch as follows patch -p0 < whatever_place/XXX or, you can specify a number of path components to strip from the path. If I am in the blk_drv directory patching would be patch -p3 < whatever_place/XXX VIII.28) There are a lot of patches available (ps patch, NFS patches, CD-ROM patches ...) can I be fairly confident the subsequent patches will work? ANSWER: This is not true yet for the current version; but it will be so I kept it :) No you can't, patching is a real beta tester art :)). People are not working on the same patched release, so you have to check if the patches you already applied works on the same kernel part, if not, /great/, just apply them. If yes, check if there is an order, patch creator knows that, and (should) try to warn patch user (in other words: beta tester) otherwise you should edit the patch files (and possibly make a brief note to others on this list/newsgroup or even a cdiff) before applying them, another solution is to keep cool and wait for the next version of Linux where, in general, the modifications have been done but this behavior is /not/ Linux helpful. VIII.29) I got the patches on some ftp sites, and applied them to the kernel and tried to compile. It didn't !!. Are the patches buggy? ANSWER: Before remake, just do a make clean in the directories involved by the patches. This will force a rebuild of the .o and .a files. If you have a RCS running on your source tree, did you checked a patched version of the files changed before /any/ CO either by you or make Finally, make sure the patches succeded. Normally, failed patches on a file FILE will leave a FILE# file. Moreover you will get a "chunk failed" message. It is possible to capture the output while patching, with the following: patch -p0 < patchfile | 2>&1 patch.result | more VIII.30) What is VFS? ANSWER: (Ted) Linux 0.96 already has Virtual FileSystem, which means that it acts as a filesystem switch. It makes it easy for someone to design another filesystem format and include it in the Linux kernel along with the standard minix filesystem format. So it /enables/ someone to design a robust filesystem which would have some nice properties (no 14 chars file name limitation, nor 64Meg limit), and could be included in the kernel in such a way that both the Minix and the new one could be mounted at the same time. This solves the uncompability problem; since the root disk could still use the Minix filesystem, while the hardisk could be using the new one. VIII.31) What's about Bus Mice ? ANSWER: (Nathan I. Laredo) Since the Linux v0.96c-pl2 the kernel does support LOGITECH and BUS MICE If you are unsure that you have a bus mouse or not, check to see if your mouse card has a selection for a sample rate switchable between 30Hz and 60Hz (or possibly 25/50Hz), if it does not, then it is NOT a true bus mouse (InPort mice for example will not work with this driver). To create a bus mouse device: mknod /dev/mouse c 10 0 VIII.32) What's about TeX ? ANSWER: The primary site for Linux TeX is 129.78.66.1, this is P. Williams' site in Australia. The stuff at tsx-11 was posted by T. Dunbar who does support/maintain the dvilj stuff. VIII.33) What's about LILO ? ANSWER: (Werner Almesberger) LILO - Generic Boot Loader for Linux ("LInux LOader") This is an ALPHA test release of a new boot loader. Be sure to have some means to boot your system from a different media if you install LILO on your hard disk. Features -------- - does not depend on the file system. (Tested with Minix, EXT FS and MS-DOS FS.) - can be used to boot from floppies and from hard disks. - can replace the master boot record. - can boot non-Linux systems (MS-DOS, DR DOS, OS/2, ...) and unstripped kernels. - supports up to 16 different boot images that can be selected at boot time. Root and swap disk/partition can be set independently for each image. - boot sector, file map and boot images can be all on different disks or partitions. Restrictions and known problems ------------------------------- - SCSI disks are not fully supported yet. (Still waiting for some kernel changes.) (Should work in current release - EY). - booting other operating systems doesn't seem to work everywhere. If everything but booting a non-Linux OS from LILO works on your system, you should boot LILO by BOOTACTV and select the alternate OS with the latter as a temporary work-around. - booting non-Linux systems from the second hard disk ("D:") is not yet supported. Please send all bug reports to almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch VIII.34) What's about MGR ? ANSWER: (General Information grabbed from various sources) There is a MGR channel available , contact the request adress with help in the body: linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi The stuff can be found at tsx-11 in pub/linux/packages/MGR In brief: MGR provides: - multiple overlapping windows - multiple fonts - text and graphics in each windows - a simple popup menu package - a client/server model 'a la' X - independance from any peculiar networking technology MGR consist of a server process and some clients. Each client has his own window, and can create subwindows. Clients communicate with the server via a bidirectionnal channel. A C library is provided. When a new window starts, it is as a terminal emulator running the shell; for more information you can grab the mgr-man.out from bellcore.com The information hereafter appeared on the MGR channel on 19th Jan. > From: u31b3hs@POOL.informatik.rwth-aachen.de > Subject: MGR 0.53 > > > MGR, version 0.53 for Linux and SunOS (Coherent unfinished yet). > > Unpack the src* stuff under in /src/lbin/mgr and the usr* stuff in > /usr/mgr. I splitted things that way for making it easier to ftp > them and carry them home. If you don't like these paths, then use > others, but remember to edit the Configfile after generating it. > YOU NEED TO INSTALL ALL FILES FOR COMPILING. > > This is a beta release for programmers, there are no binaries. It > makes my work available for people who either also work on MGR and > like to get new sources and for adventerous beta testers. WARNING: > I assume using Linux 0.99.2 and GCC 2.3.3. > > There is some new m4 code to generate menus. It is more powerful > than menu(1), but a little harder to use. > > MGR is currently being ported to Coherent 4.0, but this version > doesn't include everything yet. There is already a beta version > running on Coherent, although not too stable yet. > > For questions, write to the mailing list, channel MGR. Please be > sure to talk about the latest version of MGR plus having read the > README files in the directories containing the problem. > > You got this stuff from ftp.thp.uni-koeln.de:pub/linux/mgr or from > tsx-11.mit.edu:~ftp/pub/linux/packages/MGR, which is a mirror of the > Cologne directory. VIII.35) I have successfully compiled MGR, but when I try to run the program I get "can't find mouse" or "already in use", any clue? ANSWER: try the following "mgr -m /dev/ttys1" if the mouse is on the serial 1. Another possibility is to link /dev/mouse with /dev/ttys1 (assuming your mouse is on serial 1). Or if it's a bus mouse, "mknod /dev/mouse c 10 0" once. VIII.36) Any tips for MGR? ANSWER: Well, I have tried it on my 386Sx Ega/Vga; the screen is Ok but the Logitech mouse I have is not well recognized. BTW check the major/minor number for pty's; they should be character device with 4 as major and 128 and bigger as minor: ptyp0 c 4 128 ptyp1 c 4 129 ... ttyp0 c 4 192 ttyp1 c 4 193 VIII.37) What's about X11 ? ANSWER: See the section XII. devoted to X11 in this FAQ. ===================8<==========>8================ Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.announce,news.answers,comp.answers Distribution: world Followup-To: poster From: corsini@labri.greco-prog.fr Reply-To: linux@numero6.greco-prog.fr Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France Subject: Linux Frequently Asked Questions 4/4 [monthly posted] Summary: Linux, a small and free unix-like for 386-AT computers. Archive-name: linux-faq/part4 Last-Modified: 93/03/28 Version: 1.17 ********************************************************* * * * Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux * * * ********************************************************* This post contains Part 4 of the Linux FAQ (4 parts). It must be read *after* the 3 first parts. ===================================8<====>8============================ CONTENTS (of this part) IX. GCC MISC INFORMATION (part4) X. SCSI SPECIAL (part4) XI. NETWORKING and LINUX (part4) XII. X11, THE MAXIMUM and MORE (part4) XIII. EMACS for LINUX (part4) ===================================8<====>8============================ IX. GCC MISC INFORMATION ======================== **** Last update 93/03/26 IX.A. HLU Information IX.B. OTHERS IX.A. HLU Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The official release of GCC for Linux is 2.3.3. This section includes: README.gccdisk FAQ of gcc written by HLU IX.01) I don't know how to install gcc stuff, is there special places? ANSWER: This is the README.gccdisk Linux GNU C/C++ [HJ release] Introduction ------------ This is GNU C/C++ 2.3.3. It is linked with jump table 4.2. You should use it with the Linux C library disks since the C/C++ compiler has no shared images, which are required by all the binaries in it. It consists of 2 minix disks, which will fit on either 5.25" or 3.5" floppies. It is on tsx-11.mit.edu under pub/linux/GCC/gccdisk Distribution File Format ------------------------ There are two files, each of which goes on one disk A. Disk 1 (gcc233a.Z) This contains gcc, cpp, cc1 and crt0.o/gcrt0.o. There are also some header files in /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.3.3/include. B. Disk 2 (gcc233b.Z) This disk contains cc1plus. Installing on the Hard Drive ---------------------------------------- 1. uncompress base[1|2].Z. 2. rawrite or dd each file to a formatted floppy disk. Now you have made a copy of gcc 2.3.3 on two floppies. To copy each floppy to your hd, you should mount the floppy and copy its contents to your hard drive. You can do this by: mount /dev/fd[0|1] /mnt cd /mnt for d in bin dev etc usr do if [ -d $d ]; then cp -av $d / fi done Note: This may overwrite some files on your hard disk. Thanks. H.J. hlu@eecs.wsu.edu 12/31/92 IX.02) What compiler should I use for Linux? ANSWER: You should only use the same version on tsx-11.mit.edu under /pub/linux/GCC. If you want to use the testing release, first join the GCC channel on the Linux mailing list, and then send a note to hlu@eecs.wsu.edu. Don't use gcc older than the one on tsx-11.mit.edu. IX.03) Where is the latest official gcc 2.xx for Linux? ANSWER: It's on tsx-11.mit.edu under /pub/Linux/GCC and under pub/linux/GCC. You may find it on the other sites. Since gcc 2.3.3, you can compile it yourself out of box from any gnu ftp sites. Just unpack the source code and do configure [i386-linux|i486-linux] You should follow the instructions in INSTALL. IX.04) Where is the latest official Linux C library? ANSWER: It's on tsx-11.mit.edu under /pub/Linux/GCC and under pub/linux/GCC. You may find it on the other sites. IX.05) What are the contents of them? ANSWER: Please read the current release note and ChangeLog for details. IX.06) How do I install them? ANSWER: Read README and release notes. IX.07) What are the main differences with the old release? ANSWER: Read README and release notes. IX.08) Can I use the old version of gcc? ANSWER: Please get rid of gcc older than gcc 2.2.2. Starting from gcc 2.2.2, you can do gcc -V xxxx where xxxx is the version number. Please read `release.xxxx' for detail. There is one catch in gcc 2.2.2d, setjmp/longjmp is changed, so the old header files is not compatible with gcc 2.2.2. Before you install gcc 2.2.2d, please do cp /usr/include/setjmp.h /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.2.2/include where /usr/include/setjmp.h is come with gcc 2.2.2. IX.09) Can I delete the old shared image in /lib? ANSWER: Since the Linux C library version 4.3, we have introduced the dynamically linked library. There is no need to keep old shared images in /lib if none of your binaries are linked with the classic shared library which has been obsolete. You can just keep one version of the shared image in /lib which has the highest major and minor release numbers for each shared library. The name of the shared image is "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.so.major.minor". IX.10) Is stdio ANSI compatible? ANSWER: Yes, please test it. IX.11) Is g++ in 2.xx? ANSWER: Yes. IX.12) Where can I get the gcc manual? ANSWER: You can get man pages and manual come with the gcc source code on any gnu ftp sites. You should find gcc-man.tar.z on tsx-11 which has man pages for gcc. IX.13) What options can I use for gcc? ANSWER: Read the manual. There is one special flag for Linux, -static tells gcc to use the static libraries. The default is the jump table version of shared libraries. IX.14) How can I debug the C code? ANSWER: Read the gcc/gdb manuals. The simple way to do is gcc -g foo foo.c gdb foo IX.15) Where is the source code of the new libc.a? ANSWER: The same place you find this file. It is called libc-xx.yy.tar.z. IX.16) Why does g++ complain, even die? ANSWER: You need "expr", which is in GNU shell utilities 1.6, echo (?) and sed. IX.17) How do I generate code for 486? ANSWER: Add -m486 to CFLAGS. IX.18) I heard malloc (0) wouldn't work with Linux, what should I do? ANSWER: It *does* work in a manner which POSIX allows; unfortunately, pre-POSIX code frequently assumes that malloc(0) will not return 0 -- the standard version of malloc under Linux *does* return 0. By including , you get a definition of malloc which behaves more traditionally. If you define NO_FIX_MALLOC, then you will get the default (non-traditional) form. If you are trying to develop POSIX compliant code under Linux, you should probably define NO_FIX_MALLOC to ensure that your code doesn't make assumptions about malloc() which will not work on other systems. (Note: NO_FIX_MALLOC is specific to Linux.) (Provided by Phil.Richards@prg.oxford.ac.uk. Thanks.) IX.19) Why does gcc say "xxxxx..h not found"? ANSWER: see QUESTION: What are the contents of them? IX.20) I really followed every step in the documentation, but when I do "make", why does it say "don't how to make xxxxxx"? ANSWER: The dependency in Makefile is dated, you need to make a new one. Please get some guide on make and read Makefile. For the kernel sources, please do cd src/linux make dep IX.21) How do I compile programs under Linux? ANSWER: The Linux C library is trying to be ANSI/POSIX compliant. It is also very compatible with SYSV and BSD. The C library is loaded with SYSV and BSD functions. There are three exceptions: 1. signal in Linux is POSIX. 2. tty in Linux is POSIX. 3. time functions are POSIX, plus a few BSD and SYSV extensions. 4. setjmp/longjmp functions are POSIX. But you can use -D__FAVOR_BSD to make it BSD or use sigsigjmp/siglongjmp. When you compile a program under Linux, your best bet is include all the appropriate header files and use -Wall. All the usable functions and global variables are declared in the corresponding header files. YOU SHOULD NOT DEFINE ANY functions or global variables OF THE LINUX C LIBRARY IN YOUR CODE IF YOU WANT TO USE THE SHARED LIBRARIES. After saying all those, you now should know you can compile a program with -D_POSIX_SOURCE or -D_GNU_SOURCE (read for details). With a few modifications you can even use -DSYSV, -DUSG or -DBSD. Some codes need to define -DSTDC_HEADERS for ANSI C compiler like gcc here. To use malloc () and calloc () safely under Linux, please include and don't define NO_FIX_MALLOC. BTW, gcc -traditional should work with gcc 2.2.2d or above. Please also read ChangeLog for the latest enhancement. Please read the header files for details. Maybe you should get a book on POSIX. Any suggestion of the book list? >From Steve Robbins -- steve@nyongwa.cam.org -------- I like "POSIX Programmer's Guide", by Donald Lewine. Its essentially a list of POSIX functions' man pages, with a very brief guide in the beginning of a few things. It's published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. -------- IX.22) How can I get bsd style signal? ANSWER: Use -D__USE_BSD_SIGNAL. IX.23) Why does a program that should only poll for input become a CPU hog? ANSWER: The select() system call. The timeout parameter was classically used read-only by the system. Some manual pages already notes three years ago: select() should probably return the time remaining from the original timeout, if any, by modifying the time value in place. This may be implemented in future versions of the system. Thus, it is unwise to assume that the timeout pointer will be unmodified by the select() call. If you do not take this advice seriously you get a zero timeout written back to your timeout structure, which means that future calls to select() using the same timeout structure will immediately return. Fix: Put the timeout value into that structure every time you call select(). Change code like struct timeval timeout; timeout.tv_sec = 1; timeout.tv_usec = 0; while (some_condition) { select(n,readfds,writefds,exceptfds,&timeout); } to struct timeval timeout; while (some_condition) { timeout.tv_sec = 1; timeout.tv_usec = 0; select(n,readfds,writefds,exceptfds,&timeout); } IX.24) When a program is stopped using Ctrl-Z and then restarted, or in other situations that generate signals: Ctrl-C interruption, termination of a child process etc. why does it complain about "interrupted system call" or "write: unknown error" or things like that. ANSWER: The system call the program was executing has been interrupted to process the signal, and then it returned -1 and set errno = EINTR. The program then was likely to draw bad conclusions from that. Explanation: Your program has signal handlers installed, using signal() or sigaction(). When the signal occurred, your signal handler was invoked. In other Unix systems, this usually happens asynchronously or in a few slow system calls: When a signal is caught during the execution of system calls such as read(2), write(2), open(2) or ioctl(2) on a slow device (such as a terminal, but not a file), during a pause(2) system call or a wait(2) system call that does not return immediately because a previously stopped or zombie process already exists, the signal-catching function is executed and the interrupted system call then returns a -1 to the calling process with errno set to EINTR. Linux (following POSIX) checks for signals and may execute signal handlers * asynchronously (at a timer tick), * on return from *any* system call, * during the execution of the following system calls: select(), pause(), connect(), accept(), read() on terminals or sockets or pipes or /proc files, write() on terminals or sockets or pipes or line printer, open() on FIFOs or PTYs or serial lines, ioctl() on terminals, fcntl() with command F_SETLKW, wait4(), syslog(), any TCP or NFS operations. [For other operating systems you may have to include the system calls creat(), close(), getmsg(), putmsg(), msgrcv(), msgsnd(), recv(), send(), wait(), waitpid(), wait3(), tcdrain(), sigpause(), semop() to this list.] In the last two cases and assuming the program's signal handler returns, the system call returns -1 and sets errno to EINTR. If the SA_INTERRUPT flag is not set for the corresponding signal, however, in most cases the system call is automatically restarted (continued) after execution of the signal handler, and your program won't see any EINTR. You may ask why this is not the default behavior when the default Linux signal () is used to install the signal handler. This is because POSIX adopted this. As for which one is better, it is a matter of opinion. Note that in some versions of BSD Unix the default behavior is to restart system calls. To get system calls interrupted you have to use the SA_INTERRUPT flag. Fix: Either add -D__USE_BSD_SIGNAL to your CFLAGS. Or for every signal handler that you install with signal(), use sigaction() instead, without setting SA_INTERRUPT. Note that while this applies to most system calls, you must still check for EINTR on read(), write(), ioctl(), select(), pause(), connect(). You may do it like this: int result; while (len > 0) { result = read(fd,buffer,len); if (result < 0) break; buffer += result; len -= result; } --> int result; while (len > 0) { result = read(fd,buffer,len); if (result < 0) { if (errno != EINTR) break; } else { buffer += result; len -= result; } } and int result; result = ioctl(fd,cmd,addr); --> int result; do { result = ioctl(fd,cmd,addr); } while ((result == -1) && (errno == EINTR)); IX.B. OTHERS ~~~~~~~~~~~~ IX.25) I seem to be unable to compile anything with gcc. Why? ANSWER: If you have only 2 MB RAM, gcc will die silently without compiling anything. You must have at least 4 MB to do compilations BTW Since swapping is possible, I have heard that compilation works with only 2Meg and a lot disk traffic :) Isn't it great? IX.26) gcc complains about not finding crt0.o and the system include files What am I doing wrong ? ANSWER: The include files normal place is in /usr/include. lib*.a and *.o should be in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib IX.27) I tried to port a /new/ version of gnu stuff. But in the linking phase, gcc complains about the missing libg.a. ANSWER: Yes this is well known for compiler version earlier than 2.2.2, throw away the flag -g that's all, anyway libg.a is /only/ for debugging purpose. IX.28) How to compile programs which may be debugged with gdb? ANSWER: There are different ways to handle this problem. If you have the gcc2.2.2 or later it's simple, use the -g flag. Otherwise there are different possibilities: 1) As there is no libg.a, you should throw away the -g flag in link phase, this means that the compilation must be done in two steps example: instead of "gcc -g monprog.c -o monprog", use the following "gcc -g -c monprog.c" and then "gcc -o monprog monprog.o" Alas this method is not that good if you are using Makefile. 2) The other way is to create an empty libg.a as follows (Peter MacDonald trick): - create libfake.c containing libgfake() {} - compile it with: gcc -c libfake.c - create the libg.a with: ar r libg.a libfake.o 2bis) The more tricky Humberto method: cd /usr/lib ranlib libg.a then gcc -g monprog.c -o monprog will produce a debuggable monprog IX.29) When compiling some code, cc1 complains about some insn code, what's that? ANSWER: An insn is an internal representation that gcc uses when compiling. The main part of gcc is to take ordinary c (or c++) code, and compile it, while ding optimizations in insn part, which is soft/hard independant. Then another part which is hard/Os dependant takes the insns and translate it in assembly language. The fix is only to turn off the optimization flag (-O). IX.30) When compiling #$@!, I've got some problems with "SIGBUS" signal that doesn't exist. Any clue ? ANSWER: (Louis J. LaBash, Jr.) SIGBUS is a common problem, its not needed, just comment it all out, something like: #ifdef SIGBUS .. normal sigbus code .. #endif IX.31) How can I write codes suitable for building shared library ? ANSWER: (Eric Youngdale, eric@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil, 3/1/93) In general there are very few restrictions as long as you are using the new tools for building sharable libraries. Before the DLL libraries were available there were all kinds of things you had to watch out for, but currently you can more or less build a sharable library out of the box without making any source code modifications. See the README in the tools-m-n.tar.z distribution for more information on how to build a sharable library. X. SCSI SPECIAL =============== *** This section is written by Drew Eckhardt, mail him for *** information, questions related to this section. *** Last update March 1993. X.01) What hardware is supported? ANSWER: The Adaptec 154x, Adaptec 174x, Future Domain 8xx (TMC 950 based boards?), 16x0, Seagate ST0x, Ultrastor 14F (Some of the new ALPHA code makes attempts to deal with the 34F), and Western Digital 7000 are supported. Various Adaptec clones from Bustek and Future Domain are known to work, in both ISA and EISA flavors. Some of the SCSI drivers will not autodetect your SCSI host if the BIOS is disabled, and there may be IRQ, DRQ, address restrictions compiled into the distribution kernel. Virtually all SCSI disks, CD ROMS, and tapes should work. X.02) What hardware is not supported? ANSWER: The Adaptec 152x, Always IN-2000, DTC, Mylex, and Ultrastor 24F, PS/2 SCSI boards, and all SCSI ports on sound boards. If you want to run Linux on this hardware, you'll have to get technical docs on it, and write a driver yourself or bribe someone to do it. X.03) How do I get SCSI information? ANSWER: Subscribe to the SCSI channel of the linux-activists mailing list. mail linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi And put in the header. X-MN-Admin: join SCSI X.04) Where is the latest version maintained? ANSWER: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/scsi Please join the SCSI channel of linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi before you grab anything. eric@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Youngdale) added scatter/gather support to the SCSI drivers, and changed around the internal structures to get something that works as "version 2" X.05) I've found one of the following bugs : - I can't swap to a SCSI disk, or mount one as / - I get a READ CAPACITY FAILED message on bootup. - I have a removeable disk (ie Sysquest) and have problems when I change media. - I have a Seagate / Future Domain TMC-88x and the kernel panics with a kernel paging message. - I have an Adaptec 1742 and am experiencing data corruption - I have an Insite floptical drive and it won't work. - I have a TANDBERG TDC 3600 revision U07, SONYCD-ROM CDU-541 revision 4.3d, DENON DRD-25X revision V, or a SEAGATE ST296 revision 921 and the system hangs or reports multiple devices. ANSWER: All of these bugs have been fixed, so UPGRADE. The first one was due to a race condition. The fourth was caused by a kernel stack overflow. The Adaptec problem was caused by a firmware bug in 1540 mode. The last two were caused by SCSI devices that weren't compliant. X.06) What do I do if I find a bug that still looks like a bug after I've read the FAQ? ANSWER: Your best bet is to send it to the SCSI channel of the mailing list, where it will be seen by all of the people who've contributed to the SCSI drivers. In your bug report, please provide as much information as possible regarding your hardware configuration, and all of the messages that Linux prints when it boots. Your chances of getting the bug fixed increase exponentially with the amount of information provided. The bottom line is that if we can't reproduce your bug, and you can't point at us what's broken, it won't get fixed. X.07) What SCSI disks are supported? ANSWER: Disks up to two terabytes in size will work, since the sd driver switches to 10 byte reads when necessary. Flopticals, Bernoulis, Sysquests, and other removeable media devices are supported by the normal SCSI disk driver. X.08) What about CD ROMS? ANSWER: CD ROMS are supported. The ISO-9660 file system with Rockridge extensions is supported. You will have to make sure that you have configured the kernel to include the isofs filesystem or otherwise you will not be able to use the cdrom. X.09) What about SCSI tapes ? ANSWER: Tapes are supported. You may wish to obtain the utility program mt, which is usually available from tsx-11.mit.edu in pub/linux/ALPHA/scsi. X.10) How do I partition the disk? ANSWER: Use fdisk, efdisk, pfdisk or the DOS parititioning program of your choice. X.11) The linux partitioning programs don't work. ANSWER: Some of these default to /dev/hd*, which are disks on WD-1003 compatable controllers (IDE, MFM, RLL, ESDI, etc), rather than /dev/sd* (SCSI disks). Your solutions are to 1. Call the partitioning program with a device name, ie pfdisk /dev/sda 2. Make links from /dev/hd* to /dev/sd*. X.12) My partitioning program can't figure out the disk geoemetry The problem with partitioning SCSI disks and Linux is that Linux talks directly to the SCSI interface. Each disk is viewed as the SCSI host sees it : N blocks, numbered from 0 to N-1, all error free. There is no portable way to get disk geometry. However, DOS doesn't like things like this, it demmands that BIOS present it with a normal Cylinder / Head / Sector coordinates. So, BIOS does, and it comes up with some fabrication that fits what DOS wants to see. You don't want to disagree with what BIOS thinks when you write the partition table. The newest SCSI code will return the mapped geometry for some host adapter / disk combinations. Kernel release 0.99 and later should have this capability. QUESTION : I can't make a filesystem on /dev/hd* ANSWER : /dev/hd* aren't your SCSI disks. /dev/sd* are. See below for approproate major / minor numbers if they do not exist on your root diskette. X.13) What are the major / minor numbers for SCSI drives? ANSWER: Because of the large number of devices that can be hung off of a SCSI bus (as many as 56 if you use SCSI fanouts or bridge boards), and the possibility of 16 partitions on a SCSI disk, we'd run out of minor numbers if they were statically allocated - so a dynamic numbering scheme is used. Block device major 8 is used for SCSI drives, 11 for CD-ROMs. Character device major 9 is used for SCSI tapes. Minors are assigned in increments of 16 to SCSI disks as they are found, scaning from host 0, ID 0 to host n, ID 7, excluding the host ID. Most hosts use ID 7 for themselves. A minor where minor mod 16 = 0 is the whole drive, where minor mod 16 is between 1 and 4, that partition, extended partitions dynamically assigned from 5 to 15 inclusive. Note that the gendisk.c module prints partition tables on initialization - you should be able to see them there. Example : I have three SCSI disks, set up as follows Seagate ST02, ID=0 Seagate ST02, ID = 5 Adaptec 1542, ID = 0 The first disk on the seagate at ID 0 will become minors 0-15 inclusive, the second at ID5 16-31 inclusive, the disk on the Adaptec 48-63. X.14) My tape drive or other removeable media device isn't recognized at boot time. ANSWER: Try booting with a tape in the drive. X.15) How do I reduce kernel bloat and eliminate the drivers I don't want? ANSWER: For kernel release 0.99 and later, just go to the to directory in the kernel source tree, and type ``make config'', and answer the questions. For older kernel distributions, simply #undef CONFIG_DISTRIBUTION in include/linux/config.h, and define the macros for the SCSI hosts you want enabled. X.16) I get SCSI timeouts. ANSWER: Make sure your board has interrupts enabled correctly. X.17) The * driver doesn't work. ANSWER: A source of difficulty is that you may be trying to run the bus too fast. Try turning off the turbo switch for your machine, or check the bus speed setting in your CMOS. X.18) The Seagate / Future Domain TMC-88x driver doesn't work. ANSWER: There are several possibilities 1) Is the board jumpered for IRQ5 ? The factory settings are for MSDOS, and have interrupts disabled. On the Seagate, Interrupts are controlled by the W3 (ST01) or JP3 (ST02) jumper. Shorting pins F-G selects IRQ5. 2) Cached machines will not have problems if the Seagate's address space (typically C8000 - CAFFFF) is not marked "non cacheable." This applies to the i486 internal cache as well as i386/i486 external caches. This can be set in the XCMOS of most machines. If you can't disable cache for the Seagate's area (16K in size, starting at the base address), then you must disable the cache entirely, otherwise it won't work. X.19) The Adaptec driver doesn't work. ANSWER: A common source of difficulty is a conflict between two different boards for an IRQ level, a DMA channel, or an I/O address. Check the settings for the boards you have in your system (music boards are known to use similar IRQ or I/O addresses as the Adaptec. In the new scsi code the Adaptec can use any of the IRQ levels that it can be strapped for, it can use I/O address 0x330 or 0x334, and it can use DMA channels 5, 6 or 7. X.20) When using a Seagate / Future Domain TMC-88x, why does my system hang when syncing to disk? ANSWER: The Seagate boards are an incredibly brain dead piece of hardware. They can only generate an interrupt when a target raises the SEL signal. So, as long as a target is connected, the Seagate driver must spin its wheels waiting for the actual data transfer. Some devices agravate the situation by connecting for long periods of time while not doing anything. X.21) My system is dog slow (ie, 60k/sec) ANSWER: SCSI commands have an incredible amount of overhead. For every command, you need to arbitrate for the bus, select the target, establish an I_T_L nexus, and send the command. Processing of that command may take as much as 1ms on older devices. Add this overhead to what you already have coming through the file system, buffer cache, etc, and you have a real problem. To work around this, we needed to maximize the amount of data that could be transfered in a single command. So, we implemented scatter-gather, which allows reads/writes from/to contiguous disk sectors to non-contiguous buffers. This typically gets you a 3-5 fold improvement in performance. The current kernel only has scatter-gather support for the Adaptec, Western Digital, and Future Domain 16xx boards. However, Alpha code that provides scatter / gather for the Seagate is available from headrest.woz.colorado.edu:/pub/linux/patches.seagate.Z, for the Ultrastor from tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/scsi/ultrastor.fast. XI. NETWORKING and LINUX ============================ *** This section should be maintained by Philip Copeland *** (p_copela@csd.uwe.ac.uk). XI.01) Where can I find useful information about networking for Linux ? ANSWER: Join the NET channel of the mailing list. Also, you need to read the NET-FAQ by Phil Copeland, it's on sunsite and tsx-11 and posted to c.o.l and the NET channel every couple of weeks. Basically, all of the information on networking and TCP/IP for Linux is in the NET-FAQ, because it's maintained seperately than this document (and we don't want to waste the space reprinting it all here--- it's big!). The NET-FAQ has been completely rewritten as of Feb 1993. Get the new version. XII. X11 THE MAXIMUM and MORE ============================= *** This section is maintained by Krishna Balasubramanian *** . Mail him if you have corrections, *** additions, etc. *** Last update: Sun, 21 Mar 93 17:14:00 -0500 XII.A. X386 GENERAL INFORMATION XII.B. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS: Supported Video cards, mice. XII.C. LINUX DISTRIBUTION: Files required, Current version. XII.D. LEARNING/USING X: Pointers to X documentation. XII.E. DEBUGGING STARTUP PROBLEMS: Checklist, Screen restoration, Hanging. XII.F. XCONFIG: Video mode settings and common errors in Xconfig. XII.G. X-APPLICATIONS: Compiling X programs. XII.H. BUGS The X11 directories on linux systems are: XLIB = /usr/X386/lib/X11/ (or /usr/lib/X11/) XBIN = /usr/X386/bin/ (or /usr/bin/X11/) XDOC = XLIB/etc/ cwxi = the comp.windows.x.i386unix newsgroup Subscribe to this group if you are an xfree86 user. XII.A. X386 GENERAL INFORMATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.01) What is the X11 release supported by Linux? ANSWER: It's the X11R5 (xfree86-1.2). There are (currently separate) servers for 8514 and S3 chips. XII.02) What is X386/xfree86? ANSWER: X386 is the port of the X11 server to System V/386 that was done by Thomas Roell (roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de). It supports a wide variety of VGA boards. X386 1.2 is included in MIT's X11R5 distribution. The Linux X386 port was based on the stock distribution from X11R5, from MIT and was done by Orest Zborowski (obz@sisd.kodak.com). It has since moved to becoming part of the standard xfree86 distribution. See the FAQ on cwxi for more information on xfree86. XII.03) Where can I get X386 1.2 (X11R5)? ANSWER: The X386 1.2 and xfree86 sources are available at any site that distributes the X11R5 source (too numerous to list here, but includes export.lcs.mit.edu) XII.04) Any tips on compiling X11R5? ANSWER: - Dont do it. - XFree86 is distributed with a link kit so you can optionally include what you like in the server. - Join the xfree86 beta team (how to? see cwxi FAQ) - Instructions are in the README file in XDOC/ and the cwxi FAQ. XII.B HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Approx: at least 4 megs of ram + swap ...slooooww. 10 Meg disk for X. Another 6-10 meg of disk for GCC if you want to compile X11 programs. XII.05) What VGA boards are supported? ANSWER: et3000, et4000, gvga, pvga1a, wd890c00, tvga8900, ati ver. 5 or 6, 8514/A. (X386mono supports generic vga's and hercules). Diamond cards are not supported and will not be supported. If you are the unfortunate owner of such a card, you can probably get the server up by booting in specific modes or using dos to set your modes before warm booting into linux or using an external clock setting program. You will have to bear with these irks until you can convince diamond to alter their policy. Standard x11v1.1 or xfree86 server: ET3000 (for ex. GENOA 5300/5400) ET4000 (Tricom, STB PWR Graph, Sigma Legend, etc.) GVGA (Genoa 6400) PVGA1A (Paradise VGA Professional) WD90C00 (Paradise VGA 1024) supported by xfree86: TVGA TRIDENT 8900c, 9000, support is in xfree86 ATI ATI VGA WONDER XL and most ATI VGA WONDER PLUS cards (chip version 5 or 6). Courtesy Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) Those with 8514 compatible cards may want to get the X8514 server for speed (~2x xstones?). MONO Any vga card should be able to use X386mono server. (At least 640x480 with 800x600 virtual). Use the vga2 section of Xconfig. Support for hercules monochrome card (usable as 2nd display). The following servers will usually not handle all the options supported by xfree86. Read the documentation that comes with them carefully. They will be merged with the xfree86 distribution in some time. 8514 ATI graphics ULTRA, ATI graphics Vantage Should work with any VESA standard 8514/A register compatible card? Courtesy Kevin Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu). Scott Laird (lair@midway.uchicago.edu) writes: I uploaded a new version of the X8514 X Server to sunsite and tsx-11. It is in /pub/Linux/X11/X-servers/X8514/X8514scale.tar.Z on sunsite. It's linked with version 4.2 of the jumptable libraries, includes TCP/IP support, support for compressed bitmap fonts, Type 1 and Speedo scalable fonts. There's a README file in the same directory that will answer more questions. XS3 S3 chipset server (Jon Tombs jon@robots.ox.ac.uk) Get the FAQ on ftp.robots.ox.ac.uk (pub/linux/S3 check sunsite). Xega Generic 640x480x16 compatible server (originally for laptops). This requires a microsoft mouse at /dev/mouse for now and it does not use Xconfig so use environment variables to define the font path etc. in .xinitrc: export FONT_PATH=/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc:/usr/lib/X11/fonts75dpi Works better with courier fonts so add to .Xresources: *Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*--10* ..or whatever.. A link kit is available at tsx-11 (you need gcc2.2.2). in pub/linux/ALPHA/Xega/X386.ega.T.Z (Obselete? Unusable? Anyone?) WARNING: Do not try to bring up an Xserver that does not support your hardware. There have been cases where damage has resulted from pushing the monitor (specially fixed frequency monitors) beyond its specs. XII.06) What Mouses are supported? ANSWER: Serial : Logitech, Microsoft, MouseSystems .... compatibles ... Busmouses : Logitech, microsoft, ATI_XL, PS/2 (aux). XII.07) Does anyone have a working PS/2 mouse? Has anyone gotten the "Mini-DIN" mouse on an HP Vectra 486/33T to work? The slight info I've been able to find says it's PS/2 compatible. ANSWER: First you need to create an entry in /dev for it: mknod /dev/psaux c 10 1 There is no direct PS/2 mouse support in XFree86-1.1, so to use the mouse with X you'll have to use the mconv mouse protocol conversion utility, which can be found on nic.funet.fi, in /pub/OS/Linux/utils/tools/mconv.c. This program converts the packets sent by the PS/2 mouse into the corresponding ones from a Microsoft mouse, so you can fool X telling it you have a Microsoft serial mouse instead. Instructions for use are included in the source file. (Johan Myreen jem@cs.hut.fi) XII.08) I have trouble with my logitech Pilot mouse and X under Linux, any clue ? ANSWER: (Thomas Roell?) There are TWO lines of Logitech mice out there. One is the programmable and uses MouseSystems protocol at startup. X386 reprogramms them to use another protocol. If you specify 'Logitech' in the Xconfig, X386 assumes a mouse like C7 or S9 (notC7-M). The second line is the MicroSoft compatible. Currently all newer Logitech mice follows this practice, like the MouseMan. In that case you have to say 'MicroSoft' or 'MouseMan'. From: jliddle@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Jean Liddle) I just purchased a new logitech mouseman, and yes, the new X-Windows (XFree86 as opposed to X386) requires that you use the "microsoft" mousetype. However, if you turn Third Button Emulation off, the middle button WILL work. XII.C. LINUX DISTRIBUTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.09) What is the current version? ANSWER: The newest public Linux release is xfree86-1.2. It was compiled with gcc-2.3 (jump tables 4.3) and is available for example at tsx-11 in pub/linux/packages/X11/XFree86-1.2/. XII.10) What Files do I need to download? ANSWER: For xfree86: There is a README file in the distribution directory. Bring this down first and read it. Then get xbin, xman and xfonts. You need xprog and xlibman only if you plan to compile X applications. You need xkit if you want to relink the server. **** You need The shared images libc.so.4 (4.3 or later) and libm.so.4 (4.0) in /lib/. All the X11 binaries use these. These are available with the GCC distribution or any new rootdisk. To compile programs you should get gcc-2.3 or later and the 4.3 libraries. To get a different server, see the notes in the previous section. X11 directories in the archive sites are: tsx-11 : pub/linux/packages/X11, pub/linux/usr.bin.X11 sunsite : pub/Linux/X11/ pub/Linux/Incoming/DLL? XII.11) Where do the X11 files go? What are they? ANSWER: The linux X binary distribution looks something like: /usr/X386/ lib/ libX11.a ... (X libraries needed for compiling stuff). X11/ config/ (template files for compiling ... xmkmf) fonts/ misc/ , 75dpi/ .... etc/ (documentation). bin/ (X386, X386mono, xterm, X linked to X386). include/X11/ (include files needed for compiling). bitmaps/ (icons, bitmaps used by some applications). man/ man1/, man3/, cat1/, cat3/ /lib libX??.so.?? (Shared images needed by all X11 binaries). Its best you do a tar -tvzf on the distribution you get or find some means of extracting the distribution file list. The support files include default/example Xconfig, xinitrc, twmrc which you could copy to your HOME directory (as Xconfig, .xinitrc and .twmrc) and edit them to define your hardware and X11 setup. The directory XLIB/etc/ contains much documentation on how to configure video modes. Read the files XDOC/README and XDOC/README.Linux. XII.D. LEARNING/USING X ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.12) Where can I find the basic help for learning/using X ? ANSWER: Try man X386; man Xserver; man xterm; man twm; man xinit on any machine with X11. The man pages on xterm and twm will reflect behaviour on Linux systems quite accurately. The others will give you some bearing though not every option will work. These man pages are part of the xfree86 distribution. XII.13) What docs are available besides man pages? ANSWER: The FAQ in comp.windows.x is extensive and has a bibliography. There is also the Xt-FAQ. Both are available from export.lcs.mit.edu in pub/contrib/. There is a collection of (mit) X11 documents on tsx-11 (pub/linux/doc/xdoc.tar.Z ?) or export (pub/R5-Untarred) if you are interested in internals. XII.14) How do I start up X? ANSWER: Type 'startx' at the shell prompt. Before doing this you should: 0) Untar the xfree86 distribution from / (read XDOC/README, XDOC/README.Linux). 1) copy the file Xconfig.sample from the XLIB/ directory to your HOME directory (/usr/root/Xconfig?) or to XLIB/Xconfig. 2) Edit Xconfig and set the video data for your card and monitor. Use the clocks appropriate for your card and the modes appropriate for your monitor for those clock values. To determine what values are appropriate the Xconfig section below and the files in XDOC/. 3) Set the mouse device in Xconfig correctly....Use the busmouse entry for Logitech only. For other busmouses use microsoft (try all :-). 4) Ensure that there is a termcap entry for xterm in /etc/termcap (One is available in the subdir /doc/). 5) Ensure that the X11 binaries are in the path example: add the line PATH=${PATH}:/usr/X386/bin to ~/.profile or look at bash.ad in /doc/. WARNING: NONE of the modes (in the Modes line in Xconfig) should use a clock your monitor cannot handle. Now type startx. XII.15) How do I configure X .. colors, menu, keyboard? ANSWER: makes me ... dizzy ... server : video, keyboard Xconfig : man X386, man Xserver, XDOC/VideoModes.doc man X386keybd, man xset, man xmodmap. resources: global and application preferences. XLIB/xinit/.Xresources or ~/.Xresources : man xrdb? twm : menus, title bars, colors .. look and feel. ~/.twmrc or XLIB/twm/system.twmrc : man twm xinit : startup. ~/.xinitrc or XLIB/xinit/xinitrc -- man xinit applications : XLIB/app-defaults/Xxx (also ~/.Xresources) man xxx You can start with files from any X11 setup. Backup the files you change. See the FAQ on comp.windows.x. XII.16) [suggested by Thomas Koenig] How do I support national keyboards in X11 ? ANSWER: Put a .Xmodmap file into the user's home directory specifying which keys to use for what; or else replace the /usr/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap with the national keyboard keys customized. Do man xmodmap for more details. enclosed an excerpt of mine (french keyboard): keycode 8 = keycode 9 = Escape keycode 10 = ampersand 1 keycode 11 = eacute 2 asciitilde keycode 12 = quotedbl 3 numbersign keycode 13 = apostrophe 4 braceleft keycode 14 = parenleft 5 bracketleft keycode 15 = minus 6 bar keycode 16 = egrave 7 grave keycode 17 = underscore 8 backslash keycode 18 = ccedilla 9 asciicircum keycode 19 = agrave 0 at keycode 20 = parenright degree bracketright keycode 21 = equal plus braceright keycode 22 = BackSpace keycode 23 = Tab keycode 24 = A ........ XII.E. DEBUGGING STARTUP PROBLEMS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.17) I cannot type in my xterm ANSWER: /dev/console must have major=4, minor=0 rm -f /dev/console; ln /dev/console /dev/tty0 XII.18) What are some of the common omissions and errors? ANSWER: (Peter) 1) Add /usr/X386/bin/ (or /usr/bin/X11) to your path. 2) Add the xterm termcap entry to /etc/termcap. 3) ln -s X386 X in the XBIN directory. ln -s X386mono X (if you want to use the mono server). 4) Run X as root first. This avoids some trivial problems. 5) If you change the font path entry .... X386 is finicky about the syntax. 6) Make sure your mouse entry in Xconfig points to a legitimate serial device (or busmouse)... usually something like: microsoft "/dev/ttyS1" serial devices have major # 4 minor 64,65 ... busmouses are major 10. ls -l in /dev will show you the major and minor entries. 7) Need read/write/exec access to /tmp directory 8) Use startx 2> x.err to log your error messages. If the server sticks and you have to reboot you'll probably loose this stuff... see notes on `hanging' below. 9) You must have a free vt (eg. /dev/tty5 with no getty (see /etc/rc)). 10) Delete /tmp/.Xn-lock if recovering from a crash. 11) Note the new probeonly option for the server (man X386): startx -- -pn -probeonly 12) See Xconfig problems and the device list below. XII.19) Why is the server unable to find some of the fonts? ANSWER: First check that the directories listed in the font path exist and have font files in them. Some of the servers are not set up to use compressed fonts. In such cases you have to uncompress the fonts in the directory and run `mkfontdir .`. Read the man page on mkfontdir. XII.20) My server "hangs" Why? ANSWER: (Peter) Quite often it isn't a hang. If the server grabs the screen(and enters graphics mode) and then dies, it may return you to bash *without* restoring the screen. In other words, just because you see no output, don't assume it's running/hanging. The way to test this is to see if you can use a bash command to spin your disk. eg.: sync; ls -l /bin. Also - I *suspect* that (at least for me), you can kill the server if you include the servernum option in the Xconfig (Obselete?) You can kill the server when you want to by typing ctrl-alt-backspace. Then a couple of ctrl-C 's in case your stuck in xinit. The two line message X386 version ..... (protocol Version .... is returned from the X386 programme itself, so if you get this (or if the screen blanks) X must be starting. XII.21) When I started X11 I got "Cannot connect to server" or "process does not exist", any clue ? ANSWER: The cause might be wrong fontpath variable setup in your Xconfig; uncomment and set the correct fontpath variable. XII.22) Why cant I run more than 4 xterms? How can I have more than 4 pty's ? ANSWER: set the number in the header include/linux/tty.h and recompile the kernel. Also make nodes : mknod /dev/ptypxx 4 minor (where minor = 128 + xx) mknod /dev/ttypxx 4 minor (minor = 192 + xx) This is for before linux-0.97pl6.... for later versions you only need to make the nodes. XII.23) How does X11 start up? ANSWER: The startup involves the server (XBIN/X), and some programs like startx and xinit. Typing startx runs the script XBIN/startx. Look through startx. For explanation of the server arguments try man Xserver. startx does little other than gather arguments and then call xinit. xinit runs the server X (X is linked to X386) and the client programs specified in ~/.xinitrc. xinit continues to run, and is often the source of the error messages you see when you exit. If you get the message "giving up", it means X has died (quite probably it died immediately) and xinit has been unable to start clients from the xinitrc script. (The scripts must be executable). XII.24) How can I see what startx passes to xinit, and xinit to X? ANSWER: Add the line: set -x near the top of startx. To see what xinit passes to X, try: (Peter) rm XBIN/X - yes, if you have set it up correctly, X should only be a link so it's safe to remove it. then create a shell script XBIN/X containing: #/bin/sh echo $* and run startx. You should see something like: X :0 which is all xinit passes to X. If you don't see the :0, you may not have your DISPLAY=":0" set correctly. THEN RESTORE X!! : cd XBIN; rm X; ln -s X386 X XII.25) What devices does X depend on: ANSWER: check your device numbers with ls -l /dev. You should have: 5 0 tty 4 0 tty0 4 0 console 4 1 tty1 (etc) virtual consoles (vt's) : eg. startx -- vt8 1 1 mem 4 128 ptyp0 pseudo ttys used by xterm/emacs etc 4 129 ptyp1 (etc) to talk to unix programs. 4 192 ttyp0 4 193 ttyp1 (etc) 4 64 ttyS1 one of these is the mouse 4 65 ttyS2 or you have a busmouse. 10 x mouse busmouse x = 0 => logitech 1 => ps/2 (aux) 2 => microsoft 3 => ATI_XL. /tmp/.X11-unix/Xn n = display number. Socket used by X11 programs to talk to the server. This is created by X386. /tmp/.Xn-lock n = display number. Lock file. Note that unix programs dont expect standard names for serial devices and mice. So you can give these devices any name as long as you tell the server what its called (in Xconfig). XII.F. Xconfig: Xconfig and Video mode settings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.26) What do the mode names in Xconfig mean? ANSWER: Mode names like "640x480" are used to match entries in the modes line with the modeDB entry which actually defines the mode. You can toggle between modes in the modes line with ctrl-alt-numericplus. If you're experimenting with 640x480 you can define modes "640x480a" "641x480b" "642x480c" with different entries for each under ModeDB so you can toggle between these three modes. XII.27) How do I compute the numbers for the video modes? ANSWER: See if there is an entry that matches your chip/monitor in XDOC/modeDB.txt. Use the clock entries for your chip and the mode entry for that clock appropriate for your monitor. If you cant find a mode entry for a particular clock 'needed_clock' but can find a mode entry (for your monitor) for a nearby clock value 'found_clock', scale all numbers in the modeDB entry by (needed_clock/found_clock). Read XDOC/VideoModes.doc XII.28) How can I determine the clocks on the video chip? Where can I find clock.exe or clock.pas ? ANSWER: The XFREE Team discourages the use of clocks.exe and wants it to be removed from all docs, since the new Server is better at guessing the clocks than clocks.exe. You can get X to tell you what it finds by commenting the clocks entry in Xconfig. Use 'startx -- -probeonly 2> x.err' to log the output. If X starts up this file gets the clocks only after you exit. I strongly advise using the 'modegen' spreadsheets to generate the appropriate settings. If I remember correctly you can find them in 'pub/linux/packages/SLS/x4' called modegen.taz or something equally as obvious ... Good luck. (Andy asb@cs.nott.ac.uk) The clocks entry in Xconfig serves as an index. example: clocks 1 2 ModeDB 1 640x480 ..... 2 800x600 ..... means the first clock on the chip will be used for the 640x480 mode and so on. Usually one uses the MHz value for the clock for convenience instead of 1 2 you probably have 25 28 ... etc. XII.29) What are the settings used with a trident-8900C? ANSWER: To get X/SLS/Linux working with a trident-8900C : 1) From Frank Houston fh8n@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU vga256 Virtual 1024 768 ViewPort 0 0 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" Use the VESA monitor timings from the modeDB in the example Xconfig. You do not need to specify the chipset or clocks. 2) From: Henk Vandecasteele henkv@cs.kuleuven.ac.be TRIDENT TVGA 8900C card with BIOS C2.11, A cheap color monitor AOC (CM-335) with a maximum horizontal frequence of 39.5 vga256 Virtual 1024 1024 ViewPort 0 0 Modes "912x684" "800x600" "640x480" # This mode drives my monitor to the limit (VESA timings for the rest). "912x684" 45 912 944 1104 1136 684 684 690 712 XII.30) Oh what, Oh what, Oh what can I do with a trident 8900b? ANSWER: (drew@cs.colorado.edu) 1. While the 8900b works with the Xfree 8900c driver, you must specify a chipset line for the 8900c in your Xconfig. 2. The tridents are miserably slow in a Color mode. If you don't mind black and white, you should use X386mono. Not only is it faster, but it requires less video memory, and you'll be able to run a 1k X 1k virtual desktop. Again, you must specify the Chipset line to use the banked mono server for virtual resolutions > ~800x600. XII.31) What are common problems with Xconfig? ANSWER: If X isn't firing at all, or even if it clears the screen and crashes (see below) you almost certainly have a fault in Xconfig. 1. Note that the server X interprets Xconfig. (not xinit) 2. If you have a fault in Xconfig it is possible to crash or hang the server without getting an error message. (older versions?) 3. leave the two paths at the top of Xconfig commented out when testing. 4. test with only one graphics mode included - one you are most sure of. 5. If you make a mistake in the mouse section, you will (I understand) get an error message, so if you don't get some mouse error, try elsewhere first. (eg "No such file or directory" indicates you have a fault in the "/dev/ttyxx" line, or /dev/ttyxx doesn't exist. 6. *NB* X looks in your home directory first to find an Xconfig. make certain it's using the one you've been working on! 7. you need double quotes (") around your chipset and modes: eg chipset "et4000" Modes "640x480" "640x480a" "800x600" and around the /dev/ttyxx eg.: microsoft "/dev/ttys1" 8. Check your VGA section and modeDB first. 9. ensure ModeDB clock speeds match the VGA section. Comment out any unused lines in MODEDB. eg clocks 25 36 00 00 00 00 00 00 then you *must* have (and only have) lines under modeDB corresponding to speeds 25 and 36. If you have one with (say) 62 uncommented out in the modeDB section in place of the 36 line, you will cause the server to die immediately with no error message. 10. a syntax error (such as an unrecognised word) in Xconfig will cause a death with no warning. (Obselete?) 11. videoram must equal the amount of display ram on your chip. 12. The virtual resolution screen must fit in the videoram. eg: 512kB => 800x600 (for the 1 byte per pixel color server) XII.32) What do I use in my Xconfig file to use the bus mouse? Logitech doesn't work with my Logitech busmouse. ANSWER: (Nathan I. Laredo) Here are the mouse lines from my Xconfig: BusMouse "/dev/mouse" You may add a sample rate if you want, but chances are, unless the model number on your mouse matches mine: PC-93-9MD it probably will cause your machine to lock up, as I've gotten several reports saying that. According to the X386 documentation, non-logitech mice do not support a sample rate. XII.33) Where can I get Xconfig-files for various hardware? ANSWER: If you have access to e-mail, e-mail bcr@physics.purdue.edu a message with the subject: help If you do create a new Xconfig file or improve on an old one please mail it to bcr@physics.purdue.edu to save others from having to duplicate your work. XII.G X-APPLICATIONS: Compiling X Programs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XII.34) Does anyone know where I can find the libobz.a library ? ANSWER: This library contained the socket stuff, when X386 V0.1 was released. Meanwhile it has found it's way into the kernel, so remove -lobz from the link step in the Makefile. Any program asking for libobz needs to be recompiled anyway. XII.35) I get _setjmp undefined when linking xv from .a files. ANSWER: You are trying to link a program compiled with gcc-2.2.2 and setjmp has changed sice then. Recompile xv from the source using the latest gcc. XII.36) How do I compile an X application that has an Imakefile? ANSWER: Type xmkmf to generate the Makefile. Type make. XII.37) How do I compile a program that has no Imakefile? ANSWER: Use compiler options generated with programs that do have Imakefiles. Look in XLIB/config/ for the linux definitions. In particular you need -fwritable-strings. XII.38) gcc complains the X libraries are not found or links static. ANSWER: Check out the -nojump -static options of GCC ... read the GCC FAQ. You can tell gcc what directories to search with -L. XII.39) When using Makefiles generated by xmkmf why do I get many error messages? ANSWER: The old xmkmf under Linux doesn't like # comments in Imakefiles. Therefore you must change the #'s to XCOMM. But be careful. Don't change any pre-compiler directives. (mal11@po.CWRU.Edu Matthew A. Lewis) XII.H BUGS: ~~~~~~~~~~~ Restoration of the text screen fails on some hardware. You can get the program runx from the vgalib distribution (tsx-11 pub/linux/sources/libs/). Report the problem to the xfree86 team. Cant compile Xaw programs without -static in versions x11v1.1 or older. Color problems with Xega .... fixed in latest version on tsx-11 (Old). from chuck@coplex.com (Chuck Sites) (Old?) It is possible to run X386 on a Paradise VGA Plus. The X386.0 doc file has a small misprint. The Chipset is not pvga. It's pvga1. Anyway, under the line in /usr/X386/lib/X11/Xconfig VGA256, add, `chipset "pvga1"`. You will need a 512k board. There seems to be a problem with 800x600 mode that causes pixels to be misplaced in the center 1/3 of the screen. 640x480 works fine. Anybody out there might have a fix for that? You may want to use X386mono with 800x600 instead Fix for missing numlock control in xfree86-1.1. use xmodmap to change the mapping: clear mod1 add mod1 = Alt_L keysym Alt_R = Mode_switch add mod5 = Mode_switch David (Dawes) Sources for X11_FAQ: Steve Kotsopoulos, Peter Hawkins, John Morris, MM. Corsini, K. Balasubramanian. Direct comments, questions, complaints to krishna at: balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu XIII. EMACS for LINUX ===================== *** This section is maintained by Rick Sladkey (jrs@world.std.com) *** Last Update March 1993. XIII.A. GENERAL INFORMATION XIII.B. GNU EMACS for LINUX XIII.A. GENERAL INFORMATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a short list of Frequently Asked Questions about GNU Emacs under Linux. It does not address general questions about Emacs which are not Linux specific. For general help about Emacs, 1) learn to use and read the online documentation, 2) read the real Emacs FAQ found in emacs/etc/FAQ, and 3) read the newsgroup gnu.emacs.help. Rick Sladkey XIII.B. GNU EMACS for LINUX ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ XIII.01) What version of the compiler was used? Which shared libaries? ANSWER: This describes version of GNU Emacs 18.59 for Linux 0.99.5 and above compiled with GCC 2.2.3 using the libc.so.4.3 and libX11.so.3.0 shared libraries. XIII.02) Which files do I need? ANSWER: emacs-18.59b.tar.Z this file, sample default.el and diffs for this version, the eight-bit patch, iso-latin-1.el and eight-bit.el emacs-etc-18.59b.tar.Z emacs support programs and misc info emacs-bin-18.59b.tar.Z shared emacs binary and its doc file x11emacs-bin-18.59b.tar.Z shared x11emacs binary and its doc file XIII.03) How do I install them? ANSWER: For the latter three files, just cd to /usr and untar them. XIII.04) What if I want to compile Emacs myself? ANSWER: It is fairly easy (and highly recommended) to compile Emacs yourself if you have the the disk space. In this case you only need the standard Emacs distribution (emacs-18.59.tar.Z from any GNU archive) and the Linux diffs and support files (emacs-18.59b.tar.Z from a Linux archive). The diffs are quite small and mostly amount to a configuration file. XIII.05) What about Epoch or Lucid Emacs? Are these available for Linux? ANSWER: Yes. Thomas Dunbar has been maintaining Epoch for Linux and Chipsy Sperber has compiled Lucid Emacs. Both of these work well under Linux. Look in a Linux archive index for where to find them. XIII.06) Does Linux Emacs support eight-bit input/output? ANSWER: Yes. It is new with this version. It uses the so-called "ctl-arrow" patch. See the file README.8bit for more information. XIII.07) How much disk space is required? ANSWER: Anywhere from 1 to 15 Meg. Emacs works reasonably well with no support files at all. With a judicious selection from lisp/*.elc and etc/*, quite a lot can be done using only 2 Meg. If you want all of lisp/*.elc, info/*, and etc/* this will require 4 to 6 Meg. If you unpack the whole source you need 8 Meg. If you collect info files like rare coins and install a lot of big lisp packages then Emacs may need its own partition. :-) XIII.08) Why can't Emacs find its support files anymore? ANSWER: This is because older versions of Emacs were compiled with "/usr/local/emacs" based paths. The current version is compiled with "/usr/emacs" paths. If you have a previous installation, just "mv /usr/local/emacs /usr" and you're done. If you can't bear to part with the "/usr/local" pathnames because of inertia then do "ln -s /usr/local/emacs /usr" and you can have them both. XIII.09) How do I get Emacs to recognize my cursor keys? ANSWER: Simple. Don't use them. :-) Seriously, there are as many ways to do this are there are elisp hackers but the preferred way is to follow the pattern set by the other terminal definition files in emacs/lisp/term/*.el. For just arrow keys you can just copy vt220.el to console.el and that's it. For function keys and the others see the sample default.el included with emacs-18.59b.tar.Z. XIII.10) What packages are particularly useful under Linux? ANSWER: Because info format is the documentation standard of the GNU project and just about everything except the kernel comes from FSF, you will find that Dave Gillespie's enhanced info package is very useful. It allows multiple info directories, space bar paging, and supports compressed info files. Please learn to use info. Imagine Unix life without man. Others that I highly recommend are Sebastian Kremer's enhanced dired directory editor, Dave Gillespie's calc calculator, Masanobu UMEDA's gnus for usenet news, and Kyle Jone's vm for mail. All can be found in the OSU Emacs archive, ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu, /pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive. See the real FAQ for more details. XIII.11) Does Linux Emacs use the shared libraries? ANSWER: Yes. It works fine with the DLL libraries and should not require a new binary when the C or X libraries are updated. XIII.12) Does Linux Emacs support the X Window System? ANSWER: Yes. However, there are two binaries. One without X support (about 485k) and one with X support (about 515k). XIII.13) Do I need both Emacs if I don't always use X? ANSWER: No. The X11 version works equally well inside or outside of X. If you get the message "Check your DISPLAY variable" it means that you have defined DISPLAY in your ~/.profile (or whatever). You can fix this by starting Emacs with 'emacs -nw' or by removing the DISPLAY variable from your ~/.profile and putting it in you ~/.xinitrc. XIII.14) Why doesn't Emacs use the settings in my .Xdefaults/.Xresources file? ANSWER: You are probably using the word "emacs" and your X version of emacs is called x11emacs. Either use the word "Emacs" in your resource file or rename x11emacs to emacs. See above question on why this is reasonable. XIII.15) I read about some menu that is supposed to pop up when I press some mouse button. Does this work with Linux Emacs? ANSWER: Yes. This requires XMenu support to be compiled in. Former versions did not support it because it did not work correctly. XIII.16) Sometimes Emacs crashes with a SIGALRM message. What's wrong? ANSWER: The old answer about upgrading to a newer version of bash was incorrect. The problem was in the implementation of sleep(3) in the old C library. It is fixed as of libc-4.3. ===================8<==========>8================ SLS FAQ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q: Why doesn't ???? work. A: First read the man pages on ???? and look in this FAQ and the readme. Relevant manpages can be located using "man -k ????". Q: Why do I get "shell-init failed"? A: chmod a+rx / Q: Why do I get "can not find fixed font" A: Look in /usr/lib/X11/fonts. Do the fonts.dir and fonts.alias = the fonts there? If not, try mkfontdir. Q: Why doesn't makewhatis work? A: Because the man pages are compressed. Q: Why do is see "magic match failed" on disk a3? A: Ignore it it is normal. Sysinstall has to switch from Minix to Dos disks at a3. Q: Why do I see "no bmap support" when installing disks? A: Ignore it it is normal. Dos disks generate this message when mounted. Q: Why won't the install recognize my disks. A: Perhaps you have a bad disk, a hardware problem, the download failed or something else. Some versions of DOS don't seem to like linux. Try formatting disks on someone elses DOS. Really, you are on your own here. What I want done, is have the "file loop" patches added to a Linux system, and then store the Images to SLS, with mountings to also access their contents (someday). Meanwhile. bon chance. Q: How do I upgrade SLS A: If from .96, you don't. You must re-install from scratch. Otherwise, read the ChangeLog file and download just the needed files manually. Q: Can I install a new version of SLS over an old one? A: Best not to. Save what you want somewhere and use mk[*]fs. SLS may be best for base installs. Updates you can often get anywere on the net. That is, unless you follow the upgrades to SLS religously. Q: What version of X11 does SLS use? A: XFree 1.2. Yes, it does use shared DLL jump libs. Q: Can I install from the Hard drive? A: Yes. Even from a Dos HD, but you can't use "doinstall". It goes like: "sysinstall -instsrc /user -instroot /root -all" Q: How can I set the video-mode automatically when booting? A: Use "rdev -v /dev/fd0 1" to simulate typing '1', etc. (-1 sets default vga, -3 set ask). Try "rdev -help" for more info. Q: I have only 2Meg of ram... A: Use hlu's root disk, in GCC Q: How do I get TCP/IP or NFS working? A: Get SLS .98p5 92/12/03 or later. Look at hostcvt.build in /etc/inet Q: How come "mdir a:" don't recognize my 3.5 A: drive? A: Edit /etc/mtools. Q: Why does "sysinstall -special t" not work or, why the "*.tar" not found messages, or why do I get "can't write to disk" on installations? A: Get the new a4/menus.taz. It has a new sysinstall, that uses "-series". Q: Why do I see "link failed" messages when I install? A: Ignore them, they are harmless. Q: How do I install disks afterwards? A: sysinstall -disk. Try reading sysinstall for more info. Q: How do I uninstall a package? A: sysinstall -remove pkg. To see all pkgs, do "ls /install/installed" Q: How do I find out what disk a package is on, if I uninstall it? A: grep pkg /install/disks/* Q: I just upgraded to [X11, gs, ..] and I get "can't load library /lib/lib*" A: A new library must have come out. Get the new lib(s) to. Q: How do I find which version of SLS I am using A: uname -a Q: How do I find out what is in a package? A: Install it, look at it, uninstall it if not desired. Q: What is the meaning life A: it's coming in the next release. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------