L i n u x N e w s A summary of the goings-on in the Linux community Issue #9 December 18 to Jan 1 Our Motto: "To Hack and to Serve" ***** News of Note - 0.99 and 0.99 patchlevel 1 kernels released - GCC 2.3.3 and Linux C library 4.2 available at tsx-11 - H.J. Lu's new bootable rootdisk released - YAPPS (yet another /proc ps) source at tsx-11 - Xxgdb (X interface to Gnu debugger) uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu - New Gnu utility binaries from Rik Faith - Tinymush and tinyfugue binaries uploaded - PennMush 1.5 ported - Newest Seyon is 1.6 - Ver. 0.2 of libgr.so sent to sunsite.unc.edu - SUGG conference in Moscow calls for papers on free software - Ed Carp uploads atp-1.3 (QWK reader) - Drivers for XT controllers Alpha-4 version are ready - Lars Wirzenius steps down as Linux News Editor, Denise Tree takes over ***** Goodbye After doing eight issues of Linux News I decided to force, er, ask somebody else to continue. After I sent out issue #8 with the request for volunteers, I received several replies within a couple of hours. Nice to see that there is still that kind of spirit lingering among Linuxers. I picked Denise Tree as my successor, partly using a few random criteria (I recognized her name from c.o.l from way back, and a few other things like that), but mostly because her reply was by far the funniest. I'm sorry for all you others who also wanted to do it, but it is better to have only one person in charge of this kind of thing. However, I'm sure Denise will be glad to get any offerings for help, especially after the first few issues (it's more fun in the beginning; trust me, I know what I'm talking about). I have received about fifteen post cards and one letter in response to the begging buried in the legalese section of a few issues. Thanks to all of you who sent them, they (among other things) motivated me a lot when the thing started to get only routine and less and less fun. Don't get me wrong, Linux News never got unpleasant; I gave it away before things got that bad. Especially the first three or four issues were quite fun. The rest were more routine than creativity, and I feared that I would get quite bored and quite disgusted with it, and this was one reason why I decided to give LN away. Let's hope that Denise likes routine more than I do. Some people noticed that I got somebody else to do the INFO-SHEET and the Meta-FAQ as well, and were curious why I did that. Was I going to give up Linux? Well, no, I'm not going to give up Linux. Part of the reason I have given up these things is that I don't really have the time for them. The time freed by not doing them anymore I will allocate for studies (which haven't been progressing very well during the past year), and also for the Linux documentation project, which I coordinate. Unfortunately, there are more unpleasant reasons as well. Those who read comp.os.linux might have noticed that it is very active and has a lot of messages per day. Although I have no problem myself with the volume (even if I have at least skimmed through every article, high though it is, the amount of quality discussion is heart-breakingly low and the amount of crap unpleasantly high. Even worse, the number of persons asking questions that are directly answered either by my INFO-SHEET and Meta-FAQ, the real FAQ, or what other documentation is available is so high that I almost feel sick. So, since there seem to be few people who make use of them, the hours I have put into writing them, and the on-going effort of maintaining them, seem to be quite wasted. Since I did I-S and M-F for a purpose -- to reduce the number of repeated questions -- and since that goal did not seem to get achieved, I didn't find it worth my time to go on. At the moment, I have grown tired of fighting windmills and trying to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of comp.os.linux. I guess c.o.l will never again be the cozy meeting place of hackers and intelligent newbies who discuss things in a friendly manner, fool around, and generally have a good time. I am not certain that I wish to dwell much in the dark place that c.o.l has become, where newbies come in and the first thing they do is to try to change the Linux community to their tastes, who want to be spoonfed any and all information, and who go around demanding that others do various bigger and smaller things for them, preferably by tomorrow. Therefore, I will retire myself from most things I've been doing for the Linux community, instead continuing to whine. Of course, since there really _are_ people who do behave in the way that I consider to be civilized, I haven't just stopped doing things, but have instead found other people to take over the tasks, in the hope that these people will continue to be helped. On a more pleasant note, I'd like to thank all of those who have given me feedback over the past months, either in the form of thank yous, encouragement, or, best of all, constructive criticism and corrections. Despite my dark ramblings above, you have been many and I am truly thankful for you all. Without that kind of support from the Linuxers, I probably would have given up a lot sooner, given that I very easily grow tired of people I consider stupid (being ignorant is all right, being stupid and/or inconsiderate is not). I guess what I want to say is that I don't like comp.os.linux that well anymore, but thanks to those who have supported me this far, sorry that I can't continue, good luck to you all, hope you enjoy yourselves. If and when I feel that c.o.l is a dwellable place again, and/or I cool down a bit and grow a thicker skin, I may become more active again. If not, well, it isn't my loss (if it is a loss at all). Goodbye friends. No longer at your service, Lasu. ***** A few editorial words from Denise Tree Goodbye Lars ... and thank you for all your work and committment. I promise to do my best to add something to Linux until I too, become gloomy (or until my grades slip). It was almost exactly one year ago that I put a "rawwrote" floppy into the A: drive of my '386 and was amazed to see a new OS actually booting. Like many people I suppose, I didn't like MS-DOS or any of the commercial schemes available to simulate real multitasking. I wanted to run Unix on my own computer! I had read with anticipation about the port of BSD by the Jolitz's and of Hurd, but since they seemed long in arriving I had resorted to using a DOS clone of the Bourne shell and a mess of Unix-like DOS utilities in a free package called dosnix. Linus Torvalds version of the 0.11 kernel made such kluges unnecessary. Since then I have been an evangelical Linux Activist (I ended up changing my major from biology to COSC). So what... some might say. I'll bet the story I've told could be told with minor variations by almost everyone with a Linux partition. That's just the point of course. There have been many posts (some of which have contributed to Lars' gloomification) and even some really extended pontification about how Linux should be "handled" or whether Linux will be a "success" or what should be done to "improve" Linux.... blah blah woof woof. Well, it has already been said but I think it bears repeating: 1. Linux _is_ a success. 2. Decisions about Linux will be handled by those who do the work. 3. Linux will be improved by those who do the work and the beta testers who test it. I will try and continue Linux News much as Lars did and if I have the time I will try and do some new things which I hope will be of value to the Linux Community (and fun for me). Please send Lars some more post cards! If you have praise, criticisms, or postcards send to: tree@midget.towson.edu Denise Tree 348 Ilchester Ave. Baltimore, MD. 21218 ***** Announcements - December 21 Linus released the first patch for the 0.99 kernel which changed the following: 1. Configuration script debugged 2. inode.c initializaion changed (missing NULL and minor fixes) 3. SCSI tape patches by Kai M{kisara 4. tcp/ip patches by Ross Biro and Linus 5. keyboard patches to eliminate lockups 6. completed /proc-fs (Michael Johnson) 7. other minor fixes 8. support for extended VC switching in support of future X11 which will understand VC's. Linus say's "Wait for Xfree-1.2 to be able to switch VC's while under X (yes, including several X-sessions active at the same time..). FTP: nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/testing/Linus (cd blind) tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/sources/system - December 21 Michael Caro uploaded xxgdb.bin.TZ and xxgdb.info.TZ to sunsite.unc.edu. Xxgdb is the X interface for gdb, the Gnu debugger. It was compiled with libc.so.4.2 FTP: sunsite.unc.edu:/(???) - December 21 Michael Johnson announces that he is writing a /proc-based ps which does not depend on /dev/kmem for process status information. It will eliminate the need for recompiling ps with every kernel change and he hopes to have it completed in time for the 1.0 kernel release. - December 23 Olaf Kirch sent a patch to tsx-11 to help in compiling GWM-1.7n, the generic window manager. Look for gwm-patch.tar.Z. FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: (probably in pub/linux/sources/usr.bin.X11) - December 23 David Peterson announces new binaries of tinymush 2.0.9 and tinyfugue 2.0.b2 (mud's?) compiled with libc4.1 jump tables and 4.0 libm. FTP:tsx-11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu: tinymush-2.0.9-bin.tar.Z - December 25 Rik Faith released a large collection of Gnu binaries compiled with libc 4.1 jump tables and gcc 2.2.2d7 ( tested with 0.99 kernel and libc 4.2). Included are: *.Notes - Instructions for installation, ftp sites for src, patches for compilation *.taz - tarred, compressed binaries, COPYING, README's, man and info pages *.dist - used to build the *.taz file *.Unins file - will uninstall binaries and leave src intact This package includes the Gnu shell, file and text utils plus MANY more FSF and Gnu utilities. Bug reports and comments to: faith@cs.unc.edu FTP:*.Notes files are in the following places: ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/FSF sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils *.taz files are in the following places: ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/FSF sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils The hard to find (i.e., non-GNU) sources are in the following places: ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/utils/sources tsx-11.mit.edu:? sunsite.unc.edu:? Source for FSF utilties are in the following places: prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/FSF/from_prep - December 26 M. Saggaf released version 1.6 of Seyon, the X based communication program. Seyon uses Xterm ( or any other X terminal emulator ) and has auto-detect zmodem download, mouse aware dialing directory and transfer protocol selection. NOTE: Be sure and get the source for zmodem, rzsz9202.tar.Z, and patch with Xrz3D.tar.Z (at sunsite.unc.edu: pub/Linux/X11/utils) for a really nice graphical download status display. FTP: sipb.mit.edu: pub/seyon - December 27 Michael Johnson announced improvements to his /proc based ps and some new programs including: free, uptime, and tload. FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/BETA/procps/procps.tar.Z - December 28 Geoffrey S. Knauth posts an announcement for a conference on free software to take place in Moscow on March 19 to 23. Exerpted from Geoffrey's post: The conference is hosted by SUUG, the Society of Unix User Groups (formerly the Soviet Unix Users Group), the Russian Center for Systems Programming, the Russian Chapter of the Free Software Foundation, and the International Center for Scientific and Technical Information. Participant specialists are coming from North America, Europe and Japan. We have just learned that Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, and recipient of the ACM Admiral Grace Hopper Award and MacArthur Fellowship, will attend. The main topics of the Workshop include: - the current state of the GNU project and other FSF projects; - "free" software means information freedom and sharing; - free software portability in Open Systems environments; - user experiences with free software; - free software in education and training; - legal aspects of free software; - relevance of free software to NIS modernization and democracy; - how NIS scientists can contribute to free software. (.. stuff deleted ..) The precise location of the conference will be announced in the coming months. For further information, you may contact any of the following members of the program committee: Name Telephone E-mail ========================== ================= ====================== Moscow Sergei Kuznetsov (Chair) +7 (095) 272-4425 kuz@ivann.delta.msk.su Peter Brusilovski +7 (095) 198-7055 plb@plb.icsti.su Dmitry Volodin +7 (095) 231-2129 dvv@hq.demos.su Boston Geoffrey S. Knauth +1 (617) 891-5555 gsk@marble.com - December 29 Rik Faith re-announced his release of the Gnu (and more) utilities for Linux and also notes: WHY SOME OF THE BINARIES DUMP CORE: All of the recent binaries were linked with gcc 2.2.2d7/jump 4.1, but on a system with libc.so.4.2 installed. In particular, the rcs56A.taz files will dump core *unless* you have libc.so.4.2. On the other hand, if you just recompile the source distribution, it appears that it will work fine on your system with libc.so.4.2. Please report other problems so that I can update the solutions. - December 29 Pat Mackinley sent his ALPHA-4 XT controller drivers to tsx-11.mit.edu and nic.funet.fi. These drivers let you use XT (8 bit) controllers under Linux in conjunction with normal 16 bit AT interface cards. These cards use different IO ports and IRQ's so they will not conflict with AT hardware, thus allowing two more drives to be used (a pretty neat wat to utilize older hardware). FTP: filename not given yet - December 30 H.J. Lu announced the availability of gcc2.3.3 at tsx-11. It requires the libc4.2 library installed to run. FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/gcc233.TZ - December 30 H.J. Lu announced Linux C Library version 4.2. From H.L.'s post: This is the release of the Linux C library 4.2. You have to install the source code of 0.98 pl5 to use it since fd_set is changed and it needs . You don't have to use 0.98 pl 5 kernel. But 0.98 pl 4 kernel is necessary. You also need gcc 2.3.3 or above to use it. Since kernel now has the 387 emulation, we don't need soft math library anymore. I was told this shared image work with older kernel (newer than 0.97 pl4). I have put libnet.a and librpc.a back into libc.a. Please get the latest binutils.TZ from tsx-11.mit.edu if you cannot get your binaries linked with the shared libraries. You can get them from tsx-11.mit.edu under pub/linux/GCC. The file names are image-4.2.TZ, extra-4.2.TZ, gxx-2.3.TZ, inc-4.2.TZ, jump-4.2.TZ and libc-4.2.TZ. - December 30 H.L. Lu has made a new bootable rootdisk for the 0.99pl1 kernel using a lite version of libc.so.4.2 which does not have curses, sun rpc or gdbm. The Image has SCSI, tcp/ip and 387 emulation. FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk/3rootdisk.Z (for 3.5") tsx-11.mit.edu: pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk/5rootdisk.Z (for 5" ) Please forgive me if any announcements have been missed. I missed a few days of mail ( I have no Netnews at my school) and I have lost some older mail... send mail to tree@midget.towson.edu if you would like me to include something in Linux News #10 ....