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Debian - The Distribution from Hell

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Nir Soffer

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Feb 16, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/16/00
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This is amusing me.

Picture the following Scenario:

See Nir want to install mcdl.pl - a nice script which catalogues
collections of CDs. It does it in a neat fashion. It uses a CDDB perl
module and a mySQL module - and it simply combines the two along with a
small programs that figures out the serial number on the CD.

Anyway - I have to install the DBI moduels - right? Unfortunately I
couldn't get perl5 to compile with normal dynamic module loading
capabilities - so I decide on getting a precompiled Debian package. I mean
- that's why I got Debian - right? To save my valuable time?

Enter dselect. I remove an old package and dselect responds by wiping off:

X
xv
dpkg-ftp
netscape
gcc
xpm
xlib
libpng
libjpeg
kernel header files (and all include files somehow)

And a plethora of random crap.

I say - 'What the fuck'? And start off by wildly ftping Debian packages
and reinstalling them all.

I finally manage to get X working again - and install netscape (BTW: How
many fucking packages of netscape _are there_? What's wrong with just
plain old 'netscape'?). I catch up on Slugy. Life seems good. I decide to
get back to what I was doing in the first place. Install perl from scratch
(How many perl packages are there, anyway?) and notice that DBI won't
compile. All include files are missing. I don't feel like fiuring out why
- so I do what every person in his right mind would do - that's right - I
download the DBI Debian package. I also download the mysql Debian package
just for the hell of it.

I install mySQL. 'Can't find libreadlineg2' Fine by me. I download it and
attempt to install it.
'libreadlineg2 conflicts with libreadline2'

Okay - so it does - no biggy - --force-conflict.

Bad idea.
psychodad:~/archives/packages> ldd /bin/bash
libreadline.so.2 => /lib/libreadline.so.2 (0x4000a000)
libncurses.so.3.0 => /lib/libncurses.so.3.0 (0x40035000)
libdl.so.1 => /lib/libdl.so.1 (0x40072000)
libc.so.5 => /lib/libc.so.5 (0x40075000)
libncurses.so.4 => /lib/libncurses.so.4 (0x40133000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40173000)
ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40218000)

Apparently Debian's root shell is dynamically linked...
With libreadline.
So it now segfaults every time I run it.

Ahhm...

Wait a second! I have a root shell open! that oughta fix things up! Run
ftp to... Oh fuck. ftp also depends on libreadline.

Oh good! I have an ftp open on another VT!

Download libreadline2...:
bash-2.01# dpkg --install libreadline2_2.1-12.deb
(Reading database ... 17774 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libreadline2 2.1-2bo7.3 (using
libreadline2_2.1-12.deb) ...dpkg: error processing libreadline2_2.1-12.deb
(--install):
subprocess pre-installation script killed by signal (Segmentation fault)
Errors were encountered while processing:
libreadline2_2.1-12.deb

Yes ladies and gentlemen! dpkg runs sh scripts which run under - you
guessed it - bash! Which is dynamically linked.

Therefore dpkg is dependant on packages that dpkg is supposed to install.

What the fuck?
So now what do I have? I have a complete useless Linux installation until
I figure out where the hell I put my rescue disks and hope to hell that at
least THEY have a statically linked sh - or at least functioning
libraries.

And I blame it all on Debian.

All software sucks. But software which has inter-dependencies sucks a lot
more.

Damn - all packaging tools to hell. Damn them I say!

And for fucks sake people - when you build a Linux distribution - the
LEAST you can do is have a statically linked shell _somewhere_. That's
what statically linked shells are for, remember?


Ahh fuck it. Guess I'll just save all my data on my DOS partition and
reinstall the whole fucking works.

Oh - and downloading the binaries from Slackware did little good for some
odd reason...

It's time to tar -cvf /dosC/tmp/scorpios.tar ~/

Yawn. That and I've got a mindblowing headache... I'm going to take my
temperature now.

Nir.

--
scor...@cs.huji.ac.il -*- Nir Soffer -*- http://www.sc.huji.ac.il/~scorpios/
"Attention all you tube rats, toilet drinks, rabbits, cats and dung flingers!
The exit is that way. Let's clear the cages in an orderly fashion, because
I fashion to stuff them with orderlies!" -- Bunbun - Sluggy.com - 30/Jan/2000

Alexander Viro

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
In article <88eeuq$ee7$1...@news.huji.ac.il>,
Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
[snip]

>Enter dselect. I remove an old package and dselect responds by
[obvious]

>And a plethora of random crap.
<UI>
ncg-trg vf lbhe sevraq. Rfcrpvnyyl jvgu -f.
</UI>

>Apparently Debian's root shell is dynamically linked...

<UI>
fnfu
</UI>

<SelfLART type="read through devfs and keep finding new races">Aiiiieeeee...

--
"You're one of those condescending Unix computer users!"
"Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer" - Dilbert.

Ben Harris

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
In article <88eeuq$ee7$1...@news.huji.ac.il>,
Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>I install mySQL. 'Can't find libreadlineg2' Fine by me. I download it and
>attempt to install it.
>'libreadlineg2 conflicts with libreadline2'
>
>Okay - so it does - no biggy - --force-conflict.

Forcing things:
conflicts [!] Allow installation of conflicting packages

WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your installation.

--force-conflicts says you know what you're doing better than dpkg does.
If it turns out that you were wrong, that's your fault, not dpkg's.

Of course, Debian still sucks in many ways (like dselect getting you into
this state), but don't blame them when you explicitly override dpkg's
sanity-checking.

>Therefore dpkg is dependant on packages that dpkg is supposed to install.

Of course. dpkg --status dpkg, anyone? Upgrading essential packages would
be impossible if it wasn't.

--
Ben Harris
Unix Support, University of Cambridge Computing Service.
If I wanted to speak for the University, I'd be in ucam.comp-serv.announce.

John Burnham

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
"Ben Harris" <bj...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:88gnj2$jvc$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...

> Of course, Debian still sucks in many ways (like dselect getting you
into
> this state), but don't blame them when you explicitly override dpkg's
> sanity-checking.

I got an apology for dselect by it's author at a party once. Debian is
still my package of choice, basically because it's run by a bunch of
geeks with no pretensions.
J.
--
John Burnham
j...@greencathedral.com


Gustaf Erikson

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
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"John Burnham" <j...@greencathedral.com> writes:

> "Ben Harris" <bj...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:88gnj2$jvc$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...

> I got an apology for dselect by it's author at a party once. Debian is
> still my package of choice, basically because it's run by a bunch of
> geeks with no pretensions.
> J.

dselect is good. It acts as a clue filter. Get through dselect and
you're not so cocky anymore.

/g.

--
Gustaf Erikson --- 59*19'N 18*05'E

Kevin Buhr

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> writes:
>
> Enter dselect. I remove an old package and dselect responds by wiping off:
>
> X
> xv
> dpkg-ftp
> netscape
> gcc
> xpm
> xlib
> libpng
> libjpeg
> kernel header files (and all include files somehow)
>
> And a plethora of random crap.

In other words, you figured the software was smarter than you, and you
were wrong. Maybe you left your NT Admin hat on or something.

IIRC, AIKID, when you remove an obsolete, unimportant package (like
say "libc6" or "ldso"), "dselect" will give you a "Dependency and
conflict resolution" screen prefaced by a full page of instructions.
You don't need to read the full page of instructions if you don't
want. All you need to remember is gb glcr "E" (nf va "*E*nz zl urnq
vagb n jnyy orpnhfr gung jnf n fghcvq guvat gb erzbir") naq "D" (nf va
"*D*hvpxyl jnxr zr hc sebz guvf ubeevoyr, ubeevoyr avtugzner").

"dselect" isn't the best package manager on Earth. The best one is
that one that'll do what you want instead of what you tell it to do,
though I can't seem to remember its name just now. (The second best
one is "apt", but someone else has already mentioned it.)

--
Kevin <bu...@stat.wisc.edu>

David Scheidt

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
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Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:

: Bad idea.


: psychodad:~/archives/packages> ldd /bin/bash
: libreadline.so.2 => /lib/libreadline.so.2 (0x4000a000)
: libncurses.so.3.0 => /lib/libncurses.so.3.0 (0x40035000)
: libdl.so.1 => /lib/libdl.so.1 (0x40072000)
: libc.so.5 => /lib/libc.so.5 (0x40075000)
: libncurses.so.4 => /lib/libncurses.so.4 (0x40133000)
: libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40173000)
: ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40218000)

: Apparently Debian's root shell is dynamically linked...
: With libreadline.


: So it now segfaults every time I run it.

Is this where I get to do my evil BWWWAAA laugh?

--
dsch...@enteract.com
I'm sorry, I've quite run out of Wittgenstein ObULs. -- D.M. Procida


John Burnham

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
"Gustaf Erikson" <gus...@home.se> wrote in message
news:ud7pv7...@home.se...

> "John Burnham" <j...@greencathedral.com> writes:
>
> > I got an apology for dselect by it's author at a party once. Debian
is
> > still my package of choice, basically because it's run by a bunch of
> > geeks with no pretensions.
> > J.
>
> dselect is good. It acts as a clue filter. Get through dselect and
> you're not so cocky anymore.
>
Hmmm. I can cope with dselect, but I don't like it. But I prefer it to
these fancy graphic heavy install thingies that mean you need a Pentium
class machine with > 8 Meg of memory to do an install.
Dselect is not user friendly and can get even experienced users to fsck
up. This is not good. It is powerful and fairly functional. This is
good.
However, I don't want to start any form of distribution/install tool
holy war so I will shut up and get back to writing some Perl.

Colin Watson

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
In article <88eeuq$ee7$1...@news.huji.ac.il>,
Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>Enter dselect. I remove an old package and dselect responds by wiping off:
>
>X
>xv
>dpkg-ftp
>netscape
>gcc
>xpm
>xlib
>libpng
>libjpeg
>kernel header files (and all include files somehow)
>
>And a plethora of random crap.
>
>I say - 'What the fuck'? And start off by wildly ftping Debian packages
>and reinstalling them all.

Out of interest, are you using Debian potato, and did you uninstall
something like libc6-bin? In which case you might want to follow the
mailing lists if you're using a not-for-general-lusers branch of the
distribution ...

(That and learning the recovery sequences for dselect, of course.)

>I finally manage to get X working again - and install netscape (BTW: How
>many fucking packages of netscape _are there_? What's wrong with just
>plain old 'netscape'?).

<UI>
ncg-trg vafgnyy anivtngbe
be
ncg-trg vafgnyy pbzzhavpngbe
</UI>

>I install mySQL. 'Can't find libreadlineg2' Fine by me. I download it and
>attempt to install it.
>'libreadlineg2 conflicts with libreadline2'
>
>Okay - so it does - no biggy - --force-conflict.

*sigh*,

--
Colin Watson [cj...@cam.ac.uk]
"It stands for 'Sales and Marketing', you depraved monkeys."
"A rose by any other name, Stef." - http://www.userfriendly.org/

John Burnham

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
"Colin Watson" <cj...@cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:88h89m$6r0$1...@riva.ucam.org...

> Out of interest, are you using Debian potato, and did you uninstall
> something like libc6-bin? In which case you might want to follow the
> mailing lists if you're using a not-for-general-lusers branch of the
> distribution ...

That reminds me of the time where installing the version of perl in the
unstable branch of the Debian distro broke various things. Like
bash.....
J.

Kevin Buhr

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
cj...@cam.ac.uk (Colin Watson) writes:
>
> Out of interest, are you using Debian potato, and did you uninstall
> something like libc6-bin? In which case you might want to follow the
> mailing lists if you're using a not-for-general-lusers branch of the
> distribution ...

It was worse. He was using Debian "hamm" (hence the presence of an
existing "libreadline2"), and he tried to install a Debian "slink" or
"potato" package (hence the need to install "libreadline2g").

For those who wouldn't know Debian from a hole in the ground, "hamm"
and "slink/potato" are based on different major versions of the C
library. Thus, it requires more than a little effort to upgrade a
"hamm" distribution in piecemeal fashion.

But I'll say no more on the matter. I'm getting worried that Mr. da
Silva will tear me a new one if I keep talking Linux.

--
Kevin <bu...@stat.wisc.edu>

Peter da Silva

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
In article <vbaln4j...@mozart.stat.wisc.edu>,

Kevin Buhr <bu...@stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
> But I'll say no more on the matter. I'm getting worried that Mr. da
> Silva will tear me a new one if I keep talking Linux.

I'm very deliberately Not Getting Involved this time around.

Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.

--
In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
`-_-' Ar rug tú barróg ar do mhactíre inniu?
'U`
"I *am* $PHB" -- Skud.

Eric The Read

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Feb 17, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/17/00
to
Gustaf Erikson <gus...@home.se> writes:
> dselect is good. It acts as a clue filter. Get through dselect and
> you're not so cocky anymore.

dselect is a clue filter, but not in the way you think. The clue lies in
realizing that it's totally unnecessary, and you can use <UI DELETED> to
accomplish the same task with a minimum of fuss, and an explicit list of
packages that will be installed, and which will be removed.

That said, the virtual packages that revolve around perl, netscape, and X
are nearly all evil. But I haven't had to use dselect in a dog's age.

-=Eric
--
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart

void

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Feb 18, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/18/00
to
On 17 Feb 2000 16:57:24 -0600, Kevin Buhr <bu...@stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>Typing "make" in a directory of fresh C++ code is just like playing
>Quake. Specifically, it's like the part in Quake where you pick up
>the Super Nailgun and aim it at your face.

Reminds me of a quote from fortune:

C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

--
Ben

220 go.ahead.make.my.day ESMTP Postfix

Robin Lee Powell

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Feb 18, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/18/00
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Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-02.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>And for fucks sake people - when you build a Linux distribution - the
>LEAST you can do is have a statically linked shell _somewhere_. That's
>what statically linked shells are for, remember?

<ui>
Gurer'f n ernfba jul fnfu (juvpu pnzr ba zl 2.1 Qrovna PQf, naq urapr V
fhfcrpg vf n snveyl glcvpny hgvy) vf ebbg'f ybtva furyy ba zl znpuvar.
</ui>

-Robin
--
I'm a UNIX System Administrator for hire.
My Resume: http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/
BTW, I'm male. Honest. Which has nothing to do with me being a
sysadmin, I just want to avoid wannafscks from guys.

Stephan Schulz

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
In article <88j28n$gm5$1...@news.huji.ac.il>,
Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-01.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
>On a side note - I never figured ear infections could _hurt_ that much. I
>have a fever of 38.5 a few days back and now I'm living on 2000mg of
>penicillin a day and ear drops. Ugh. Ear drops suck.

I have had fairly frequent inflammations of the outer ear (due to
having a narrow ear channel, doing _lot's_ of water sports, and biking
to and from lakes/pools/white-water rivers with wet hair and no
hat)[1]. I always got Novicain-based drops, and antibiotics. Things
usually were ok after 3 or 4 days.

Then I discovered the power of Aspirin. If I feel the start of an ear
ache, I take two and sleep it over. Most often it is fine the next
morning.

An inflammation of the middle or inner ear, on the other hand, is a
lot more serious, and should be taken to a specialist as early as
possible.

Stephan

[1] Yes, this is at least semi-luserish...

-------------------------- It can be done! ---------------------------------
Please email me as sch...@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Stephan Schulz)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Felix Deutsch

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
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sch...@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Schulz) writes:
> Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-01.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> >On a side note - I never figured ear infections could _hurt_ that much. I
> >have a fever of 38.5 a few days back and now I'm living on 2000mg of
> >penicillin a day and ear drops. Ugh. Ear drops suck.
>
> I have had fairly frequent inflammations of the outer ear (due to
> having a narrow ear channel, doing _lot's_ of water sports,

Serves you *just* right, you PREVERT!

<g>

Felix, always interested in new applications for bodily orifices

Paul Tomblin

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
>Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
>fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.

What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?


--
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.

'Usenet "belongs" to those who administer the hosts of which it is comprised'
- RFC 1036, draft revision

Paul Tomblin

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In a previous article, Tomi Sarvela <t...@nether.tky.hut.fi> said:
>Well, to be honest, it's more like other way around with rpm. Sometimes you
>just *know* the thing'll work, but rpm won't even consider the possibility
>that it has no idea what I'm trying to achieve. What'll you do then?
>
>Use the --force, Luke.

The only thing I regularly use --nodeps for is to uninstall sendmail after
I've installed postfix. rpm thinks I can't uninstall sendmail because if I
do, nothing will be able to provide an MTA to mutt and fetchmail. That's
actually pretty smart of it, but I'm glad I can override it.

Peter da Silva

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <88sjdt$5l5$1...@allhats.xcski.com>,

Paul Tomblin <ptom...@xcski.com> wrote:
> In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
> >Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
> >fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.

> What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?

What makes you think I'm part of that hokey religion?

Matthew Crosby

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <ud7pv7...@home.se>, Gustaf Erikson <gus...@home.se> wrote:
>"John Burnham" <j...@greencathedral.com> writes:
>
>> "Ben Harris" <bj...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
>> news:88gnj2$jvc$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
>
>> I got an apology for dselect by it's author at a party once. Debian is
>> still my package of choice, basically because it's run by a bunch of
>> geeks with no pretensions.
>> J.
>
>dselect is good. It acts as a clue filter. Get through dselect and
>you're not so cocky anymore.

Ah, kids today. dselect as a clue filter? What happened to the old
faithful trio, sendmail.cf, ed and adb macros?

I knew I'd been SAing too long when I was able to use ed comfortably
without once looking at the manuals

Such a pity these have gone away. I mean, no one needs to rebuild boxes
without term* or whatever anymore, so ed's gone, that sissy m4 stuff has
come in for sendmail, and as for adb, Sun's new mdb is extendable with c
(though doesn't currently support an interpreted language other then
good ol adb; they claim none really can quite do the job, and it's true
that perl, python and tcl are all a little lacking on the ol manipulate
kernel data structure front).

And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.
We come to the point instead where _dselect_ is considered a filter.
What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
This is a serious problem, fellow BOFH's, one we need to think about.


--
Matthew Crosby cro...@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer: It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

Adam J. Thornton

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>,

Matthew Crosby <cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
>or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.
>We come to the point instead where _dselect_ is considered a filter.
>What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
>run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
>This is a serious problem, fellow BOFH's, one we need to think about.

I think I posted a rant about this sort of problem about a year ago. Did
anyone bother to keep it?

One possibility is that netbsd doesn't encourage you to get quite as soft.
Having to make all the device nodes by hand so I could install to the
second IDE controller was comforting in a way, and I edited the XF86Config
manually too (although I'm sure if I'd cared to look, I could have just
built some tool from the ports collection).

Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"My eyes say their prayers to her / Sailors ring her bell / Like a moth
mistakes a light bulb / For the moon and goes to hell." -- Tom Waits

Peter da Silva

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>,
Matthew Crosby <cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
> And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
> or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.

Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

Ben Coleman

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
On 22 Feb 2000 20:36:06 GMT, Peter da Silva wrote:

>Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
>the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

I suppose my brother's SWTPC 6800 was a luxury, then, because instead
of a front panel it came with MIKBUG in ROM?

Ben
--
Ben Coleman NJ8J http://oloryn.home.mindspring.com/
"I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the
same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
Paul Tomblin

Matthew Crosby

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Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <220220000935400149%pe...@insane.deathpunks.net>,

petro <pe...@insane.deathpunks.net> wrote:
>In article <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>, Matthew Crosby
><cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>> What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
>> run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
>
> Anybody know where I can get a copy of Plan 9 cheap? I've always
>wanted to play with it, but the last time I looked it was over $200. A
>little steep for a lark.


----- Transcript of session follows -----
550 <pe...@insane.deathpunks.net>... Host unknown (Name server: insane.dea
thpunks.net: host not found)

???

Anyway, I own a personal "site license" for it, and they are pretty
liberal on what they consider site, so if we just call ourselves "Scary
Devil Research" or something I think I can send you a copy. Send me
mail.

(That assumes you can find hardware that will run it, mind you. The
driver set was never very big to begin with and is state of the art 95
or so. Best bet might be to dig up an old Sparc or something...)

Also, see plan9.bell-labs.com, I think they still have the demo disks
you can download...
See http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/plan9/plan9faq.html for the faq...

Kai Henningsen

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) wrote on 22.02.00 in <88su65$g...@web.nmti.com>:

> In article <88sjdt$5l5$1...@allhats.xcski.com>,
> Paul Tomblin <ptom...@xcski.com> wrote:
> > In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
> > >Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
> > >fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.
>
> > What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?
>
> What makes you think I'm part of that hokey religion?

The fact that here, *nobody* uses rot-13 for bad language?

Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)

Alan J Rosenthal

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
petro <pe...@insane.deathpunks.net> writes:
> Anybody know where I can get a copy of Plan 9 cheap?

Just record it off the television.

Nick Manka

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <88urvm$h...@web.nmti.com>,

pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

> Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
> the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

Bah, you haven't booted up your PDP 11 in years. Go sit in the
corner and mourn the instruction set.

--
Network Samurai http://www.syncronym.org/~nick/

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de>,

Kai Henningsen <kaih=7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) wrote on 22.02.00 in <88su65$g...@web.nmti.com>:
> > In article <88sjdt$5l5$1...@allhats.xcski.com>,
> > Paul Tomblin <ptom...@xcski.com> wrote:
> > > In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
> > > >Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
> > > >fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.

> > > What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?

> > What makes you think I'm part of that hokey religion?

> The fact that here, *nobody* uses rot-13 for bad language?

I do. Proof by example that your statement is inoperative.

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <bybelazvaqfcevatp...@nntp.mindspring.com>,

Ben Coleman <olo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> On 22 Feb 2000 20:36:06 GMT, Peter da Silva wrote:
> >Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
> >the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

> I suppose my brother's SWTPC 6800 was a luxury, then, because instead


> of a front panel it came with MIKBUG in ROM?

ROM monitors were the first steps down the road to Install Wizards. The road
to hell is paved with convenient shortcuts.

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <88v2gh$7...@web.nmti.com>, Nick Manka <ni...@abbnm.com> wrote:
> In article <88urvm$h...@web.nmti.com>,
> pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
> > the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

> Bah, you haven't booted up your PDP 11 in years. Go sit in the


> corner and mourn the instruction set.

This PDP-11? This bloody PDP-11 has more ROM on the disk controller than
any computer has a right to. It's not a real computer, it's just the next
best thing.

Besides, I booted it up 1-1-2000.

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In article <87d7pod...@nigelw.wizardis.com.au>,

Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> wrote:
> pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
> > toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
> > installation.

> How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?

s/burn/weave/ if you really want peopel to respect your chops, man.

Chris Butler

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
[ alt.sysadmin.recovery - 21 Feb 2000 23:57:49 GMT ]
* Paul Tomblin wrote *

>In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
>>Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur nany
>>fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.
>
>What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?

Perhaps there are some parts of sysadminning that require one to fhpx chf
debz gur nany fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry?

I'm just glad I've not come across these areas of sysadminning.

--
Chris
<chr...@sandy.force9.co.uk>

Lionel Lauer

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Kibo informs me that pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) stated that:

>In article <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>,
>Matthew Crosby <cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:

>> And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
>> or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.
>

>Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
>the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.

Damn right.

*Some* of us did many of our first installations with a soldering iron,
*then* got the luxury of using toggle switches & a 'load memory' button.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Lionel Lauer

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Kibo informs me that "Ben Coleman" <olo...@mindspring.com> stated that:

>On 22 Feb 2000 20:36:06 GMT, Peter da Silva wrote:
>

>>Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to toggle in
>>the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real installation.
>

>I suppose my brother's SWTPC 6800 was a luxury, then, because instead
>of a front panel it came with MIKBUG in ROM?

Yep.

(Ah, it's been a long time since I've heard any mention of the old
Sweatpacks...)

Lionel Lauer

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Kibo informs me that Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> stated
that:

>pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>> Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
>> toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
>> installation.
>

>How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?

Trust me on this one - having an EPROM to burn your boot code into
semi-permanantly *is* a luxury, after being used to toggling it into RAM
for the umpteenth time after your app code has scribbled on it yet
again.

Tanuki the Raccoon-dog

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In <87aeksd...@nigelw.wizardis.com.au>, Nigel Williams
<nig...@wizardis.com.au> said

>pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>> Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> wrote:
>> > pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> > > Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
>> > > toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
>> > > installation.
>
>> > How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?
>
>> s/burn/weave/ if you really want peopel to respect your chops, man.
>
>?
>
>The only think I can think of is using web for your bootloader ROM
>source.

Ever heard of wire-wrapping? Either lots of little 1N914 diodes
in a matrix, or, if you're really desperate, lots of little
ferrite cores on a crosswire-matrix...
--
!Raised Tails! -:Tanuki:-
http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/index.htm
"We're not the admins you're looking for"

Stephan Schulz

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In article <p1vitzi...@eede.ericsson.se>,

Felix Deutsch <Felix....@eede.ericsson.se> wrote:
>sch...@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Schulz) writes:
>> Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-01.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>> >
>> >On a side note - I never figured ear infections could _hurt_ that much. I
>> >have a fever of 38.5 a few days back and now I'm living on 2000mg of
>> >penicillin a day and ear drops. Ugh. Ear drops suck.
>>
>> I have had fairly frequent inflammations of the outer ear (due to
>> having a narrow ear channel, doing _lot's_ of water sports,
>
>Serves you *just* right, you PREVERT!
>
>Felix, always interested in new applications for bodily orifices

I see your champagne and I raise you any three entries from the ssb
FAQ.


Now...

If prevert is to pre-version as pervert is to perversion, does that
imply that users of pre-versions (alpha and beta testers, and any
users of MicoShaft products) are all masochists? Makes sense that way.


Stephan

Calle Dybedahl

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
>>>>> "Ingvar" == Ingvar Mattsson <ing...@bofh.se> writes:

> I think that Cousin Padrone had something to say about this.

"No, no. C is a small sharp knife. You can cut down trees with it, and
get it cut down exactly the way you want it, with each shaving shaped
exactly as you wish.

C++ is a small sharp knife with a bolted-on chainsaw and
bearing-mounted laser cannon rotating at one revolution per second
wildly firing every which way. You can cut down trees with it, and get
it cut down exactly the way you want it, with each shaving shaped
exactly as you wish.

You can also fire up the chainsaw and cut down the entire forest at
one go, with all the trees cut down exactly the way you want them and
every shaving shaped exactly as you wish -- provided that you make
sure to point the wildly rotating and firing lasercannon in the right
direction all the time."

-- Padrone, LysKom, article 717443, 11 Sep 1994, translated by me.
--
Calle Dybedahl, Vasav. 82, S-177 52 Jaerfaella,SWEDEN | ca...@lysator.liu.se
Hello? Brain? What do we want for breakfast?

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In article <87aeksd...@nigelw.wizardis.com.au>,

Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> wrote:
> pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> wrote:
> > > pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > > > Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
> > > > toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
> > > > installation.

> > > How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?

> > s/burn/weave/ if you really want people to respect your chops, man.

> ?

Hardwired read-only memory planes. Like core with hard wire links instead
of cores. You could also s/burn/cut/ for diode ROMs. PROMS (EEROMS, UVEPROMS,
etc) are for wimps.

Mike Andrews

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:

: *Some* of us did many of our first installations with a soldering iron,


: *then* got the luxury of using toggle switches & a 'load memory' button.

On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.

Then came the CDC 3600 and 3800, which had hardwired boot code, and
I was in Heaven.

Kids nowadays don't nkow how good they have it.

--
The Internet is totally out of control, impossible to map accurately, and
being used far beyond its original intentions. So far, so good.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal May 1993

Richard Gadsden

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In article <2000Feb22.1...@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu>,

BBC B BASIC programs through teletext. I didn't need reminding.

--
Richard Gadsden
"[T]he secret to high uptimes is no one to use the network, no
one to manage the network and no one to maintain the network"
Chris Hacking, the Scary Devil Monastery

Ben Coleman

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
On Wed, 23 Feb 2000 17:42:23 +1100, Lionel Lauer wrote:

>(Ah, it's been a long time since I've heard any mention of the old
>Sweatpacks...)

He still has it, although it's been modified to run a 6809 instead of a
6800. I'm not sure how long it's been since he last fired it up.

Alexander Viro

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
In article <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>,
Matthew Crosby <cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>Ah, kids today. dselect as a clue filter? What happened to the old
>faithful trio, sendmail.cf, ed and adb macros?
>
>I knew I'd been SAing too long when I was able to use ed comfortably
>without once looking at the manuals
>
>Such a pity these have gone away. I mean, no one needs to rebuild boxes
>without term* or whatever anymore, so ed's gone, that sissy m4 stuff has
>come in for sendmail, and as for adb, Sun's new mdb is extendable with c
>(though doesn't currently support an interpreted language other then
>good ol adb; they claim none really can quite do the job, and it's true
>that perl, python and tcl are all a little lacking on the ol manipulate
>kernel data structure front).
>
>And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
>or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.
>We come to the point instead where _dselect_ is considered a filter.
>What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
>run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
>This is a serious problem, fellow BOFH's, one we need to think about.

[Warning: the following is true story and if the stuff below will ever
become UI for you - accept my condolence. It _is_ scary, so think before
reading further]

Give them what I got yesterday. As in, box that got
a) Linux kernel running.
b) init and bash running.
c) serial and floppy - built as modules. And not loaded.
d) no sash.
e) no ethernet.
f) bloody large number-crunching that Should Not Be Aborted(tm).
g) libc and ld-linux.so - unlinked (self-LART by owner).
Now, I could tell the guy to piss off, but... WTF? He had decent beer and
was properly scared. Oh, well... So we have no exec() for anything dynamically
linked. And we have no chance to access any external stuff - insmod is linked
dynamically, so no insmod floppy for you. Shutting the system down was not an
option due to (f) (aside of dealing with fsck later - umount(8) is dynamically
linked too). Now, I knew that both /lib/libc.so-2.1.2 and
/lib/ld-linux.so-2.1.2 were still alive - mmaped by init, for one. And
/proc/1/maps would even contain their inumbers. So the plan of attack was
to create a file in root and then cannibalize the entry (change inumber in
the directory). Alas - not enough. In-core inode got zero i_nlink and
if I would just create a link by hands it would not become positive. I.e.
still remove-upon-close. But. But if we will manage to call link() on the
hand-made link we will get i_nlink raised to 1 - iget() will find the same
in-core inode, so we are OK. We'll have to revert the phony link to avoid
PO'd fsck, but that's not a problem...
So there we go: assuming that we got static ln
echo >foo
ln foo bar
flip inumber in foo entry to point to libc
ln foo /lib/libc.so-2.1.2
flip inumber.......................... bar
repeat for ld-linux.so
rm foo bar
begin recovering other damage (self-LART was a bit larger).
But... we don't have this flip stuff and we don't have (aaarrgh) static
ln. Oh, shit... OK, but all we really need is a couple of syscalls, right?
There we go:
eax=__NR_link;
ebx=s1;
ecx=s2;
int 0x80;
eax=__NR_exit;
ebx=0;
int 0x80;
s1: "foo"
s2: "bar"
The next step was getting the syscall numbers. grep? We don't need no stinkin'
grep.
# while read i; do case $i in *__NR_link*) echo $i;; esac;
done </usr/include/asm/unistd.h
#define __NR_link 9
# while read i; do case $i in *__NR_exit*) echo $i;; esac;
done </usr/include/asm/unistd.h
#define __NR_exit 1
#define __NR__exit __NR_exit

Now, scratching the head and recalling intel code...
start: b8 09 00 00 00
bb (address of s1)
b9 (address of s2)
cd 80
b8 01 00 00 00
bb 00 00 00 00
cd 80
s1: 66 6f 6f 00
s2: 62 61 72 00

Fine, but... a.out support is compiled... you guessed it, as module and not
currently loaded. So we are in for crufting up an ELF binary. OK, we don't
actually need 100%-correct ELF, just something that will pass for the
exec(). Now, we don't have shell scripts, but . will work. So the next
step was rolling more(1) in shell and reading through the relevant code
(surprisingly small - binfmt_elf.c and two headers). After much swearing
the following abortion was created:
7f 45 4c 46 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
02 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 start______ 34 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 34 00 20 00 01 00 28 00
00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 base_______
base_______ size_______ size_______ 05 00 00 00
00 10 00 00
start:
b8 09 00 00 00 bb start+1d___ b9 start+21___ cd
80 b8 01 00 00 00 bb 00 00 00 00 cd 80 66 6f 6f
00 62 61 72 00
OK, set base to something page-aligned, start=base+54, size=79. There we go:
7f 45 4c 46 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
02 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 54 00 00 80 34 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 34 00 20 00 01 00 28 00
00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80
00 00 00 80 79 00 00 00 79 00 00 00 05 00 00 00
00 10 00 00 b8 09 00 00 00 bb 71 00 00 80 b9 75
00 00 80 cd 80 b8 01 00 00 00 bb 00 00 00 00 cd
80 66 6f 6f 00 62 61 72 00

well, while read l; do for i in `echo $l`; do echo -ne "\\$i"; done; done
made for oct2bin, overwriting /usr/bin/emacs with the output of that gave
us static equivalent of ln foo bar. And it worked. The rest was essentially
the same - the only tricky part was to find the location of directory entry.
Which was done with (lseek, read byte, exit(said_byte)) and shell wrapper
around that. So we had a way to read a block and dump it on the console.
The rest was obvious - start from relevant block in inode table and walk
through the references... Once we got that, it was an easy ride - trick
with inumber flipping brought libc and dynamic linker back and after that
we had 99% of system back into the working state. Amazing how little you
actually need to bring the system back to life...

--
All that blue light from Orthanc at night? That was Saruman, trying to
moderate news.admin.palantir-abuse.sightings.
Mike Andrews in the Monastery

Paul Mc Auley

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Mike Andrews <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote on Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:41:34 GMT:
| Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:

| : *Some* of us did many of our first installations with a soldering iron,
| : *then* got the luxury of using toggle switches & a 'load memory' button.

| On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
| the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
| instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.

| Then came the CDC 3600 and 3800, which had hardwired boot code, and
| I was in Heaven.

| Kids nowadays don't nkow how good they have it.

I'm not sure which disturbs me more, the fact that there are people here
who have been playing this game since a good bit before I was born
(0.772Ms) or the fact that I'm getting dangerously close to the
"Kids nowadays" mindset myself.

<glances down> Ah, _good_ sigmonster.
Paul
--
--- Paul Mc Auley <pmca...@iol.ie>
--
- If it's too loud, you're too old.

Kevin Buhr

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Tanuki the Raccoon-dog <Tanuki@canis-^Hmajor.da^Hemon.co.uk> writes:
>
> Ever heard of wire-wrapping? Either lots of little 1N914 diodes
> in a matrix, or, if you're really desperate, lots of little
> ferrite cores on a crosswire-matrix...

This can't be UI. While I know, more or less, how ferrite core RAM
works, I must profess ignorance as far as ferrite core *ROM* is
concerned. Is the idea that you put cores at intersections where you
want 1-bits and, rather than magnetizing them, just use them to induce
current in a sense wire when current is pulsed appropriately?

Kevin <bu...@stat.wisc.edu>

Kevin Buhr

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
chr...@sandy.force9.co.uk (Chris Butler) writes:
>
> Perhaps there are some parts of sysadminning that require one to fhpx chf
> debz gur nany fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry?
^
Are we to conclude that you rot-13 by hand and hit "d" instead of "s"?
Did you stage the whole thing just to look cool?

--
Kevin <bu...@stat.wisc.edu>

Alan J Rosenthal

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> wrote:
>> How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?
>
>s/burn/weave/ if you really want peopel to respect your chops, man.

And it was a voltage increase in both directions (burning and erasing).

Rodger Donaldson

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
On Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:41:34 GMT, Mike Andrews <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote:

>Kids nowadays don't nkow how good they have it.

If they're (un)lucky, kids get to work for a newspaper with insane
purchasing policies. Then they get to work with wirewrap-era Pagestore
systems and ATEX J11s, and have all the pleasure of 60s and 70s era computing.

One day, I'll recover from the trauma.

--
Rodger Donaldson rod...@diaspora.gen.nz
"Whenever you get mysterious behavior, try the -w switch!!!
Whenever you don't get mysterious behavior, try using -w anyway."

Jasper Janssen

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
ric...@tga.u-net.com (Richard Gadsden) wrote:
>In article <2000Feb22.1...@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu>,
>fl...@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) wrote:

>> Just record it off the television.
>>
>BBC B BASIC programs through teletext. I didn't need reminding.

Same through Radio. Except in BASICODE, needing special interpreters
to become BBC B BASIC, and also capable of becoming C64 BASIC, or
GWBASIC, or...

Aaargh.

Bastard.

Jasper

Lionel

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Word has it that on 23 Feb 2000 17:18:23 -0600, in this august forum,
bu...@stat.wisc.edu (Kevin Buhr) said:

>Tanuki the Raccoon-dog <Tanuki@canis-^Hmajor.da^Hemon.co.uk> writes:
>>
>> Ever heard of wire-wrapping? Either lots of little 1N914 diodes
>> in a matrix, or, if you're really desperate, lots of little
>> ferrite cores on a crosswire-matrix...
>
>This can't be UI. While I know, more or less, how ferrite core RAM
>works, I must profess ignorance as far as ferrite core *ROM* is
>concerned.

That would be because there's no such thing[0].

You read the data from a ferrite core by pulsing one of the loops, while
sensing the pulse from the other loop, the magnitude(?) of which tells
you whether the core had a 1 or a 0 in it. I say 'had', because the read
process erases the existing field, which you then need to re-write as
part of the process.

OTOH, a core memory board is sorta-kinda like ROM, in that you can
remove power & the data doesn't go away[1]

>Is the idea that you put cores at intersections where you
>want 1-bits and, rather than magnetizing them, just use them to induce
>current in a sense wire when current is pulsed appropriately?

I suppose it would be possible to come up with some such arrangement,
but there wouldn't be much point, as a diode matrix will do the job much
better, as well as being cheaper & easier to build. Not to mention the
fact that you can, in fact, reprogram a diode matrix ROM by means of a
pair of side-cutter, a good soldering iron, & a bag of $0.01 diodes.

[0] My $DEITY, what have I done? Issuing a categorical statement of fact
in the Monastry? That's just begging for some bastard to dig up details
of some incredibly obscure device, just to prove me wrong.

[1] CF "Real Programmers", specifically the rant about modern RAM &
offline store vs core memory.

Lionel

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Word has it that on Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:41:34 GMT, in this august forum,
mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) said:

>Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>: *Some* of us did many of our first installations with a soldering iron,
>: *then* got the luxury of using toggle switches & a 'load memory' button.
>
>On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
>the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
>instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm not familiar with this one, would that be a nickname for Burroughs,
by any chance?

>Then came the CDC 3600 and 3800, which had hardwired boot code, and
>I was in Heaven.
>

>Kids nowadays don't nkow how good they have it.

Damn right!

Mike Andrews

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:

:>Is the idea that you put cores at intersections where you


:>want 1-bits and, rather than magnetizing them, just use them to induce
:>current in a sense wire when current is pulsed appropriately?

: I suppose it would be possible to come up with some such arrangement,
: but there wouldn't be much point, as a diode matrix will do the job much
: better, as well as being cheaper & easier to build. Not to mention the
: fact that you can, in fact, reprogram a diode matrix ROM by means of a
: pair of side-cutter, a good soldering iron, & a bag of $0.01 diodes.

: [0] My $DEITY, what have I done? Issuing a categorical statement of fact
: in the Monastry? That's just begging for some bastard to dig up details
: of some incredibly obscure device, just to prove me wrong.

Well, I can conceive of a way to do it, since the core will affect any
pulse you send down the wire, even if the pulse has less energy than is
required to switch the core to the other state. But it would be a real
PITA to build, since you'd have to put cores only where you wanted '1'
bits (or '0' bits, if you wanted to invert the signal). I can see how
it could be a Right Bitch to automate the construction, but it would
be _very_ difficult to get the wrong answer.

Once Upon A Time, CDC had a core stack plant in Seoul, Korea, on the
road south towards Osan; I drove by it in 1969. Semiconductor RAM
didn't come along big-time for another ... what, 5 years? IIRC, the
IBM S/360 series were all ferrite cores, and the jump to silicon RAM
was with the 3031/3032[1]/3033 series and later.

I've seen much more improbable things than ferrite toroid ROM in my career
as electron-pusher.

[1] There (the 3032) was a nightmare. The design goals for all the 303*
series were drawn up in Poughkeepsie, and the 3032 got farmed out to IBM
Boeblingen for implementation, while the 3031 and 3033 stayed in the USA.
The 3032, when it came out, was a 303* machine in name only, with so little
compliance to the design goals that the project director got canned --
or so I heard. The hardware configuration frames on the service console
were totally unlike those of the 3031 and 3033, and the same held true
for most other aspects of the 3032.

Mike Andrews

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:
: Word has it that on Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:41:34 GMT, in this august forum,
: mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) said:

:>Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:
:>
:>: *Some* of us did many of our first installations with a soldering iron,
:>: *then* got the luxury of using toggle switches & a 'load memory' button.
:>
:>On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
:>the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
:>instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^
: I'm not familiar with this one, would that be a nickname for Burroughs,
: by any chance?

Not in the least. The Rice Machine was Rice University's implementation of
the Whirlwind: 54-bit words, a _really_ weird instruction set, Williams-
tube[1] memory, and the very first hardware implementation of dynamic
address translation[2]. It was a very decidedly experimental machine,
with creaky old tape drives with spring-loaded buffer arms; these were
used not only for program I/O, but also for paging when the machine was
in JKI mode[3].

[1] Williams-tube: electrostatic memory implemented in cathode-ray
tubes: light up a spot on the tube with a high-energy beam, and
scan with a low-energy beam to read. Refresh cycles are necessary,
since the charge on the phosphor decays rather quickly. With enough
experience, it is possible to read the contents of memory directly
off the faceplate of the tube. Williams-tube memory replaced the
original mercury delay-line memory, and a good thing, too.

[2] Developed by Professor John K. Iliffe of ?Cambridge, and controlled
by a manual switch on the machine console. This was _NOT_ something
you wanted to change in mid-run. The switch had the extremely
innocuous label "JKI MODE" in DYMO tape, white letters on black.
Very unassuming in appearance for something that became so critically
important to making the world run now, only 35 years later.

[3] If you got here, you must not have read footnote 2. Go back and do it
now, or I'll <clickety-click> Do Things.

--
| "Things can happen to browsers in magical libraries that can
| make having your face pulled off by tentacled monstrosities
+------------+ from the Dungeon Dimensions seem a mere light
mi...@mikea.ath.cx| massage by comparison." -- Pterry

Tanuki the Raccoon-dog

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
In <vba3dqj...@mozart.stat.wisc.edu>, Kevin Buhr
<bu...@stat.wisc.edu> said

>Tanuki the Raccoon-dog <Tanuki@canis-^Hmajor.da^Hemon.co.uk> writes:
>> Ever heard of wire-wrapping? Either lots of little 1N914 diodes
>> in a matrix, or, if you're really desperate, lots of little
>> ferrite cores on a crosswire-matrix...
>
>This can't be UI. While I know, more or less, how ferrite core RAM
>works, I must profess ignorance as far as ferrite core *ROM* is
>concerned. Is the idea that you put cores at intersections where you

>want 1-bits and, rather than magnetizing them, just use them to induce
>current in a sense wire when current is pulsed appropriately?

A ferrite-core-ROM is really the same as a ferrite-core-RAM,
which is best thought of as being like a NVRAM, or alternatively,
think of it as a dynamic RAM with a refresh-interval measured
in months rather than milliseconds.

Jan Ingvoldstad

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
On 22 Feb 2000 23:25:53 GMT, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:

> In article <7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>> The fact that here, *nobody* uses rot-13 for bad language?

> I do. Proof by example that your statement is inoperative.

Not if you're a nobody. ;)

--
ASR: We took both pills.

Chris Butler

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
[ alt.sysadmin.recovery - 23 Feb 2000 17:22:51 -0600 ]
* Kevin Buhr wrote *

>chr...@sandy.force9.co.uk (Chris Butler) writes:
>>
>> Perhaps there are some parts of sysadminning that require one to fhpx chf
>> debz gur nany fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry?
> ^
>Are we to conclude that you rot-13 by hand and hit "d" instead of "s"?

In that particular case, I tried (unsucessfully) to copy from the quoted
text. I blame lack of caffiene, combined with a friend who goes by the
nickname of "Debz".

>Did you stage the whole thing just to look cool?

Not likely -- that's the last thing I'd want to look. Especially in the
SDM.

--
Chris
<chr...@sandy.force9.co.uk>

Peter da Silva

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
In article <_l2t4.10408$nu4.9...@news.flash.net>,

Mike Andrews <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote:
> Well, I can conceive of a way to do it, since the core will affect any
> pulse you send down the wire, even if the pulse has less energy than is
> required to switch the core to the other state. But it would be a real
> PITA to build, since you'd have to put cores only where you wanted '1'
> bits (or '0' bits, if you wanted to invert the signal).

ICBW, but ISTR that's what woven ROM planes did. The idea was to get something
that looked enough like a core memory board but was less volatile... yes,
I know core was pretty nonvol but apparently it wasn't durable enough for
some applications.

BTW, great quote, pity Dr Dobbs has turned into a Windoze rag.

Mike Whitaker

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
In article <230220002028107593%pe...@insane.deathpunks.net>, petro wrote:
>In article <891kot$7...@weyl.math.psu.edu>, Alexander Viro

><vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu> wrote:
>> [Warning: the following is true story and if the stuff below will ever
>> become UI for you - accept my condolence. It _is_ scary, so think before
>> reading further]
>>

Honouring his ^L would have been nice. HTH. HAND

P.S. I agree, mind: my perl one-liner to rescue a system that $SK1PT_K1DD13
has trashed /bin and /sbin on[2] just pales into insignificance.[1]

[1] thank god tcsh, perl and sudo are not in /bin
[2] the user with sudo who managed to get his account hacked has been LARTed.
--
Mike Whitaker Guitarist, filker, Perl and MUSHcode hack
mi...@altrion.org

Mike Andrews

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Peter da Silva <pe...@abbnm.com> wrote:
: In article <_l2t4.10408$nu4.9...@news.flash.net>,

: Mike Andrews <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote:
:> Well, I can conceive of a way to do it, since the core will affect any
:> pulse you send down the wire, even if the pulse has less energy than is
:> required to switch the core to the other state. But it would be a real
:> PITA to build, since you'd have to put cores only where you wanted '1'
:> bits (or '0' bits, if you wanted to invert the signal).

: ICBW, but ISTR that's what woven ROM planes did. The idea was to get something
: that looked enough like a core memory board but was less volatile... yes,
: I know core was pretty nonvol but apparently it wasn't durable enough for
: some applications.

Those damned ferrite cores are just plain brittle. So damn brittle that
they'll crack just for the pleasure of making you replace the whole
fscking core stack. No, there's no way to replace a core plane without
unthreading all the sense wires, and you _DON'T_ want to go there. And
then replacing the core in the plane involves unthreading and rethreading
all the drive wires, and you _DON'T_ want to go _there_, either.

Once upon a time, almost long enough ago, I saw a Field Circus type
spill a 1-quart CocaCola with ice into an operating core stack:
1 Kwords of 48 bits each. I hit the EPO switch and got a cart over
to him, he unbolted the stack, put it on the cart, and covered it
with a tarp, and we took it over to the GIANT ULTRASONIC CLEANER,
which was big enough to do Volkswagen engines.

We ran it through three times, put it back on the tarp, covered it
again (not just to keep the dust off: it was raining hard), and
took it back where it belonged. Damn thing worked! We plugged it
in and ran all the diagnostics, and it worked! As a matter of fact,
it worked better on the "Shmoo" test than it had before we cleaned
it.

--
It shone, pale as bone, as I stood there alone.
And I thought to myself how the moon, that night cast its light
on my hearts true delight, and the reef where her body was strewn
-- Manuel Calavera, "Grim Fandango"

Joe Thompson

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
On 17 Feb 2000 16:22:11 -0700, Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> wrote:
> That said, the virtual packages that revolve around perl, netscape, and X
> are nearly all evil. But I haven't had to use dselect in a dog's age.

What annoys me about the X packages is that they all depend on each other,
but you can't just download one monstrous package (it wouldn't even really
be that big) and install it. You have to either 1) download the big tar-
ball from XFree86.org and install it, which works fine but dpkg will hate
you and there's no way to tell dpkg-db "Yes, I really do have this package
and I don't care about the file list, just assume everything that should
be there is there and FSCKING QUIT WITH THE WARNINGS" except to hand hack
it and even then it still complains about things but at least you can
install stuff, or 2) download two dozen little packages for everything from
xbase to xterm, and forget about installing them one-at-a-time because
everything depends on everything else so you'll have to either --force-
depends or tell the package tool to install them all at once and then
things get *really* fun.

Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson | http://www.orion-com.com/~kensey/
sp...@orion-com.com | PGP key: Finger joe-...@mindspring.com
AFU Axolotl of Scorn | O- He-Who-Grinds-the-Unworthy
"I grabbed what was available, woman!" -- Steve H.

Eric The Read

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) writes:
> 2) download two dozen little packages for everything from
> xbase to xterm, and forget about installing them one-at-a-time because
> everything depends on everything else so you'll have to either --force-
> depends or tell the package tool to install them all at once and then
> things get *really* fun.

This is the approach I recommend; besides, it's not as if it requires any
user intervention, anyway. Just <UI DELETED> and get your self a cup of
coffee. Size of cup depending on your pipe to the 'net, of course.

> Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
> potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
> version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe

Egads, man! I've seen some perverted things done with package managers
in my time, but that one takes the biscuit, jelly and all. Not only
shouldn't you, you shouldn't disturb the dreams of us debian-ized monks
by even suggesting that such a thing is *possible*, yet alone *done*.

I think I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry for a bit. Or maybe do
some QA; that's about as mentally stimulating.

-=Eric
--
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart

Tai

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
While pretending to be roadkill on the InfoBahn, <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> scrawled:

>petro <pe...@insane.deathpunks.net> writes:
>> Anybody know where I can get a copy of Plan 9 cheap?
>
>Just record it off the television.

I still have a copy of it from blockbusters. Really need to
go return it to them. I'll stop procrastinating tomorrow.

-Tai
--
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United
States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.
-- Nobel Prize winner, Glenn T. Seaborg

Joe Thompson

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Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
On 24 Feb 2000 13:59:15 -0700, Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> wrote:
> sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) writes:
> > 2) download two dozen little packages for everything from
> > xbase to xterm, and forget about installing them one-at-a-time because
> > everything depends on everything else so you'll have to either --force-
> > depends or tell the package tool to install them all at once and then
> > things get *really* fun.
>
> This is the approach I recommend; besides, it's not as if it requires any
> user intervention, anyway. Just <UI DELETED> and get your self a cup of
> coffee. Size of cup depending on your pipe to the 'net, of course.

This was before I had experienced the Fun Which is Named Apt.

> > Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
> > potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
> > version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe
>
> Egads, man! I've seen some perverted things done with package managers
> in my time, but that one takes the biscuit, jelly and all. Not only
> shouldn't you, you shouldn't disturb the dreams of us debian-ized monks
> by even suggesting that such a thing is *possible*, yet alone *done*.
>
> I think I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry for a bit.

Four days, Eric. Four days before I asked the stupid question and was told
"yes, a * in /etc/passwd means that account is disabled." The fscking
*root* account was DISABLED during a dist-upgrade! What piece of dreck
thought *that* was a good idea?!? Granted I should have seen it sooner,
but I was a bit freaked out when "LILO: linux single" failed with a shitload
of modules failing to load for hardware I never even heard of. All I could
get to work was "linux init=/bin/bash" and that is *not* fun. Once I got
the config files straightened out I discovered that not only is this upgrade
possible, not only will hamm's apt happily do it for you, but it can
actually be made to *work*. Onna 2.0.34 kernel no less.

And you thought you were disturbed before.

Now I need to hurry up and replace in.telnetd on that box with ssh. Really
I just need to kill telnetd and run ssh on that port -- our firewall at work
doesn't support outgoing ssh connections. Bah. -- Joe

Eric The Read

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) writes:
> Four days, Eric. Four days before I asked the stupid question and was told
> "yes, a * in /etc/passwd means that account is disabled." The fscking
> *root* account was DISABLED during a dist-upgrade! What piece of dreck
> thought *that* was a good idea?!?

Is this a real question, or did you ever figure it out? FWIW, I've done
dist-upgrade after dist-upgrade, and never seen this happen. I even did
hamm->slink->potato just fine with dist-upgrade (after having suffered
under dselect, I'm thrilled with apt). But then, I did it all in order
(silly me).

> Once I got
> the config files straightened out I discovered that not only is this upgrade
> possible, not only will hamm's apt happily do it for you, but it can
> actually be made to *work*. Onna 2.0.34 kernel no less.

This, actually, doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that you were
able to get in that mess in the first place. But then again, "enough
rope to hang yourself", and all that.

> And you thought you were disturbed before.

Nah, that's just my p-sychiatrist's opinion. :)

> Now I need to hurry up and replace in.telnetd on that box with ssh. Really
> I just need to kill telnetd and run ssh on that port -- our firewall at work
> doesn't support outgoing ssh connections. Bah. -- Joe

That's a thought, actually. I don't usually have my home box online when
I'm at work (only one line right now), so I don't have to telnet in
often.

Tai

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
While pretending to be roadkill on the InfoBahn, <nig...@wizardis.com.au> scrawled:

>pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>
>> Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
>> toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
>> installation.

>
>How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?

My computer boots instantly.[1]

-Tai
[1] $luser proceeds to press the switch on the monitor - bing, off, bing
on...

Joe Thompson

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
On 24 Feb 2000 15:28:23 -0700, Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> wrote:
> sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) writes:
> > Four days, Eric. Four days before I asked the stupid question and was told
> > "yes, a * in /etc/passwd means that account is disabled." The fscking
> > *root* account was DISABLED during a dist-upgrade! What piece of dreck
> > thought *that* was a good idea?!?
>
> Is this a real question, or did you ever figure it out? FWIW, I've done
> dist-upgrade after dist-upgrade, and never seen this happen. I even did
> hamm->slink->potato just fine with dist-upgrade (after having suffered
> under dselect, I'm thrilled with apt). But then, I did it all in order
> (silly me).

It's sort of a real question, as in "now that I know how to fix it the
cause is less important, but if you happen to know I'd love to hear it."
Best suspects are PAM and shadow-suite.

> > Now I need to hurry up and replace in.telnetd on that box with ssh.
> > Really I just need to kill telnetd and run ssh on that port -- our
> > firewall at work doesn't support outgoing ssh connections. Bah. -- Joe
>
> That's a thought, actually. I don't usually have my home box online when
> I'm at work (only one line right now), so I don't have to telnet in
> often.

DSL is such a wonderful thing :)

I actually just got around to doing it and what worked better was running
sshd on port 21 since I don't run an FTP server anyway; when I get home and
can hack from the console I'll do it up right on port 23 in case I ever
*do* want to run an FTP server. Of course in the meantime the ftp client
refuses to run. -- Joe

Brian Kantor

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Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>You read the data from a ferrite core by pulsing one of the loops, while
>sensing the pulse from the other loop, the magnitude(?) of which tells
>you whether the core had a 1 or a 0 in it. I say 'had', because the read
>process erases the existing field, which you then need to re-write as
>part of the process.
>

ITYM "pulse the X and Y matrix wires, and look for a current pulse in
the read wire that is threaded through the cores"...

Don't get me started on half-select currents. Arrrghhh!

Core memory was cool. We've grown up since then.
- Brian

Lionel Lauer

unread,
Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
Kibo informs me that pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) stated that:

>BTW, great quote, pity Dr Dobbs has turned into a Windoze rag.

They still have articles about actual algorithms & other non-Windowsy
things, but yes, it is a pity, it was excellent back in the days.

Lionel Lauer

unread,
Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
Kibo informs me that al...@lspace.org (Alan Bellingham) stated that:

>Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>>Word has it that on Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:41:34 GMT, in this august forum,
>>mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) said:
>>
>>>instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>I'm not familiar with this one, would that be a nickname for Burroughs,
>>by any chance?
>

>Interesting guess, but that'd have been the wrong SF novelist.

It was a word association thing. I thought 'Rice', & of the strings of
associated words that popped up, 'Burroughs' was the only one that
seemed to have any chance of making sense in context. (I've never heard
of Rice University, BTW.)

> It was
>William "Nova Express" Burroughs, inventor of the Steely Dan, who came
>from that family,

I've read some of William S. Burroughs stuff, but it never would have
occurred to me that he had any connection to the company - amazing what
one learns in this froup at times.

> not Edgar "Tarzan" Rice Burroughs.

Jed Davis

unread,
Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
In article <890dph$itc$1...@sunsystem5.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>, Stephan
Schulz <sch...@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE> wrote:

> In article <p1vitzi...@eede.ericsson.se>,
> Felix Deutsch <Felix....@eede.ericsson.se> wrote:
> >sch...@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Schulz) writes:
> >> Nir Soffer <scor...@amos-01.cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >On a side note - I never figured ear infections could _hurt_ that much. I
> >> >have a fever of 38.5 a few days back and now I'm living on 2000mg of
> >> >penicillin a day and ear drops. Ugh. Ear drops suck.
> >>
> >> I have had fairly frequent inflammations of the outer ear (due to
> >> having a narrow ear channel, doing _lot's_ of water sports,
> >
> >Serves you *just* right, you PREVERT!
> >
> >Felix, always interested in new applications for bodily orifices
>

Hmm... the last time I checked, the apostrophe wasn't a bodily orifice.

>
> If prevert is to pre-version as pervert is to perversion, does that
> imply that users of pre-versions (alpha and beta testers, and any
> users of MicoShaft products) are all masochists? Makes sense that way.
>
What about users of pre-versions running on an OS with poorly protected
memory and cooperative multitasking?

Now _that's_ masochistic.

--Jed, possibly forseeing a software masochism DSW

--
MESSAGE OF THE DAY: Too often, we lose sight of life's simple
pleasures. Remember, when someone annoys you it takes 42 muscles in
your face to frown BUT, it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm
and bitch-slap the motherf---er upside the head...

Adam J. Thornton

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Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
In article <mob9bsgab0k1epu1m...@4ax.com>,
Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:

>mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) said:
>>On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
>>the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
>>instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I'm not familiar with this one, would that be a nickname for Burroughs,
>by any chance?

Not hardly.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/

Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"My eyes say their prayers to her / Sailors ring her bell / Like a moth
mistakes a light bulb / For the moon and goes to hell." -- Tom Waits

Adam J. Thornton

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Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
In article <vtgbbs8dfe2rre8ua...@4ax.com>,

Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>It was a word association thing. I thought 'Rice', & of the strings of
>associated words that popped up, 'Burroughs' was the only one that
>seemed to have any chance of making sense in context. (I've never heard
>of Rice University, BTW.)

And, oddly, the B5000 was a tagged machine which owed quite a bit of its
design to the R1, via Bob Barton at Shell, who left shell to head up the
B5000 project. The descriptor addressing in the B5000 is almost identical
to the R1's codeword scheme.

So, in fact, it's an excellent guess.

Abigail

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Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
Uncle Jesse (uncle...@mac.com) wrote on MMCCCLXIX September MCMXCIII in
<URL:news:unclejesse-25...@198.108.83.100>:
++
++ I actually witnessed one of our lusers turn the monitor off and back on
++ to "reset my terminal" (her words). The sad thing is that she has a CS
++ degree but the only way that makes sense is if she slept her way through
++ school.


Having a CS degree has nothing to with it. Stephan Hawkings might do
seemingly stupid things with a telescope as well. Having a CS degree
doesn't say anything about knowing how to operate a piece of hardware.

Abigail
--
The Shogun laughing
near a farmer's cottage. A
spider. A fox crouches.


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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Lionel Lauer

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
Kibo informs me that br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) stated that:

>Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>>
>>You read the data from a ferrite core by pulsing one of the loops, while
>>sensing the pulse from the other loop, the magnitude(?) of which tells
>>you whether the core had a 1 or a 0 in it. I say 'had', because the read
>>process erases the existing field, which you then need to re-write as
>>part of the process.
>>
>
>ITYM "pulse the X and Y matrix wires, and look for a current pulse in
>the read wire that is threaded through the cores"...

Bugger, I wasn't aware of those details. In my defence, I've never done
any design work involving core[0], so all my theoretical knowledge on
core is second-hand.

>
>Don't get me started on half-select currents. Arrrghhh!
>
>Core memory was cool. We've grown up since then.
> - Brian

[0] OTOH, I used to own a surplus core memory boad that I kept for
decorative & boggling purposes.

Scott E. Post

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
In article <230220002028107593%pe...@insane.deathpunks.net>,

petro <pe...@insane.deathpunks.net> wrote:
>In article <891kot$7...@weyl.math.psu.edu>, Alexander Viro
><vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> <snip 3 pages followed by this followup:>
>
> My ghod man.
>
> I sit...Amazed. Truely the work of an artist.
>

I sit...Amazed. Someone in the monestary who can't trim posts.

--
Scott "note Followup-To" Post sep...@home.com http://members.home.net/sepost

Colin Watson

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
In article <slrn8bb2jf...@crowley.orion-com.com>,

Joe Thompson <sp...@orion-com.com> wrote:
>On 17 Feb 2000 16:22:11 -0700, Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> wrote:
>> That said, the virtual packages that revolve around perl, netscape, and X
>> are nearly all evil. But I haven't had to use dselect in a dog's age.
>
>What annoys me about the X packages is that they all depend on each other,
>but you can't just download one monstrous package (it wouldn't even really
>be that big) and install it. You have to either 1) download the big tar-
>ball from XFree86.org and install it, which works fine but dpkg will hate
>you and there's no way to tell dpkg-db "Yes, I really do have this package
>and I don't care about the file list, just assume everything that should
>be there is there and FSCKING QUIT WITH THE WARNINGS"

Every Debian install should have a big sign sellotaped to the front
saying <UI> "rdhvif vf lbhe sevraq" </UI>.

>except to hand hack it

... or is that what you meant?

>Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
>potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
>version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me.

*shudder*

I wish apt would fscking *downgrade* as well as upgrade, mind. It
sometimes has the nasty feel of a one-way street where you're not sure
if there's a cliff at the far end.

--
Colin Watson [cj...@cam.ac.uk]
"When Irish eyes are smiling, watch your step."

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) wrote on 24.02.00 in <DWet4.11428$nu4.1...@news.flash.net>:

> Those damned ferrite cores are just plain brittle. So damn brittle that
> they'll crack just for the pleasure of making you replace the whole
> fscking core stack. No, there's no way to replace a core plane without
> unthreading all the sense wires, and you _DON'T_ want to go there. And
> then replacing the core in the plane involves unthreading and rethreading
> all the drive wires, and you _DON'T_ want to go _there_, either.

If we were still using them these days, I'd imagine people would
experiment with plastic coating to stabilize the things.

Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 24.02.00 in <slrn8bb7u4...@crowley.orion-com.com>:

> Now I need to hurry up and replace in.telnetd on that box with ssh. Really
> I just need to kill telnetd and run ssh on that port -- our firewall at work
> doesn't support outgoing ssh connections. Bah. -- Joe

BTW, you do now about telnet-over-ssl, yes?

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
matt+...@netizen.com.au (Matt McLeod) wrote on 26.02.00 in <slrn8bfmv9.o0...@enzo.netizen.com.au>:

> Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril

> Thankyou.
>
> I'd been trying to figure out just what it was about Debian
> and Redhat which gives me the willies. $UNIX_OF_CHOICE may
> suck in many ways, but at least it's not too difficult to
> back out of an upgrade when necessary.

You can always downgrade with dpkg. (But look what apt-get -f install says
afterwards, just in case dpkg did get a dependency wrong - it sometimes
does on downgrades.)

And remember that downgrades are much less tested.

Then again, you can always look inside a package manually if you want to,
before installing it. ar+tar+gzip is all you need in case dpkg, for some
reason or other, won't do it for you.

Not like a certain other package manager which has proprietary gunk around
its data.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) wrote on 22.02.00 in <88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>:

> Ah, kids today. dselect as a clue filter? What happened to the old
> faithful trio, sendmail.cf, ed and adb macros?

Time went by.

sendmail.cf - yep, written one from scratch when all I could lay my hands
on contained serious breakage.
Never touched sendmail afterwards, but my .cf did exactly
what I wanted it to do.
ed - used similar programs on other OSes, never liked 'em.
adb - no real usage. Then again, I'm no friend of debugger macros
anyway. I usually don't spend enough time inside a debugger
for it to be worth the time. printf debugging is often
better anyway. Especially *nix debuggers are mostly good for
getting a traceback on a segfault.

> Such a pity these have gone away. I mean, no one needs to rebuild boxes
> without term* or whatever anymore, so ed's gone, that sissy m4 stuff has
> come in for sendmail,

This is the place where I shake my head and say, "Son, *sendmail* is gone,
and has been for a long, long time. And good riddance.". Yes, I know it's
still used by 3/4 of Internet mail hosts; Windows is also used by a large
percentage of desktop users. So?

A friend just got hit by some spammer, which (a spammer isn't a who) used
her address - or rather, some invented user at her site - as envelope
sender. Most of the dreck are bounces from open relays. *All* of those
I've looked at have been sendmail installs - fairly modern ones, too.

Sendmail truely is the Windows of MTAs.

> And now one doesn't need to go through setting up X at the config level,
> or downloading all 40 disks of SLS, or even building your own kernels.

Hmm. I admit to one machine under my control running a stock kernel that I
know of, and one where I don't know. Of <counts /> 9 I think, all
different. (One does smail, two or three do ssmtp, the rest do exim.)

> We come to the point instead where _dselect_ is considered a filter.

Boggles me, too. After all, not only does it have an online help, it
*always* says how to get there on screen, *and* always shows it when you
enter a new mode - well, at least in the [S]elect part, which really is
the only one that needs it. I mean, how clue resistant can you get?

Then again, I have seen posts where people claim to like it.

> What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
> run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
> This is a serious problem, fellow BOFH's, one we need to think about.

The real problem here, I think, is non-genetic bogon inheritance. That is,
unless you can think of a way where the few clued raise all the world's
kids far away from all the lusers, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
long...@newsguy.com (Lionel Lauer) wrote on 23.02.00 in <3au6bskksg4u4luv7...@4ax.com>:

> Kibo informs me that Nigel Williams <nig...@wizardis.com.au> stated
> that:
>


> >pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> >
> >> Bloody kids. If it hasn't got a front panel and you don't have to
> >> toggle in the bootstrap by hand you haven't experienced a real
> >> installation.
> >
> >How about "Didn't have a front panel, had to burn our own ROMs"?
>

> Trust me on this one - having an EPROM to burn your boot code into
> semi-permanantly *is* a luxury, after being used to toggling it into RAM
> for the umpteenth time after your app code has scribbled on it yet
> again.

Also after being used to PROMs instead, I'd suspect.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
pmca...@iol.ie (Paul Mc Auley) wrote on 23.02.00 in <8sc198.vm...@news.iol.ie>:

> <glances down> Ah, _good_ sigmonster.

> - If it's too loud, you're too old.

Hmm. I musta' been to old from birth, then. I never was a fan of loud
stuff. I was always upset that the radio hadn't more control at the lower
end of the loudness scale - either it was off, or it was too loud.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) wrote on 23.02.00 in <891kot$7...@weyl.math.psu.edu>:

> [Warning: the following is true story and if the stuff below will ever
> become UI for you - accept my condolence. It _is_ scary, so think before
> reading further]

[ snip truely amazing Linux hack ]

Now try that with a kernel and processor you haven't been hacking on for a
long time.

[ thinks back to a discussion recently where I work out how to manually
install a W2K boot loader (because it can boot off FAT32) on a system. Not
all that difficult, *if* you happen to know how the boot process works in
general, what a FAT boot sector looks like, and so on ... but seeing
technical people's eyes glaze anyway. Oh, and you want to make a small
batch file for doing that with DOS debug.exe, PFY. [more glazing] Hey,
it's not really all that difficult! ]

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) wrote on 22.02.00 in <88v5u1$o...@web.nmti.com>:

> In article <7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> Kai Henningsen <kaih=7ZMP6...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> > pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) wrote on 22.02.00 in
> > > <88su65$g...@web.nmti.com>: In article <88sjdt$5l5$1...@allhats.xcski.com>,
> > > Paul Tomblin <ptom...@xcski.com> wrote:
> > > > In a previous article, pe...@abbnm.com (Peter da Silva) said:
> > > > >Right now I'm dealing with the ways in which C++ fhpxf chf sebz gur
> > > > >nany fberf bs n yrcebhf pnzry.
>
> > > > What part of that sentence did you consider UI that needed rot-13ing?
>
> > > What makes you think I'm part of that hokey religion?
>
> > The fact that here, *nobody* uses rot-13 for bad language?
>
> I do. Proof by example that your statement is inoperative.

Hmmm ... I could think of other ways of interpreting that result.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 24.02.00 in <slrn8bb2jf...@crowley.orion-com.com>:

> Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
> potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm

> version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe

Hmm. There's a reason I always start serious upgrades by upgrading the
package tools first.

Robin Munn

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Feb 27, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/27/00
to
On 26 Feb 2000 19:26:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen

<kaih=7Zbcd...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>cro...@nagina.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) wrote on 22.02.00 in
><88udvb$8u4$1...@peabody.colorado.edu>:
>> What can we do to stop today's kids getting soft? Require them all to
>> run Plan 9? Program in Intercal?
>> This is a serious problem, fellow BOFH's, one we need to think about.
>
>The real problem here, I think, is non-genetic bogon inheritance. That is,
>unless you can think of a way where the few clued raise all the world's
>kids far away from all the lusers, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do.

<delurk>

You are Plato, and I claim my copy of _The Republic_.

Heh, a dual Comp. Sci. / Philosophy major actually comes in handy
sometimes, who would have thought it?

P.S. Hopefully, you won't be hearing from me very much. I'm at a small
school (about 2000 undergrads) and I've got very few real lusers, plus
our boss is definitely non-PH, so I've rarely been in need of recovery.
(I'm one of the student techs on the ResNet staff). I admit I'm a bit
worried, though; I'll be entering the "Real World" for the first time
this summer, doing an internship in either sysadminning or development.
Ah well, we'll see how it goes...

</delurk>

--
Robin Munn
rm...@pobox.com

Joe Zeff

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Feb 27, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/27/00
to
There's a scandalous rumor that sch...@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE
(Stephan Schulz) wrote:

>An inflammation of the middle or inner ear, on the other hand, is a
>lot more serious, and should be taken to a specialist as early as
>possible.

I had one of those back in '94. The semi-circular canals were
affected, giving me weird balance problems. I'd be walking straight
when my balance would take a sudden right-turn. Weird. It probably
explains why I didn't try to get out of the beanbag chair I was
sitting in when the Northridge quake hit.

--
Joe Zeff
The Guy With the Sideburns
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Burger" -- Ronald McDonald
http://www.lasfs.org http://home.earthlink.net/~sidebrnz

Chris Johnson

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Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
_In_ line with the general, if not specific, theme of this thread:

*ahem*

AAAAAAIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHH!

*pantpantpant*

Nothing Debian could possibly do could ever _approach_ the
from-hellishness of LinuxPPC 1999 Q3. My _god_. After several days of
installs using a spiffy paid-for CD dist (this, after learning and taking
notes on and remembering other from hell difficulties I got from a
downloaded version!), I am forcibly reminded of a Monty Python phrase
which I _always_ think of at times like this: it's about Ken
Something-or-other the amazingly stupid boxer and his stick insects, and
how when one was sick he would stay up all night 'rubbing it with
Germoline and banging its head on the table'.

Well, trying to install LinuxPPC is basically equivalent to banging my
Mac's head on the table, over and over and over. The supplied kernel can
make it through the install maybe 75% of the time without panicking.
That's the RH install- it can't even run its spiffy X-based install at
all! When I say 'install' I of course mean 'install a minimal amount of
stuff, see if it comes up with a totally blank timezone configure box
(which will mean that the install dies horribly with a dead superblock
when you've finished), if you can get anything at all installed and
bootable then go in again and try to load other stuff on, or as much as
you can before the kernel panics again, at which point reboot in single
user mode and fsck in order to be able to boot again at all and see what
you have'...

Which of course is followed by 'mean time between lockups in X about
five minutes, some of which won't even let you force your way into a text
console- which might be just as well as when you _can_ get into a console
login, most of the time it will not recognize the root password, just like
when fsck wigs out and tells you to enter the root password or hit ctrl-D,
and then likewise refuses to recognize the root password. Oh, that's not
counting the times when startx just plain segfaults when you try to run
it...'

Yaaaaaa! DeadRat on a 486 was vastly preferable to this horror. I
_tire_ of banging my Mac's head on the table like that. It's between ten
and seventy times worse than MacOS for rebooting, not counting how
gleefully it trashes its disks in the middle of locking up and requiring
hardware resets. *shudder*

The appalling thing is, I paid money for this, wanting to encourage
them. What the hell was I thinking? I really couldn't say. I still want to
have a Linux to turn to, when some vendor like Aladdin on MacOS does
something really annoying, or when Apple reminds me that they basically
suck just as bad as any other vendor. But it's really pathetic when you
have to flee desperately to MacOS for _stability_. :P however, I think I
can probably boot the Linux console without banging its head on the table!
Thankfully I have the minimal clue required to kill auto-xdm and get
things relatively console-friendly. So, several days of concerted effort
have brung forth a 300Mhz G3 powered teletype. *urg*

Not that I have anything against console- I _like_ console. But _not_
being _forced_ to run console or the whole machine makes like W98 upgrade
over W95 upgrade over WfWG on a packard bell in a thunderstorm without a
powerline conditioner, overclocked. *shudder*

AAAAAAAAA! Okay. Rant over for now. It's just that there's something
peculiarly disturbing about a Linux being _that_ borken despite concerted
unborkification efforts being carried out for days on end. And I'm sure
that there's something just cosmically wrong with having to flee to MacOS
for stability reasons from Linux. *twitch* I wonder how horrifically
non-luserish not to say guru-like I'll have to be to debug this pile 'o
crap? Or whether I can trade it in on LinuxPPC 2000 without repeat without
paying an upgrade price that is tantamount to purchasing scratch tickets?
I mean, 1999 Q3 _so_ impresses me with their ability to get a linux
running for longer than five minutes at a time... *twitch, vibrate*


Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)

Lionel Lauer

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Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
Kibo informs me that ad...@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) stated that:

>In article <mob9bsgab0k1epu1m...@4ax.com>,
>Lionel <longwor...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>>mi...@mikea.ath.cx (Mike Andrews) said:
>>>On target. I knew I'd graduated to the bigtime in 1964 when I found that
>>>the CDC 3200 had keys so that I could type in the boot instructions,
>>>instead of having to toggle-and-load them a la the old Rice Machine.
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>I'm not familiar with this one, would that be a nickname for Burroughs,
>>by any chance?
>
>Not hardly.
>
>http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/

Whoa! Nifty architecture.

Lionel Lauer

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Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
Kibo informs me that al...@lspace.org (Alan Bellingham) stated that:

>Lionel Lauer <long...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>>of PROMs. Mind you, EPROM erasers aren't that cheap though.
>
>Depends. I don't imagine the cardboard of our last one was _that_
>expensive. Heck, even the windowsill worked. Slowly, mind you.

The problem with that technique is that it make for unreliable EPROMs,
as the erasure process works by using the UV energy in the light to
charge up <mumble>s in each bit, & when you program the chip, you are
discharging some of them. If you erase with the wrong light source, it's
highly unlikely that you'll install a full charge, so some of the bits
will be likely to change state over a period of time.

>One fun project I had involved on site commissioning. We had the EPROM
>blower (now, that was a bit more expensive, since it was not standard in
>any way), eraser (a proper one - this was a certain $VBC from the
>Netherlands), and PC (well, it ran an 8088 at the regulation 4.77 MHz.
>In an office.
>
>The machine with the EPROMS in it was in a refinery a mile up a hill.
>
>Iterative debugging with a 2 mile roundtrip walk, and an hour of EPROM
>blowing.
>
>We did have a alternative board that had static RAM on it that could be
>blown instead in about 30 seconds. Shame was, it couldn't actually keep
>its programming for the journey back up the hill.

Pity I wasn't working for that company. It's very easy to design a low
power SRAM board with battery backing that'll store data safely for
weeks. I once designed such a sub-system that had 128KB of RAM & a tiny
NiCad stack (3 Varta button cells) which consumed all of 11uA in standby
mode. I never tried seeing how long it could sustain memory contents in
practice before losing data[0], but in theory it should have been
capable of keeping it safely for several weeks. Seeing as the spec only
called for retention of 2 days, that did the trick nicely.

[0] The longest period we ever left them unpowered for in practice was
for a bit over a week.

Joe Thompson

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Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
On 26 Feb 2000 19:03:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
<kaih=7Zbcd...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 24.02.00 in
> <slrn8bb7u4...@crowley.orion-com.com>:
>
> > Now I need to hurry up and replace in.telnetd on that box with ssh. Really
> > I just need to kill telnetd and run ssh on that port -- our firewall at work
> > doesn't support outgoing ssh connections. Bah. -- Joe
>
> BTW, you do now about telnet-over-ssl, yes?

Sure. But the intersection of our strict firewall and the services I want
to run at home means it's simplest just to run ssh on an odd port. -- Joe

Joe Thompson

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Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
On 26 Feb 2000 19:02:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
<kaih=7Zbcc...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 24.02.00 in
> <slrn8bb2jf...@crowley.orion-com.com>:
>
> > Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
> > potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
> > version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe
>
> Hmm. There's a reason I always start serious upgrades by upgrading the
> package tools first.

apt-hamm was written specially for hamm as it's not possible to use apt
from any future distribution with hamm, and apt didn't exist (as far as I
can find) when hamm was released. Strictly speaking, apt-hamm *is* an
upgrade of the package tools. -- Joe

Kai Henningsen

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 28.02.00 in <slrn8bk14j...@crowley.orion-com.com>:

> On 26 Feb 2000 19:02:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
> <kaih=7Zbcc...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> > sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 24.02.00 in
> > <slrn8bb2jf...@crowley.orion-com.com>:
> >
> > > Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink
> > > and potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the
> > > hamm version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe
> >
> > Hmm. There's a reason I always start serious upgrades by upgrading the
> > package tools first.
>
> apt-hamm was written specially for hamm as it's not possible to use apt
> from any future distribution with hamm, and apt didn't exist (as far as I
> can find) when hamm was released. Strictly speaking, apt-hamm *is* an
> upgrade of the package tools. -- Joe

Ok: s/upgrading/upgrading to the version of the dist I'm trying to install/

In other words, "apt-get -um install apt dpkg debconf libc6" or some such
incantation. If it involves unstable, big jumps, or accidents, might need
to break it down into smaller steps. Looking at the proposed actions
helps. Older apt-get versions may recognize fewer switches. Void where
prohibited.

Jed Davis

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
In article <86n1osp...@tezcatlipoca.algonet.se>, Calle Dybedahl
<ca...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:

> >>>>> "Ingvar" == Ingvar Mattsson <ing...@bofh.se> writes:
>
> > I think that Cousin Padrone had something to say about this.
>
> "No, no. C is a small sharp knife. You can cut down trees with it, and
> get it cut down exactly the way you want it, with each shaving shaped
> exactly as you wish.
>
> C++ is a small sharp knife with a bolted-on chainsaw and
> bearing-mounted laser cannon rotating at one revolution per second
> wildly firing every which way. You can cut down trees with it, and get
> it cut down exactly the way you want it, with each shaving shaped
> exactly as you wish.
>
> You can also fire up the chainsaw and cut down the entire forest at
> one go, with all the trees cut down exactly the way you want them and
> every shaving shaped exactly as you wish -- provided that you make
> sure to point the wildly rotating and firing lasercannon in the right
> direction all the time."
>
> -- Padrone, LysKom, article 717443, 11 Sep 1994, translated by me.

I'm usually a C++ fan, but I do agree with this. I'm tempted to reduce
the font size and signaturize it, but that's been beaten to death and
subsequently abandoned, so I won't.

--Jed

--
"WARNING - Do not swallow the battery door"
--Motorola minipager Instruction Manual.

Joe Thompson

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
On 28 Feb 2000 09:01:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
<kaih=7ZhKon$Hw...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
> sp...@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote on 28.02.00 in
> <slrn8bk14j...@crowley.orion-com.com>:

> > apt-hamm was written specially for hamm as it's not possible to use apt
> > from any future distribution with hamm, and apt didn't exist (as far as I
> > can find) when hamm was released. Strictly speaking, apt-hamm *is* an
> > upgrade of the package tools. -- Joe
>
> Ok: s/upgrading/upgrading to the version of the dist I'm trying to install/
>
> In other words, "apt-get -um install apt dpkg debconf libc6" or some such
> incantation.

But you can't do that without apt-hamm. In retrospect it would have been
smarter to apt up to slink and then to potato, but there's really no over-
whelming reason a big jump like that *shouldn't* work, except I've been
told that hamm is something many of the Debian maintainers wish had never
been released.

hamm is a serious breakpoint for Debian. It's harder to get from hamm to
slink than it is to get from slink to potato (my understanding is that the
versions of libc involved and the dependencies thereon have a lot to do
with this). -- Joe

Chris Johnson

unread,
Feb 29, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/29/00
to
Postlude to Rant:

Isn't it interesting how bad high memory might not upset MacOS a bit
(but upset programs unlucky enough to set foot there), but causes Linux to
scream and die? Just what I needed, more hardware expenses just when I'm
getting billed >150$ more for an ADAT repair than I was led to expect.

No fear, linuxPPC does still manage to find ways to be from hell
anyhow, but the former rant was clearly colored by the bad RAM. True
from-hell value should be roughly equal to the previous rant but with the
W98/W95/WFWG packard bell _not_ overclocked. Correction made in the
interests of fairness and before anyone else can say 'Do you suppose your
RAM or CD-Rom are beginning to crumble?' which is, alas, all too true for
both.

At least I get to have the machine speed up- running 3 64M DIMMs is
apparently _not_ a way to get interleaved RAM. Removing a dying one and
going with _2_ dimms apparently _is_. *zinggg* stuff is visibly faster.
Now for another nice matched pair, to go to 256M >:)

Random interjection from hell: my god, what was in the WindowMaker
people's heads when they redesigned the config program? It used to be
small, tidy, sensibly organised, with a cute scrolling display of 'topics'
and a rather pleasing menu editor for a linux window manager. I will
obviously have to hunt down whatever the old program was I used to use on
WM, because wmakerconf, despite a slightly wider range of configuration,
sucks, fails to handle root menu editing anywhere near as well, and smells
like KDE all over. furrfu. Might have to grovel over old disks to find the
older program, assuming it even still applies anymore.

Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)

The Scarlet Manuka

unread,
Feb 29, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/29/00
to
Anthony DeBoer <a...@news.onramp.ca> wrote:

> Joe Thompson <sp...@orion-com.com> wrote:
>>Oh, did I mention you should never install hamm, add a bunch of slink and
>>potato packages, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to potato using the hamm
>>version of apt? No? Well you shouldn't. Trust me. -- Joe

> Were they on a food theme there? And what's a slink, and are they
> good eatin'?

Read "Dragon's Egg".

And yes, they are good eating, if you are a cheela. However I do not believe
many cheela post to this newsgroup - they would die before they saw any
replies to their postings, after all. Of course if they just wanted to rant
they might not care.

--
The Scarlet Manuka, | Nitpickers' Party motto:
Pratchett Quoter At Large, | "He who guards his lips guards his
First Prophet of Bonni, is: | soul, but he who speaks rashly will
sa...@maths.uwa.edu.au | come to ruin." -- Proverbs 13:3

Chris Adams

unread,
Feb 29, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/29/00
to
On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 03:21:16 GMT, Chris Johnson <jinx...@sover.net> wrote:
>WM, because wmakerconf, despite a slightly wider range of configuration,
>sucks, fails to handle root menu editing anywhere near as well, and smells
>like KDE all over. furrfu. Might have to grovel over old disks to find the

I no longer think that parsing "wmakerconf" as "wankerconf" was coincidental.


Zebee Johnstone

unread,
Feb 29, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/29/00
to
In alt.sysadmin.recovery on Tue, 29 Feb 2000 06:38:50 GMT

You too?

Then I got sidetracked by wondering what configuration options
were available.

Zebee


--
Zebee Johnstone (ze...@zip.com.au)
Proud holder of aus.motorcycles Poser Permit #1.
"You don't own an Italian motorcycle
- you merely have the privilege of paying its bills."


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