Gparted questions

[vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com]

Is it advisable to refromat the entire hard drive?

Since no OS works any more, may I use GParted?

How do you put a partition inside a partition?

WHat are the recommended partition sizes? For a 500GB HD, I want a 650MB pure
DOS partition, then WIn XP (100GB?) then QUantian
(Knoppix, Debian, somewhat old/legacy)
(Ext4, Swap, data partitons???)

Can the shared DATA partition be inside the extended partiton holding Unix
and SWAP? Win3 used a swap file, can (should?) I get Win XP to share the SWAP
with Linux?

XP wants chkdsk/reformat of Win7 partiton. Is it complaining about NTFS or MBR?
I thought I reformatted the Win7 partiton already.

--
Vasos Panagiotopoulos panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---

[Rockinghorse Winner]

On 2023-01-31, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com <vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com> wrote:
> Is it advisable to refromat the entire hard drive?
>
> Since no OS works any more, may I use GParted?
>
> How do you put a partition inside a partition?
>
> WHat are the recommended partition sizes? For a 500GB HD, I want a 650MB pure
> DOS partition, then WIn XP (100GB?) then QUantian
> (Knoppix, Debian, somewhat old/legacy)
> (Ext4, Swap, data partitons???)
>
> Can the shared DATA partition be inside the extended partiton holding Unix
> and SWAP? Win3 used a swap file, can (should?) I get Win XP to share the SWAP
> with Linux?
>
> XP wants chkdsk/reformat of Win7 partiton. Is it complaining about NTFS or MBR?
> I thought I reformatted the Win7 partiton already.
>

A great resource is the gentoo handbook:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation Search for the
*Introduction to Block Devices* section, and start reading from there.

--
"Many have sought in vain to tell joyously of the Most Joyous; now at last
it declares Itself to me, now in this misery." -Holderlin

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 1/30/23 16:25, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> Is it advisable to refromat the entire hard drive?

Depends on previous use and it may be too old to bother with.

>
> Since no OS works any more, may I use GParted?

A good distribution will have GPartEd as a component
of a Live DVD/CD.

>
> How do you put a partition inside a partition?

We don't do that anymore in enlightened circles.
We used to do that when Hard Disks were quite small and
the term for that is creating logical partitions.
These days we use Globally Identifiable Partitions
Which are not the old style at all but are all primary
partitions.
We create depending on the computer, an EFI partition
300 MB and then i use 1 gig for boot 50 GB for my / Root to allow
for updates and I use a large /home plus a data and or backup
partition.

>
> WHat are the recommended partition sizes? For a 500GB HD, I want a 650MB pure
> DOS partition, then WIn XP (100GB?) then QUantian
> (Knoppix, Debian, somewhat old/legacy)
> (Ext4, Swap, data partitons???)

I guess you are a student? Or a masochist but it should work with 50 GB
for the Windows XP. I ran it on 20 or 30 GB hard drive which I split
with my first Linux install. You should not install Knoppix as it is
a tool for solving problems but maybe you can give 4 GB and let it boot
from its Iso file? Why use old Debian, if you do not want systemd
download and use Devuan which uses the same repositories as Debian.
Your EFI is in FAT32. Your small DOS partition should be in FAT.
Windows XP in NTFS, SWAP is its own filesystem whatever Linux partition
other than Swap can be ext4. I dunno nuttin about no Quantian.

>
> Can the shared DATA partition be inside the extended partiton holding Unix
> and SWAP? Win3 used a swap file, can (should?) I get Win XP to share the SWAP
> with Linux?

I doubt it.
Shared data should be either FAT32 or NTFS Linux can copy back and
forth to eigher
>
> XP wants chkdsk/reformat of Win7 partition. Is it complaining about NTFS or MBR?
> I thought I reformatted the Win7 partition already.

Windows is a deceitful tool that will turn in your hand
to your disadvantage. Check your BIOS for the ability to use
EFI without a special partition.

Good Luck, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com

bliss - on the ever-faithful Dell Latitude E7450, PCLinuxOS 2022
KDE Plasma 5.26.5 Kernel: 6.1.8-pclos1 (64-bit)
KDE Frameworks 5.102.0 - Qt Version: 5.15.6
Graphics : X11 - Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 5500
15.5 GiB of RAM - CPU 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
Actually 2 real cores and 2 virtual cores.

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

[Marco Moock]

Am 31.01.2023 um 00:25:46 Uhr schrieb
vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com:

> Is it advisable to refromat the entire hard drive?

If you like to change the partitioning, yes.

> How do you put a partition inside a partition?

That is only intended for MBR and logical partitions.

> WHat are the recommended partition sizes? For a 500GB HD, I want a
> 650MB pure DOS partition, then WIn XP (100GB?) then QUantian
> (Knoppix, Debian, somewhat old/legacy)
> (Ext4, Swap, data partitons???)
>
> Can the shared DATA partition be inside the extended partiton holding
> Unix and SWAP?

Yes, if the OS can read it.

> Win3 used a swap file, can (should?) I get Win XP to
> share the SWAP with Linux?

I assume this won't work.

> XP wants chkdsk/reformat of Win7 partiton. Is it complaining about
> NTFS or MBR? I thought I reformatted the Win7 partiton already.

Delete the win 7 partition, then create an NTFS for XP if you really
like to use that dinosaur.

[The Natural Philosopher]

XP runs better and boots faster in a VM. I think my virtualBox XP
install is about 12Gb.

Runs fast enough for everything except real time games. But why would
you use XP for that?


--
"I am inclined to tell the truth and dislike people who lie consistently.
This makes me unfit for the company of people of a Left persuasion, and
all women"

[vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com]

THanks for replies.

I am 61, trying to reconstruct a former setup I still need.
I had done this before ten years ago.

Will XP read a DATA partition under EXTENDED that houses Linux (Knoppix/Quantian)
and SWAP as well? In my former setup I accessed the XP files from Linux.

Quantian is a form (distro) of Knoppix/Debian chock full of apps I need

If I really was a masochist (it shows up on my psych profile 13/15, Obsessive
14/15) I would also set up a DEC TOPS20 partition to emulate what I had in
college. DOn't tempt me.

Thanks again.

[Tauno Voipio]

On 31.1.2023 20.11, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> THanks for replies.
>
> I am 61, trying to reconstruct a former setup I still need.
> I had done this before ten years ago.
>
> Will XP read a DATA partition under EXTENDED that houses Linux (Knoppix/Quantian)
> and SWAP as well? In my former setup I accessed the XP files from Linux.
>
> Quantian is a form (distro) of Knoppix/Debian chock full of apps I need
>
> If I really was a masochist (it shows up on my psych profile 13/15, Obsessive
> 14/15) I would also set up a DEC TOPS20 partition to emulate what I had in
> college. DOn't tempt me.
>
> Thanks again.
>
>

XP is not supported anymore by Microsoft. You may have problems
activating it after installation.

--

-TV

[The Natural Philosopher]

More pirate activation codes than Ive had hot dinners, out there,

--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain

[Marco Moock]

Am 31.01.2023 um 18:11:04 Uhr schrieb
vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com:

> THanks for replies.
>
> I am 61, trying to reconstruct a former setup I still need.
> I had done this before ten years ago.
>
> Will XP read a DATA partition under EXTENDED that houses Linux
> (Knoppix/Quantian) and SWAP as well? In my former setup I accessed
> the XP files from Linux.

IIRC XP can use extended partitions that contain logical partitions
with a file system XP can read. Using a swap partition for Linux
together with XP doesn't work.

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 1/31/23 10:11, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> THanks for replies.
>
> I am 61, trying to reconstruct a former setup I still need.
> I had done this before ten years ago.

I hope it is not nostalgia as too much nostalgia can
be fatal.

>
> Will XP read a DATA partition under EXTENDED that houses Linux (Knoppix/Quantian)
> and SWAP as well? In my former setup I accessed the XP files from Linux.

Not as far as I know. Linux has a flexibility that Windows© eschews.
There were supposed to be additions to Windows© that allowed
it to read in ext3 or ext4. Haven't heard about it lately.
But modern Linux distributions can access the Windows© partitions.

But if you are a glutton for Windows© punishment they Microsoft©
has produced a version of Linux that runs under Windows©. Not under XP
but the later versions. You will have to go to Windows© to read about
that addition to Windows©

>
> Quantian is a form (distro) of Knoppix/Debian chock full of apps I need

Well I haven't seen it lately. Maybe it is time to look around.
By the way Knoppix is up to 9.1 freely distributable but maybe 9.2 has
been released by now. It was released only at a German show with a
magazine promotion. AFAIK it will still install as version of
Debian...

>
> If I really was a masochist (it shows up on my psych profile 13/15, Obsessive
> 14/15) I would also set up a DEC TOPS20 partition to emulate what I had in
> college. DOn't tempt me.
>
> Thanks again.

Oh please don't regress to DEC TOP20 partition.
If you do finding help will be harder.

[26C.Z968]

On 1/30/23 7:25 PM, vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> Is it advisable to refromat the entire hard drive?
>
> Since no OS works any more, may I use GParted?

If nothing works then nothing works - so you may as
well do a total reformat.

> How do you put a partition inside a partition?

You don't REALLY do that.

Go to the "Device" tab, pick "Create a Partition Table".

I would recommend a "GPT" partition.

If you go with the "MSDOS"/MBR style partitioning scheme
then you will have to create an "extended partition" if
you need more than four partitions. With GPT (today's
de-facto standard) you can create lots and lots of
partitions no problem.

If you need UEFI, then your very first partition should
be a FAT-32, 128mb to 512mb in size. Smaller usually
does it.

HOWEVER, if you ARE starting from scratch then just install
a standard linux distro like Debian from a USB stick or DVD.
It will create the UEFI partition and set all the little
status flags correctly. However MANUAL control of new partitions,
like for Debian, will be needed so it won't use up the entire
damned disk. The alt is to do a Deb install and then use a USB
stick with a 'live' linux so you can run gparted on the disk
and SHRINK the Deb partition. You can't gparted on the partition
you're running from.

If you use WINDERS ... well then ... things get uglier. You
can indeed make a "dual boot" drive. Alas Winders thinks it
owns the universe so it has to be installed FIRST and then
you have to SHRINK the Winders partition to make space for
anything else (ControlPanel->Administrative Tools->DiskManagement).
You can also use gparted from a USB stick, gparted-live.
Then you install a Linux in the empty space. GRUB2 will be
installed automatically and you will get a boot menu when
the box starts - Linux or Winders. But WHY would you want
Winders ??????

Note, heavy-duty Winders fix-it utilities will REMOVE Grub2
and re-assert the WinderVerse model on the disk. Bill Gates
does NOT like competition. A more difficult alt is to set
up Linux/Unix/Grub on a completely different drive and
then use the PC's BIOS options to boot THAT disk when you want.

>
> WHat are the recommended partition sizes? For a 500GB HD, I want a 650MB pure
> DOS partition, then WIn XP (100GB?) then QUantian
> (Knoppix, Debian, somewhat old/legacy)
> (Ext4, Swap, data partitons???)
>
> Can the shared DATA partition be inside the extended partiton holding Unix
> and SWAP? Win3 used a swap file, can (should?) I get Win XP to share the SWAP
> with Linux?
>
> XP wants chkdsk/reformat of Win7 partiton. Is it complaining about NTFS or MBR?
> I thought I reformatted the Win7 partiton already.

??? The newer version of Winders rules. If you have Win-11 or Win-10
then IGNORE anything Vista/XP/W2k/etc wants to do. I'd suggest running
them as virtual machines anyhow ... VirtualBox works fine - you can
even run CP/M-86 ... the "other disk" that came with the IBM-PCs.

Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
Nobody there understands how it works anymore - they just practice
patch-n-hope. It's a lost cause. Winders WILL become a Linux/Unix
pretty soon for sheer SURVIVAL reasons.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am not quite clear on what the OP is asking here, and believe you may
have answered the wrong question

>>Will XP read a DATA partition under EXTENDED that houses Linux
>> (Knoppix/Quantian) and SWAP as well?

And the answer to this is, not directly, but it can easily be made to.
Virtualbox will allow you to map a linux disk as a *networked* windows
drive.

I keep no data of any consequence in my Windows VM. Its all under linux.
And indeed on a different machine to the one running Windows in a VM.

At one time I ran SMB on my server and mounted that on windows, but I
susbequently ditched that because I had no native windows or macintosh
machines - I went all linux, and now I mount the server via a mount of a
local drive that is in fact an NFS mount of the server!

Sounds clunky, but works really well. NFS integrates machines seamlessly
in a trusted environment, saturates the link satisfactorily, and as far
as the windows VM knows it might as well be part of the local disk.

IIRC (and its ages since I played with it), Virtual Box takes the user
it is initiated by and runs with those permissions. So there is no
problem in giving access to system folders since you wont have
permission to tamper with anything therein.

I just peeked into my config, and what i had set up - so long ago I had
forgotten - is /home/me as a shared drive in virtual box, so I cant
actually see the host machine root directory at all.

This appears in Virtual box as \\vboxsvr\...

And in fact I think will work even if you disable networking in the Vbox
XP client.


So its all very well thought out and logical. You set up the Vm and
control what access it has to the host machine, and use windows
networking to access the data.

HTH


--
"In our post-modern world, climate science is not powerful because it is
true: it is true because it is powerful."

Lucas Bergkamp

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

> If you use WINDERS ... well then ... things get uglier. You
> can indeed make a "dual boot" drive. Alas Winders thinks it
> owns the universe so it has to be installed FIRST and then
> you have to SHRINK the Winders partition to make space for
> anything else (ControlPanel->Administrative Tools->DiskManagement).

Beware - Windoze creates a Master File Table (MFT) and places it
smack in the middle of its partition. This table is immovable,
so you can shrink the partition by a maximum of 50%. Download a
trial version of PerfectDisk (https://www.raxco.com). It's capable
of moving the MFT after a reboot. The MFT still goes into the
middle of the shrunken partition, so you might have to repeat the
process a few times to shrink the partition down to the size you
want. (The Win7 partition on this laptop was taking up the entire
250GB disk - after a few cycles I got it down to 45GB.)

> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.

More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."

> Nobody there understands how it works anymore - they just practice
> patch-n-hope. It's a lost cause. Winders WILL become a Linux/Unix
> pretty soon for sheer SURVIVAL reasons.

M$ has had to back away a bit from their constant reboots -
I think it was interfering with their surveillance efforts.

A delightful irony is that originally M$ ran their web sites on Apache,
because it took a while before IIS was ready for prime time.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[26C.Z968]

On 2/1/23 1:03 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> If you use WINDERS ... well then ... things get uglier. You
>> can indeed make a "dual boot" drive. Alas Winders thinks it
>> owns the universe so it has to be installed FIRST and then
>> you have to SHRINK the Winders partition to make space for
>> anything else (ControlPanel->Administrative Tools->DiskManagement).
>
> Beware - Windoze creates a Master File Table (MFT) and places it
> smack in the middle of its partition. This table is immovable,
> so you can shrink the partition by a maximum of 50%. Download a
> trial version of PerfectDisk (https://www.raxco.com). It's capable
> of moving the MFT after a reboot. The MFT still goes into the
> middle of the shrunken partition, so you might have to repeat the
> process a few times to shrink the partition down to the size you
> want. (The Win7 partition on this laptop was taking up the entire
> 250GB disk - after a few cycles I got it down to 45GB.)

"PerfectDisk" hmm ??? Interesting.

At least with earlier versions of Winders - XP/Vista/7 and
I *think* 10 - I've had good luck using gparted to shrink
down the Winders main partition. Can't swear about 10 or
11 however.

On the plus, 'disks' are now usually HUGE - so even shrinking
Winders by 50% leaves way way more than you need for any Linux
environment(s). You can also upgrade to a larger 'disk' after
shrinking Winders, making it proportionally smaller just-because.
2-3tb SSDs are now (kinda) affordable too.

I've got a box with a Win-10 part on it - but it's only about
20% of the entire drive. I think I fire up Winders about once
every three months, mostly just for the updates but it's also
good to ensure my Python apps are Win+Lin compatible. Other
langs need to be re-compiled on Win alas. I like CodeBlocks
for 'C' dev and Lazarus for Pascal GUIs. Easy to move across
OS's with those tools.

>> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
>> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
>> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
>> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
>> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
>
> More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
> Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."

Hmm .. I wonder how much DOS is *still* in Win-11 ? How much CP/M
was in DOS for that matter ?

Some ancient stuff will NEVER go away. When Bill Gates was getting
started there were competitions between programmers to code basic
functions (say times/dates etc) in as few bytes as possible and/or
in as few CPU nanoseconds as possible. This made lots and lots of
little utility routines as optimized as ever possible - and they
still live in *everything*. Working with a very limited CPU/mem
environment does encourage 'tight'/efficient coding.

IMHO, "Programming 101" should use naught but Arduino Uno's for
the first half. That'll teach efficient programming - an oft-
forgotten virtue (and it'll bring you $$$ if you get into
embedded/IOT later). And yes, it IS possible to code a TCP
stack on an Uno - there's a library for it and you can add-on
a 10/100 networking shield and do a minimal web page (I've
done it, but it IS really slow). I won't curse todays newbies
with PIC-12x chips with 128 BYTES of RAM, 1kb of flash and
SIX usable i/o pins - I'm not THAT mean :-)

>> Nobody there understands how it works anymore - they just practice
>> patch-n-hope. It's a lost cause. Winders WILL become a Linux/Unix
>> pretty soon for sheer SURVIVAL reasons.
>
> M$ has had to back away a bit from their constant reboots -
> I think it was interfering with their surveillance efforts.

Win-11 is the worlds largest and most expensive piece
of SPYWARE ever.

> A delightful irony is that originally M$ ran their web sites on Apache,
> because it took a while before IIS was ready for prime time.

Shoulda stuck with Apache ....

Dunno WHAT runs all their big new O365 cloud stuff - but I'm
pretty sure those warehouses full of boxes AIN'T running
Win-Server .....

Anyway, Win has become inscrutable, a Gordian knot, something
too complex and self-interactive for anybody, even AI, to really
get a handle on. Reportedly the last MS guy who could hold it
all in his head and knew how tweaking 'X' would affect 'Y'
retired right after they finished Win2k. They HAVE to migrate
in the same direction as Apple - buy their own little BSD and
pretty it up so it still looks/feels mostly like Winders,
but ain't.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

> On 2/1/23 1:03 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
>>> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
>>> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
>>> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
>>> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
>>
>> More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
>> Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."
>
> Hmm .. I wonder how much DOS is *still* in Win-11 ? How much CP/M
> was in DOS for that matter ?

One of my pet peeves goes all the way back to CP/M. The CP/M file
system only stored the size of a file in 128-byte sectors. To make
sure a text file ended in the right place, a hex 1A marker was placed
at the end of the actual text. Since the MS-DOS file system (and its
Windows successors) stores file sizes to the byte, there is not - and
never was - a need for that hex 1A marker. But it lives on to this
day, still causing data lossage. My programs never write it, and
remove it whenever they see it.

> Some ancient stuff will NEVER go away. When Bill Gates was getting
> started there were competitions between programmers to code basic
> functions (say times/dates etc) in as few bytes as possible and/or
> in as few CPU nanoseconds as possible. This made lots and lots of
> little utility routines as optimized as ever possible - and they
> still live in *everything*. Working with a very limited CPU/mem
> environment does encourage 'tight'/efficient coding.

Often at the expense of correctness and reliability.

> Anyway, Win has become inscrutable, a Gordian knot, something
> too complex and self-interactive for anybody, even AI, to really
> get a handle on.

Complexity is a weapon. (The KISS principle is a countermeasure -
which explains why it's so widely hated.)

[26C.Z968]

On 2/1/23 11:01 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/1/23 1:03 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
>>>> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
>>>> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
>>>> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
>>>> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
>>>
>>> More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
>>> Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."
>>
>> Hmm .. I wonder how much DOS is *still* in Win-11 ? How much CP/M
>> was in DOS for that matter ?
>
> One of my pet peeves goes all the way back to CP/M. The CP/M file
> system only stored the size of a file in 128-byte sectors. To make
> sure a text file ended in the right place, a hex 1A marker was placed
> at the end of the actual text. Since the MS-DOS file system (and its
> Windows successors) stores file sizes to the byte, there is not - and
> never was - a need for that hex 1A marker. But it lives on to this
> day, still causing data lossage. My programs never write it, and
> remove it whenever they see it.

I suspect such weirdnesses were carry-overs from older
systems that might have looked at data - esp on tapes -
differently than later data on disks. Having a 'definite'
EOF marker ain't the worst idea even IF the OS stores
length to the byte. There were lots of kinds of storage
media in the old days - tapes, cards, drums, even
mercury-delay lines - and every system or quasi-system
handled it differently.

STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....

>> Some ancient stuff will NEVER go away. When Bill Gates was getting
>> started there were competitions between programmers to code basic
>> functions (say times/dates etc) in as few bytes as possible and/or
>> in as few CPU nanoseconds as possible. This made lots and lots of
>> little utility routines as optimized as ever possible - and they
>> still live in *everything*. Working with a very limited CPU/mem
>> environment does encourage 'tight'/efficient coding.
>
> Often at the expense of correctness and reliability.

Um ... no, not necessarily. Might (probably are) SECURITY
ISSUES these days, but the old code was/is pretty damned
good. Bill Gates often won those 'contests' - he is a very
sharp programmer. Unfortunately he was also a very sharp
business guy without ethical concerns ........

>> Anyway, Win has become inscrutable, a Gordian knot, something
>> too complex and self-interactive for anybody, even AI, to really
>> get a handle on.
>
> Complexity is a weapon. (The KISS principle is a countermeasure -
> which explains why it's so widely hated.)

Yes, complexity CAN be a weapon - and in Win it often seems
to be used that way. However complexity can also be something
of an *accident* - patching, re-patching, re-re-patching for
decades until yer OS is a bowl of spaghetti.

This is why Win MUST migrate to -IX if it is to survive for
much longer, even the 'pros' can't deal anymore. The best
they can do is make the glitches/vulnerabilities look like
YOUR Fault.

Well, there ARE other good systems other than -IX based.
I always liked VMS. Maybe they can buy it and .....

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-02-01 06:30, 26C.Z968 wrote:
>   If you use WINDERS ... well then ... things get uglier. You
>   can indeed make a "dual boot" drive. Alas Winders thinks it
>   owns the universe so it has to be installed FIRST and then
>   you have to SHRINK the Winders partition to make space for
>   anything else (ControlPanel->Administrative Tools->DiskManagement).
>   You can also use gparted from a USB stick, gparted-live.
>   Then you install a Linux in the empty space. GRUB2 will be
>   installed automatically and you will get a boot menu when
>   the box starts - Linux or Winders. But WHY would you want
>   Winders ??????

Years ago I played with Windows 2008 server, and the DVD had both the
server and normal editions. And with that DVD it was very easy to tell
Windows to install to a percent of the disk, because we installed both
versions and Linux later. No resizing needed.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-02-02 05:01, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/1/23 1:03 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
>>>> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
>>>> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
>>>> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
>>>> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
>>>
>>> More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
>>> Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."
>>
>> Hmm .. I wonder how much DOS is *still* in Win-11 ? How much CP/M
>> was in DOS for that matter ?
>
> One of my pet peeves goes all the way back to CP/M. The CP/M file
> system only stored the size of a file in 128-byte sectors. To make
> sure a text file ended in the right place, a hex 1A marker was placed
> at the end of the actual text. Since the MS-DOS file system (and its
> Windows successors) stores file sizes to the byte, there is not - and
> never was - a need for that hex 1A marker. But it lives on to this
> day, still causing data lossage. My programs never write it, and
> remove it whenever they see it.

I made use of it, in MsDOS.

My programs stored data starting first with a descriptive text, then
CR,LF,EOF, and then the actual binary data structures. That way, a file
could be identified using "type somefile.dat".


--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Jim Jackson]

On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....

errrr..... On my linux system Ctrl-D quits, CTtrl-Z puts python in the
background but stopped.

[Jim Jackson]

On 2023-02-02, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

> "bg" lets it run again in the background.

My point was that Ctrl-Z does NOT necessarily QUIT python as was
claimed.

(You can of course alter your tty settings to switch things around as
you wish.)

[Lew Pitcher]

Correct...ish

While Linux terminal handling often defaults this way, you can change
both the eof (Ctrl-D) and suspend (Ctrl-Z) terminal handling behaviours
(along with a number of others) using the stty(1) command. Concievably,
you /could/ assign ^Z to the eof handling, and some other control character
to the suspend handling.

FWIW, the OP may be confusing Linux Ctrl-D EOF with MSDOS Ctrl-Z EOF.

HTH
--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

[Charlie Gibbs]

That looks like what happened. However, he wasn't the original poster.
I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.

[Rich]

Consider the credibility of the source of the "Ctrl-Z to quit python"
comment (i.e. 26C.Z968).

[26C.Z968]

I use Deb derivs with bash. If I "python3" then only
Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put
a "quit" command into python eh ?

[26C.Z968]

Only been doing it for 10+ years ... so I can't possibly
know what I'm talking about, right ??? :-)

[26C.Z968]

On 2/2/23 5:48 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-02, Lew Pitcher <lew.p...@digitalfreehold.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 02 Feb 2023 14:28:10 +0000, Jim Jackson wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....
>>>
>>> errrr..... On my linux system Ctrl-D quits, CTtrl-Z puts python in the
>>> background but stopped.
>>
>> Correct...ish
>>
>> While Linux terminal handling often defaults this way, you can change
>> both the eof (Ctrl-D) and suspend (Ctrl-Z) terminal handling behaviours
>> (along with a number of others) using the stty(1) command. Concievably,
>> you /could/ assign ^Z to the eof handling, and some other control character
>> to the suspend handling.
>>
>> FWIW, the OP may be confusing Linux Ctrl-D EOF with MSDOS Ctrl-Z EOF.
>
> That looks like what happened. However, he wasn't the original poster.
> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.

"Cargo cult" ... perhaps an apt description :-) CP/M did it
and so DOS, pretty much a straight-up CP/M rip-off (just
made 'pip' live), copied it without a thought.

OTOH ... there were and still are a lot of systems and file
schemes out there so an "official EOF" char for text files
isn't the worst idea. CP/M isn't quite dead, variants live
on in the embedded sector and you can still buy brand-X
Z80s ... what if I want to bring a DOS file into it and
there's no Ctl-Z ??? I don't remember about Amiga-OS and
BeOS or C64 text files but people DO still use these things
or emulated versions for various reasons.

[26C.Z968]

There ARE certain niceties to Win-Server. It's made for
a "different audience".

I also think - because they aim it at biz/govt - there's
less spyware in there. In govt/medical circles, where
there are LAWS involved, spyware would trash the deal.

OTOH, it cost$ more.

[26C.Z968]

Quite ... and MS (officially) doesn't care anymore. It's ObWare.

Plenty of codes for NT/2K as well ... and they don't even
"activate", just want a valid code.

I still kinda like 2K ... it was the last step before massive
bloat and spyware and greed set in.

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 02/02/2023 22:48, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> That looks like what happened. However, he wasn't the original poster.
> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>
> --

Well not exactly. At that time it provided backward compatibility with
CP/M files.

And having been used it was hard to un-use it.

--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain

[Rich]

26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

We only know what we see you post here, and over the last six or so
months since you started posting here, you've not exactly shown
yourself to be very credible.

[Rich]

They did:

$ rlwrap python3
Python 3.7.2 (default, Feb 4 2020, 00:09:47)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> exit()
$

[Dan Espen]

Based on your posting history...

home> python3
Python 3.11.1 (main, Dec 7 2022, 00:00:00) [GCC 12.2.1 20221121 (Red Hat 12.2.1-4)] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> <== Ctl-z
[1]+ Stopped python3
home> python3
Python 3.11.1 (main, Dec 7 2022, 00:00:00) [GCC 12.2.1 20221121 (Red Hat 12.2.1-4)] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> <== Ctl-d
home>

Without any customizations, all the distros I've seen or heard about use
Ctl-z to put something in the bg (as above). Ctl-D is normal EOF.

Sure you can use Ctl-z to quit python. If you consider putting python
in the background a good quit. A "ps" will show python still running.

--
Dan Espen

[Jim Jackson]

On 2023-02-03, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
> On 2/2/23 9:28 AM, Jim Jackson wrote:
>> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....
>>
>> errrr..... On my linux system Ctrl-D quits, CTtrl-Z puts python in the
>> background but stopped.
>
>
> I use Deb derivs with bash. If I "python3" then only
> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop.

Well Ctl-Z causes the shell to put python3 in the background - I assume
you understand what that is? - and returns to the shell prompt. As has
been said by several people Ctl-D will terminate. I'd expect any
seasoned unix/linux user to have tried the traditional End-of-file
Ctl-D. It works in quite a lot of situations.

> You'd think they'd put
> a "quit" command into python eh ?

I suppose they expect people who start up python at the command line to
know what they are doing, or be able to find out.

I've just googled "linux how to exit from interactive python"

and guess what, right there at the top of the search results...

In Linux or macOS, type Ctrl + D . The interpreter terminates
immediately; pressing Enter is not needed. If all else fails, you can
simply close the interpreter window.

Interacting With Python
https://realpython.com # interacting-with-python

[Carlos E.R.]

cer@Telcontar:~> python3
Python 3.6.15 (default, Sep 23 2021, 15:41:43) [GCC] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

[ctrl][Z]

[1]+ Stopped python3
cer@Telcontar:~> fg
python3


>>>
>>>

[ctrl][D]

cer@Telcontar:~>


cer@Telcontar:~> python3
Python 3.6.15 (default, Sep 23 2021, 15:41:43) [GCC] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> exit
Use exit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit
>>> quit
Use quit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit
>>> quit()
cer@Telcontar:~>


--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Fritz Wuehler]

26C.Z968 <26C.Z...@noaada.net> [2]:
2> If I "python3" then only Ctl-Z seems to make it stop.

No. It's either <Ctrl-D> or `quit()'

$ rlwrap python3
Python 3.5.3 (default, Nov 4 2021, 15:29:10)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
information.

>>> quit
Use quit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit
>>> quit()

$

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2023-02-03, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

> On 2/2/23 5:48 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
>> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
>> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>
> "Cargo cult" ... perhaps an apt description :-) CP/M did it
> and so DOS, pretty much a straight-up CP/M rip-off (just
> made 'pip' live), copied it without a thought.

One thing that MS-DOS didn't inherit, but invented on its own,
was the COPY command's refusal to copy zero-length files.
PIP would do it quite happily.

> OTOH ... there were and still are a lot of systems and file
> schemes out there so an "official EOF" char for text files
> isn't the worst idea.

Everybody does it, so it must be good. Uh-huh.

> CP/M isn't quite dead, variants live
> on in the embedded sector and you can still buy brand-X
> Z80s ... what if I want to bring a DOS file into it and
> there's no Ctl-Z ???

That depends on the protocol. There are all sorts of ways to
determine end of file, including length fields in data blocks.
What if an incoming data stream suffers a line hit and a byte
gets corrupted to hex 1A? Say goodbye to the rest of your data.
BTDTGTS (been there, done that, got the scars)

> I don't remember about Amiga-OS and
> BeOS or C64 text files but people DO still use these things
> or emulated versions for various reasons.

I can't speak for BeOS or C64, but the Amiga file system was
pretty Unixy in that respect.

[pH]

On 2023-02-02, Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/1/23 1:03 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-02-01, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Though insider rumors are that MicroSquish is going down the same,
>>>> sane, path as Apple ... ie converting more and more to a Linux/Unix
>>>> underlying system ... they are disguising this and you won't really
>>>> see anything Linux-ish for quite awhile. Winders is a HORRIBLE OS,
>>>> packed full of 30 years of fix-ups, compromises and vulnerabilities.
>>>
>>> More than 40 years if you include the cruft it inherited from MS-DOS.
>>> Their quality standard is "Sort of works, most of the time."
>>
>> Hmm .. I wonder how much DOS is *still* in Win-11 ? How much CP/M
>> was in DOS for that matter ?
>
> One of my pet peeves goes all the way back to CP/M. The CP/M file
> system only stored the size of a file in 128-byte sectors. To make
> sure a text file ended in the right place, a hex 1A marker was placed
> at the end of the actual text. Since the MS-DOS file system (and its
> Windows successors) stores file sizes to the byte, there is not - and
> never was - a need for that hex 1A marker. But it lives on to this
> day, still causing data lossage. My programs never write it, and
> remove it whenever they see it.
>

Wasn't the rest whole sector filled to its end with 1A's after the last
byte.

Long live CP/M. All hail WordStar. (but the jstar invocation of Joe will h
ave to do).

pH in Aptos

[26C.Z968]

Ctl-D does work too .. btw. I tend to open one Python
interactive session a day so 'D' or 'Z' is just as good.

Otherwise, up yours. Any excuse to play the elitist, eh ?

I've been at this for 45+ years, make good money filling the
interesting unique and diverse niches for thingies and
utilities and, most of all, I've *enjoyed* every damned
minute at it. You could say I've never "worked" a day in
my life. If you can claim the same then great for you ...

[26C.Z968]

I tend to open ONE python interactive terminal a day for
testing itty bitty bits of code, so 'D' or 'Z' are just
as good. 'D' does completely end the session while 'Z'
kinda leaves it in the background but then I shut off
the PC at the end of the day anyhow so it's kinda all
the same.

Still wish P3 had a straight-up "quit" command that acted
like Ctl-D .........

[26C.Z968]

On 2/3/23 8:35 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-03, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/2/23 5:48 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
>>> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
>>> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>>
>> "Cargo cult" ... perhaps an apt description :-) CP/M did it
>> and so DOS, pretty much a straight-up CP/M rip-off (just
>> made 'pip' live), copied it without a thought.
>
> One thing that MS-DOS didn't inherit, but invented on its own,
> was the COPY command's refusal to copy zero-length files.
> PIP would do it quite happily.

And SHOULD !

I often use zero-length files for 'markers' ... the most
obvious use is "touch". If all you really need is the
datetime of the touched file, why put any crap IN it ?

>> OTOH ... there were and still are a lot of systems and file
>> schemes out there so an "official EOF" char for text files
>> isn't the worst idea.
>
> Everybody does it, so it must be good. Uh-huh.

To a point that's actually TRUE. Standardization.

As, as I said, there are LOTS of systems still in use,
by all means go with the "standard". The OS may or may
not need that Ctl-Z, but hey, it's ONE byte .....

I still have a Kaypro-4 and floppies with old but interesting
stuff on them so, hey, I *might* want to port it back and forth
tomorrow ......

>> CP/M isn't quite dead, variants live
>> on in the embedded sector and you can still buy brand-X
>> Z80s ... what if I want to bring a DOS file into it and
>> there's no Ctl-Z ???
>
> That depends on the protocol. There are all sorts of ways to
> determine end of file, including length fields in data blocks.
> What if an incoming data stream suffers a line hit and a byte
> gets corrupted to hex 1A? Say goodbye to the rest of your data.
> BTDTGTS (been there, done that, got the scars)

Yes, there are "all sorts of ways" - but Ctl-Z is a really
really EASY way for text-like files.

>> I don't remember about Amiga-OS and
>> BeOS or C64 text files but people DO still use these things
>> or emulated versions for various reasons.
>
> I can't speak for BeOS or C64, but the Amiga file system was
> pretty Unixy in that respect.

Still have a C64 in The Heap somewhere - oughtta fire
it up sometime. An Apple-II as well ....

Alas I got into Amiga TOO early, the 1000 series.
Actually had to split the price between two credit cards.

There were SO many "Guru Meditations" that I got rid of
the thing almost immediately. Still had some good features
mixed-in with all the OS bugs though. Later AOS was much
more usable apparently and is still much-loved by certain
cliques. Of course half the Amiga was the nifty graphics
chips - way above the usual in an IBM-PC universe - and
while you can emulate them on modern equipment it still
ain't just quite the same. An "Amiga 2K4" with all-
modern junk might actually be interesting. Lots of
ways to "get it done" .....

"Unixy" goes WAY back ... peruse "OS-9" for example - it
often brags about being a GOOD Unix that performs well
with a minimal cpu/mem footprint. Still being sold for
the embedded market (MicroWare) as a NRT OS. Was kinda
popular for the RS "CoCo" computers. Would like to see
somebody expand OS-9 into a modern 64/128 OS. Same goes
for VMS - geared for international biz over crap modems
WAY back ....

[26C.Z968]

On 2/3/23 3:50 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 02/02/2023 22:48, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> That looks like what happened.  However, he wasn't the original poster.
>> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
>> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
>> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>>
>> --
>
> Well not exactly. At that time it provided backward compatibility with
> CP/M files.
>
> And having been used it was hard to un-use it.

Quite correct.

Nothing really WRONG with Ctl-Z either. Enhanced
compatibility/ease across several OS's. Where does
your text file end - just look for a Ctl-Z.

BINARY files ... something else entirely .... bigger
pain in the ass if file sizes weren't mapped down to
the byte.

[Fritz Wuehler]

On 2023-02-04, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

> Still wish P3 had a straight-up "quit" command that acted
> like Ctl-D .........

Both exit() or quit() work. Did you even try?

[Rich]

Indeed it does, but need I remind you of your post that started this
sub-topic:

Message-ID: <RT-dnWHHOeYa2kb-...@earthlink.com>

> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....

Which is yet one more example that lowers your credibility.

> Otherwise, up yours. Any excuse to play the elitist, eh ?

My, such touchness.

> I've been at this for 45+ years, make good money filling the
> interesting unique and diverse niches for thingies and utilities
> and, most of all, I've *enjoyed* every damned minute at it.

Mere assertions as far as any of us are concerned. We've no proof of
any of this. All we have to go on is what you post here, and given
those examples, you've not been terribly credible overall.

[Rich]

> Still wish P3 had a straight-up "quit" command that acted
> like Ctl-D .........

See, yet another "lack of credibility" statement.

Python 3 *has* a "straight-up 'quit' command", you just don't seem to
know anything about it. Note below:

$ rlwrap python3
Python 3.7.2 (default, Feb 4 2020, 00:09:47)

[GCC 4.8.2] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> quit()
$

Note the "quit()" above.

[Rich]

Clearly 26C.Z968 did not, and clearly 26C.Z968 is unaware of them, else
the statement you quoted would never have been made.

And both exit() and quit() have been pointed out to 26C.Z968 by at
least 3-4 posters now, and 26C.Z968 remains ignorant.

[Rich]

Dudete deSpélècz <dud...@never.you.mind.invalid> wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Feb 2023 00:23:21 -0500, 26C.Z968 wrote:
>
>> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put a "quit" command
>> into python eh ?
>

> They did!
>
>>>> quit()
>
> $

You are now the fourth poster to point this fact out.

Shall we lay odds on 26C.Z968 continuing to not pay attention and
continuing to complain that "You'd think they'd put a "quit" command
into python eh ?"

[26C.Z968]

On 2/4/23 2:27 PM, Dudete deSpélècz wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Feb 2023 00:23:21 -0500, 26C.Z968 wrote:
>

>> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put a "quit" command
>> into python eh ?
>

> They did!
>
>>>> quit()
>
> $
>

[26C.Z968]

On 2/4/23 2:27 PM, Dudete deSpélècz wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Feb 2023 00:23:21 -0500, 26C.Z968 wrote:
>

>> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put a "quit" command
>> into python eh ?
>

> They did!
>
>>>> quit()

Yea, it works. Ctl-Z or Ctl-D are quicker though.

[26C.Z968]

No, I'm not paying attention.

No fun :-)

However Ctl-Z or Ctl-D are quicker than
actually typing out "quit()" ...

Oh well, doesn't really matter the way I use
Python interactive - I open one terminal with
P3 every day and use it for little syntax
checks for the main pgm I'm working on. Then
I turn off the PC and go home.

[26C.Z968]

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040316-00/?p=40233

In CP/M, files were stored in “sectors” of 128 bytes each.
If your file was 64 byte long, it was stored in a full sector.
The kicker was that the operating system tracked the size of
the file as the number of sectors. So if your file was not an
exact multiple of 128 bytes in size, you needed some way to
specify where the “real” end-of-file was. That’s where Ctrl+Z
came in. By convention, the unused bytes at the end of the
last sector were padded with Ctrl+Z characters. According
to this convention, if you had a program that read from a
file, it should stop when it reads a Ctrl+Z, since that meant
that it was now reading the padding. To retain compatibility
with CP/M, MS-DOS carried forward the Ctrl+Z convention. That
way, when you transferred your files from your old CP/M machine
to your new PC, they wouldn’t have garbage at the end.

Ctrl+Z hasn’t been needed for years; MS-DOS records file sizes
in bytes rather than sectors. But the convention lingers in
the “COPY” command, for example.

. . .

Short files STILL use up (rather large) sectors. A one byte
file probably uses up 512 to 2048 bytes on the disk depending
on how you set up sectoring at format time. (some os's like
OpenSUSE might ask you if you're expecting lots of small files
or fewer large files). I think 8k sectors are seen more
commonly now - but can be a HUGE waste of space depending.
1k/2k sectors are probably about the best 'compromise' value
for general-use systems these days. Depends on whether you
keep lots of huge movie/pdf/ppt files or lots of little text
files.

Oh ... for an SSD - you MAY do better with 256k/512k sectors
since there's no actual "seeking" like on a magnetic disk.

There's still a lot to be said about CP/M. It was small and
efficient and did most of what you'd ever need to do with
an OS. I know variants are still used in the embedded
universe, and with good reason. Leave out the bits your
app won't need and you can trim it down REALLY small - even
smaller than the most trimmed-down Linux (TinyCore and Taz
seem impressive, but still use MEGAbytes, CP/M would fit
on a single-sided single-density floppy with room to spare
and run in 16-32 kb on-machine). Eight (easy) bits as a
limitation yea, but in embedded that's often more than
enough. DOS was just CP/M but with most of the stuff in
'pip' running live or standalone.

DOS was originally known as "QDOS" - "quick & dirty OS" -
before Gates bought it :-)

[26C.Z968]

Whatever dude. None of us are 101% on every possible app under
every possible use paradigm.

>
>> Otherwise, up yours. Any excuse to play the elitist, eh ?
>
> My, such touchness.

Well ... less than Mr. Natural :-)

>> I've been at this for 45+ years, make good money filling the
>> interesting unique and diverse niches for thingies and utilities
>> and, most of all, I've *enjoyed* every damned minute at it.
>
> Mere assertions as far as any of us are concerned. We've no proof

Again, up yours.

I'll be retiring sometime this year with a nice SS and
pension check. A long, interesting, varied career. Not
YOUR career of course, undoubtably different environs
and challenges, but I'm happy.

NOW I've gotta find stuff to DO after retirement. Was
always kinda interested in robotics .....

[The Natural Philosopher]

The Natural Philosopher if you please. Mr Natural was a completely
different dude.

I remember his famous saying, apparently adapted from an African proverb.

The very definition of Karma.


"He who shits in the road
Will meet flies, on his return".

Heed.

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2023-02-04, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:

> On 2/3/23 8:35 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2023-02-03, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/2/23 5:48 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
>>>> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
>>>> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>>>
>>> "Cargo cult" ... perhaps an apt description :-) CP/M did it
>>> and so DOS, pretty much a straight-up CP/M rip-off (just
>>> made 'pip' live), copied it without a thought.
>>
>> One thing that MS-DOS didn't inherit, but invented on its own,
>> was the COPY command's refusal to copy zero-length files.
>> PIP would do it quite happily.
>
> And SHOULD !
>
> I often use zero-length files for 'markers' ... the most
> obvious use is "touch". If all you really need is the
> datetime of the touched file, why put any crap IN it ?

'zackly.

Another cute use of a zero-length file in CP/M is that if your
program is serially re-usable and the image is still sitting
in memory, running a zero-length file will re-run it.
Hence my creation of a zero-length file called RERUN.COM.

>>> OTOH ... there were and still are a lot of systems and file
>>> schemes out there so an "official EOF" char for text files
>>> isn't the worst idea.
>>
>> Everybody does it, so it must be good. Uh-huh.
>
> To a point that's actually TRUE. Standardization.
>
> As, as I said, there are LOTS of systems still in use,
> by all means go with the "standard". The OS may or may
> not need that Ctl-Z, but hey, it's ONE byte .....

One byte which has caused untold grief over the years.
An early version of MS-DOS (3.0?) contained a bug where
if you re-directed output to append to a file (e.g.
DIR >>foo), it would not overwrite a hex 1A if it was
at the end of the file. Thus any additional data would
be lost. M$ fixed that one pretty quickly.

> I still have a Kaypro-4 and floppies with old but interesting
> stuff on them so, hey, I *might* want to port it back and forth
> tomorrow ......
>
>>> CP/M isn't quite dead, variants live
>>> on in the embedded sector and you can still buy brand-X
>>> Z80s ... what if I want to bring a DOS file into it and
>>> there's no Ctl-Z ???
>>
>> That depends on the protocol. There are all sorts of ways to
>> determine end of file, including length fields in data blocks.
>> What if an incoming data stream suffers a line hit and a byte
>> gets corrupted to hex 1A? Say goodbye to the rest of your data.
>> BTDTGTS (been there, done that, got the scars)
>
> Yes, there are "all sorts of ways" - but Ctl-Z is a really
> really EASY way for text-like files.

And you know what they say about quick-and-dirty fixes:
in the end they're seldom quick, but almost always dirty.
It doesn't take that much more effort to Do The Right Thing.

> Alas I got into Amiga TOO early, the 1000 series.
> Actually had to split the price between two credit cards.

I came into a bit of money in March 1986 and bought a 1000.
(I still have it, complete with Jay Miner's autograph on the case.)

> There were SO many "Guru Meditations" that I got rid of
> the thing almost immediately.

Lack of memory protection was a major weakness. Many of us
learned to avoid software with poor memory management.

> Still had some good features mixed-in with all the
> OS bugs though.

It was still pretty good compared to all the DOS/Win bugs.
And real multitasking was a first.

[26C.Z968]

On 2/5/23 1:11 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-02-04, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/3/23 8:35 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-02-03, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2/2/23 5:48 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I was the first one to mention control-Z (as hex 1a) in the context
>>>>> of a brain-damaged feature which MS-DOS blindly inherited from CP/M.
>>>>> Under CP/M it was needed; under MS-DOS it's just cargo-cult programming.
>>>>
>>>> "Cargo cult" ... perhaps an apt description :-) CP/M did it
>>>> and so DOS, pretty much a straight-up CP/M rip-off (just
>>>> made 'pip' live), copied it without a thought.
>>>
>>> One thing that MS-DOS didn't inherit, but invented on its own,
>>> was the COPY command's refusal to copy zero-length files.
>>> PIP would do it quite happily.
>>
>> And SHOULD !
>>
>> I often use zero-length files for 'markers' ... the most
>> obvious use is "touch". If all you really need is the
>> datetime of the touched file, why put any crap IN it ?
>
> 'zackly.
>
> Another cute use of a zero-length file in CP/M is that if your
> program is serially re-usable and the image is still sitting
> in memory, running a zero-length file will re-run it.
> Hence my creation of a zero-length file called RERUN.COM.

Hey ... I never knew THAT would work ! :-)

>>>> OTOH ... there were and still are a lot of systems and file
>>>> schemes out there so an "official EOF" char for text files
>>>> isn't the worst idea.
>>>
>>> Everybody does it, so it must be good. Uh-huh.
>>
>> To a point that's actually TRUE. Standardization.
>>
>> As, as I said, there are LOTS of systems still in use,
>> by all means go with the "standard". The OS may or may
>> not need that Ctl-Z, but hey, it's ONE byte .....
>
> One byte which has caused untold grief over the years.
> An early version of MS-DOS (3.0?) contained a bug where
> if you re-directed output to append to a file (e.g.
> DIR >>foo), it would not overwrite a hex 1A if it was
> at the end of the file. Thus any additional data would
> be lost. M$ fixed that one pretty quickly.

Bugs everywhere ... at least they fixed it promptly.
These days they'd hide or even try to excuse it .....

Try to map NAS folders to drive letters. They won't let
you reference the IP more than once (ok, twice the first
time if you use the formal name of the server (//serverQ)
and then it's IP). Users REALLY LIKE drive letters, it's
something they can easily remember ... "X" is for, "M"
is for ... but you have to DEFEAT MS by making lots of
alias IP addresses for the server. This has been going on
for a LONG time - no explaining, not even excuses. Not
SURE if it applies if you use a WINDOWS server though
(I'll check that soon, BET they don't limit WinSvr !).

>> I still have a Kaypro-4 and floppies with old but interesting
>> stuff on them so, hey, I *might* want to port it back and forth
>> tomorrow ......
>>
>>>> CP/M isn't quite dead, variants live
>>>> on in the embedded sector and you can still buy brand-X
>>>> Z80s ... what if I want to bring a DOS file into it and
>>>> there's no Ctl-Z ???
>>>
>>> That depends on the protocol. There are all sorts of ways to
>>> determine end of file, including length fields in data blocks.
>>> What if an incoming data stream suffers a line hit and a byte
>>> gets corrupted to hex 1A? Say goodbye to the rest of your data.
>>> BTDTGTS (been there, done that, got the scars)
>>
>> Yes, there are "all sorts of ways" - but Ctl-Z is a really
>> really EASY way for text-like files.
>
> And you know what they say about quick-and-dirty fixes:
> in the end they're seldom quick, but almost always dirty.
> It doesn't take that much more effort to Do The Right Thing.

Ummm ... but REMEMBER THE ERA. "That Much More" meant
MORE code/bytes and in a 16/32/64-kb universe that
really MEANT something important. Ctl-Z was a really
cheap fix. If I'm doing microcontrollers I *will*
take the path that saves even a dozen bytes or so
because there just aren't many bytes to spare.

>> Alas I got into Amiga TOO early, the 1000 series.
>> Actually had to split the price between two credit cards.
>
> I came into a bit of money in March 1986 and bought a 1000.
> (I still have it, complete with Jay Miner's autograph on the case.)
>
>> There were SO many "Guru Meditations" that I got rid of
>> the thing almost immediately.
>
> Lack of memory protection was a major weakness. Many of us
> learned to avoid software with poor memory management.

But you had to know what that software was - and, at the
time, that meant obscure computer mags or BBS's. The more
usual scene was "buy 4 $$$, hope, usually get *screwed*").

The BYTE Mag BBS/forum was a very good tool. For hardware
and software it could be almost as good a Google search
nowadays.

>> Still had some good features mixed-in with all the
>> OS bugs though.
>
> It was still pretty good compared to all the DOS/Win bugs.
> And real multitasking was a first.

Well, depends ... there was OS-9 on the RS CoCo's which
was pretty unix-like (and is STILL sold (MicroWare) for
embedded/IOT projects as a good NRTOS). I'd pay for a
modernized OS-9/64 with GUI that'd run on PCs or Pi's.
Might give the BSDs a good run.

https://microware.com/

But for those who'd only used DOS or early Win then
yes, AOS was a big leap. The graphics capabilities were
way beyond anything running Win or even Mac at the time
as well.

The guy I dumped it on needed to do stuff on captured
NTST-Cam (the kind with video TUBES) frames. For fun
point a tube camera at a tube TV ... then you'll see
where the opening for the old "Dr. Who" came from.

Oh, I *do* have Win-1.1 on a VM .... it's *horrible* !
Could do better on a C64 at the time. Also saved ONE
BYTE mag, with a review of something called "Windows 1"
in it :-)

[26C.Z968]

"rlwrap" ? Never needed it.

Yes, clearly there ARE lots of ways to disappear
CL Python. Ctl-Z worked for me and that's what
I stuck with. Plain old "quit()" seems to do it
as well and Ctl-D - but usually I don't WANT to
quit the interpreter entirely - keep it up for
testing a few lines of code here and there
during the day. For more complicated issues I'll
just nano a more proper Python test pgm and run
it from terminal. I can type quick (needed two
xtra credits for HS, so I took "Typing" :-)

We all do stuff in our own way, according to our
needs and psychology.

[Rich]

26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
> On 2/3/23 9:23 AM, Rich wrote:
>> 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/2/23 9:28 AM, Jim Jackson wrote:
>>>> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....
>>>>
>>>> errrr..... On my linux system Ctrl-D quits, CTtrl-Z puts python in the
>>>> background but stopped.
>>>
>>>
>>> I use Deb derivs with bash. If I "python3" then only
>>> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put
>>> a "quit" command into python eh ?
>>
>> They did:
>>
>> $ rlwrap python3
>> Python 3.7.2 (default, Feb 4 2020, 00:09:47)
>> [GCC 4.8.2] on linux
>> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>> >>> exit()
>> $
>
> "rlwrap" ? Never needed it.

https://github.com/hanslub42/rlwrap

rlwrap is a 'readline wrapper', a small utility that uses the GNU
Readline library to allow the editing of keyboard input for any
command.

It provides all the GNU readline 'magic' to REPL's that do not have the
same already built in, including command recall from previous sessions
(i.e., you can 'exit', return later, and recall command lines from the
prior 'exited' session).

> Yes, clearly there ARE lots of ways to disappear CL Python. Ctl-Z
> worked for me and that's what I stuck with.

Technically, Ctrl-Z is "suspend" but the end effect is as if the Python
REPL had disappeared (it really did not 'disappear') and the shell
prompt reappears.

[26C.Z968]

Yep, works - and doesn't leave Python kinda
running aimlessly as a background process
(though that CAN be useful for testing a
few things like basic client/server stuff).

But that's not how I usually use the Python
interpreter. I bring it up in a terminal and
use it all day for testing a few lines of code
to see if the syntax is correct.

Python is good/bad. It's got a library for pretty
much EVERYTHING, vastly simplifying - but it's also
interpreted (slow, unless you use one of the compiler
approaches) and the syntax/libs aren't as stable
as with 'C'. BUT, if you want a web server in just
maybe a dozen lines of your own code ... Python.

Got one of those running on a Pi - just scans the
local network in several ways to see what's "up"
and usually a little xtra info about what's "up".
A nice little web page I can bring up any time
from a browser in an instant with VERY minimal
investment. Doesn't have to be "fast", ain't gonna
be 50,000 users. For THAT I have 'C' forked and
pre-threaded servers but they AIN'T just a few
lines of code.

[Bobbie Sellers]

The point is to figure out haw your actions are causing
Guru Medictaion

>>
>> Lack of memory protection was a major weakness.  Many of us
>> learned to avoid software with poor memory management.
>
>
>   But you had to know what that software was - and, at the
>   time, that meant obscure computer mags or BBS's. The more
>   usual scene was "buy 4 $$$, hope, usually get *screwed*").
>
>   The BYTE Mag BBS/forum was a very good tool. For hardware
>   and software it could be almost as good a Google search
>   nowadays.
>
>
>>>     Still had some good features mixed-in with all the
>>>     OS bugs though.
>>
>> It was still pretty good compared to all the DOS/Win bugs.
>> And real multitasking was a first.
>
>   Well, depends ... there was OS-9 on the RS CoCo's which
>   was pretty unix-like (and is STILL sold (MicroWare) for
>   embedded/IOT projects as a good NRTOS). I'd pay for a
>   modernized OS-9/64 with GUI that'd run on PCs or Pi's.
>   Might give the BSDs a good run.
>
>   https://microware.com/
>
>   But for those who'd only used DOS or early Win then
>   yes, AOS was a big leap. The graphics capabilities were
>   way beyond anything running Win or even Mac at the time
>   as well.

Which is why I wanted one from the time I saw it demoed
at a Coomodore show in San Francisco. I could not affore the Amiga
when it was hot bvut I got an A1000 when they were trying to force
evernone to move up to the A500 or A2000.

>
>   The guy I dumped it on needed to do stuff on captured
>   NTST-Cam (the kind with video TUBES) frames. For fun
>   point a tube camera at a tube TV ... then you'll see
>   where the opening for the old "Dr. Who" came from.
>
>   Oh, I *do* have Win-1.1 on a VM .... it's *horrible* !
>   Could do better on a C64 at the time. Also saved ONE
>   BYTE mag, with a review of something called "Windows 1"
>   in it  :-)

Yes well I figured it out and stuck with the c=64.
I used MS-DOS for about a week and returned the clone.
I had thoguht the C=64 was opague but the MS-DOS
was just a brick. AmgiaOS was transparent and had a useful
GUI. Linux is not quite as transparent as Amiga but then my
eyesight and brain have dimmed.

bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

[Dan Espen]

Rich <ri...@example.invalid> writes:

> 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>> On 2/3/23 9:23 AM, Rich wrote:
>>> 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>> On 2/2/23 9:28 AM, Jim Jackson wrote:
>>>>> On 2023-02-02, 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> STILL have to use Ctrl-Z to quit Python3 in Linux ....
>>>>>
>>>>> errrr..... On my linux system Ctrl-D quits, CTtrl-Z puts python in the
>>>>> background but stopped.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I use Deb derivs with bash. If I "python3" then only
>>>> Ctl-Z seems to make it stop. You'd think they'd put
>>>> a "quit" command into python eh ?
>>>
>>> They did:
>>>
>>> $ rlwrap python3
>>> Python 3.7.2 (default, Feb 4 2020, 00:09:47)
>>> [GCC 4.8.2] on linux
>>> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> >>> exit()
>>> $
>>
>> "rlwrap" ? Never needed it.
>
> https://github.com/hanslub42/rlwrap
>
> rlwrap is a 'readline wrapper', a small utility that uses the GNU
> Readline library to allow the editing of keyboard input for any
> command.

Sure looks to me like Python is either using readline or doing a real
good imitation.

--
Dan Espen

[26C.Z968]

Well, it's kinda 'readline()' but aimed at the keyboard
instead of a disk file. In Linux at least most everything
*is* a file, or treated as such, at some level. The trick
is FINDING the 'keyboard file' without a bunch of really
hairy code like dealing with displays in 'X' ....

Hmm ... a brainfart from the old days ... is there a Python
library that'll let you poke stuff into the keyboard buffer ?
Great way to emulate user input real fast for apps that
demand "user interaction".

[Dan Espen]

More information on how Python uses either readline or libedit:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/readline.html

Sure looks to me like "rlwrap" is not needed.

--
Dan Espen

[Rich]

26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
> Hmm ... a brainfart from the old days ... is there a Python
> library that'll let you poke stuff into the keyboard buffer ?
> Great way to emulate user input real fast for apps that
> demand "user interaction".

You are likely looking for 'expect'
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect) which allows automating programs
that read/write to a tty (well, more than /just/ a tty, but tty
programs are the one's most expect scripts automate).

[Rich]

That does look to be the case. Reality is I use the Python REPL so
seldom I didn't bother checking first.

[Dan Espen]

What Python does on it's own is way better than what readline provides.
Bring up the interpreter, type "imp", hit tab. It's readline with the
addition of "rlcompleter" which understands Python keywords.

Using rlwrap doesn't make any sense.


--
Dan Espen

[Jack Strangio]

vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com writes:
>
> How do you put a partition inside a partition?
>

A partition, or a filesystem??

We tend to use both of these terms interchangeably, but they ARE NOT THE
SAME THING.

Normally we fill a disk-partition with just one filesystem, though MBR
'extended partitions' can hold several 'logical partitions'.

This most likely what you wanted the answer to, but you CAN put a 'partition' within a
partition by formatting a normal file as a filesystem.

So (for instance) you might have a 100MB partition that hold ten 10 MB
files, each of which holds a filesystem and each of those can be mounted
just like a disk-partition can be mounted.

====================================
#!/bin/bash
#jvs script "loopmount"
# mounts .iso image file on /cd
# mounts filesystem-file on mount-point
#
if [ "$2" != "" ]; then
MOUNTPOUNT=$2
else
MOUNTPOUNT=/cd
fi

if [ "$3" != "" ]; then
TYPE=$3
else
TYPE=iso9660
fi

if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo "usage: loopmount <imagefile-name> ( will be mounted on /cd ) (will be iso9660)"
echo " loopmount <imagefile-name> <mount-point> <filesystem type>"
else
LOOP=$(sudo losetup --find --show $1)
echo "sudo /bin/mount -t${TYPE} -oloop $LOOP $MOUNTPOUNT"
sudo /bin/mount -t${TYPE} -oloop $LOOP $MOUNTPOUNT
fi
====================================

Regards,

Jack
--
My wife says I have two faults:
I don't listen and something else.

[26C.Z968]

I've never needed to use it in a dozen years
of Python. MAY have some obscure applications
however.

DO wanna know the latest trix in poking the
keyboard buffer though ... FINDING it is
the first big trick. These days it's all
very 'abstracted' - local instances buried
really deep with obscure names and such.
OK for most uses UNLESS you wanna automatically
put text into annoying prompts/forms over and
over and over.

I kinda stayed away from Python for a long time,
mostly because I don't like slow interpreted
languages - gimme executables anytime. However
once the "improved" P3 got semi-decent I decided
to give it a shot. It ain't bad and, at this
point, really kinda DOES have a library for
*everything*. There's stuff that's (near)
impossible/incomprehensible in 'C' that's super
easy in P3.

DO wish Python used formal bracketed ops instead
of relying on indent alone ..... 'C' {} or
Pascal Begin End are clearer and surer.

Gotta see what P4 is gonna DO to my P3 programs
though. They'll have a new, "improved", paradigm
after all and it'll take YEARS to port over all
those old libraries :-)

[26C.Z968]

Why put in THAT much work ? Just dump AOS 1.0 ......
it was good time/$$$ logic. I was never a "hobbyist",
it was all job-related in some dimension. I thought
Amiga could be an asset. It wasn't.

Hey, when even "Hello-World.c" fails ... DUMP IT.

There CAN be advantages of not being first in line - as
I discovered with the A-1000s.

Hey, I've only owned ONE new car in my life ... even a
few months used and it's half or a third the price.
As my wise granny, who raised seven kids in The Depression,
said - "spend less than you earn and money will never
be a problem".

>>    The guy I dumped it on needed to do stuff on captured
>>    NTST-Cam (the kind with video TUBES) frames. For fun
>>    point a tube camera at a tube TV ... then you'll see
>>    where the opening for the old "Dr. Who" came from.
>>
>>    Oh, I *do* have Win-1.1 on a VM .... it's *horrible* !
>>    Could do better on a C64 at the time. Also saved ONE
>>    BYTE mag, with a review of something called "Windows 1"
>>    in it  :-)
>
>     Yes well I figured it out and stuck with the c=64.
> I used MS-DOS for about a week and returned the clone.

EARLY 'clones' weren't always so great (except Compaq,
but they were $$$). At WORK it was all real IBM-PCs.
(still have the Technical Reference Manual !)

My first clone was a Sanyo-550 ... and it wasn't bad.
However its "improved" graphics were NOT compatible
with the IBM graphics card. I bought a card that WAS
compatible (was doing stuff with bits in pix at the
time and needed compatibility) and jumpered it in.
Used the thing for a couple of years and was happy.

>     I had thoguht the C=64 was opague but the MS-DOS
> was just a brick.

The aforementioned TRM was a big help there.

C64s were damned good little computers (actually
the VIC series were too). I've seen them used in
various apps decades beyond "their time". Not so
long ago on the "govt access" channel, I saw a
crash message instead of the usual text scroll -
it was a C64 message :-)

8-bits and 64kb can STILL get a lot of stuff done.

> AmgiaOS was transparent and had a useful
> GUI. Linux is not quite as transparent as Amiga but then my
> eyesight and brain have dimmed.

Well, I don't print things in 6-pt font anymore :-)

Heh, once we got a demand for info from some lawyers -
docs and mails and such. SO - we GAVE them that ...
in 4-pt font from a new HP-LaserJet-II :-) Yes, it
COULD be read clearly - with a magnifying glass.
It was to "save paper", of course, very "green".
We thus fulfilled our legal requirement and they
never bothered us again .........

Age alters us all. Energy and prompt alacrity
do get downsized. "Wisdom" increases however.

[26C.Z968]

Generally agreed ... however there MAY be niche applications
so don't cuss it TOO loudly :-)

I'm happy with EVERYTHING Python gurus produce even IF I never
find a use for them. It represents "possibilities".

[26C.Z968]

On 2/7/23 9:46 PM, Jack Strangio wrote:
> vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com writes:
>>
>> How do you put a partition inside a partition?
>>
>
> A partition, or a filesystem??
>
> We tend to use both of these terms interchangeably, but they ARE NOT THE
> SAME THING.

VERY true !

> Normally we fill a disk-partition with just one filesystem, though MBR
> 'extended partitions' can hold several 'logical partitions'.

GPT has effectively ended the need for 'extended' partitions.
However it's still good for people to KNOW about them. I still
have a couple older boxes/systems that are MBR with extended
partitions and no UEFI. If you CAN do it the older, simpler,
way - why not ? Lots more documentation.

> This most likely what you wanted the answer to, but you CAN put a 'partition' within a
> partition by formatting a normal file as a filesystem.

Ummm ... that's REALLY kludgy and a "file" really
isn't a "file system". For 99.9% these days I'd
rec GPT and straight-up GPT partitions with single
filesystems on them. It's KISS.

AAAaauuugghhh !!! :-)

CAN do and SHOULD do are NOT the same thing !

[Richard Kettlewell]

"26C.Z968" <26C....@noaada.net> writes:
> DO wanna know the latest trix in poking the keyboard buffer though
> ... FINDING it is the first big trick. These days it's all very
> 'abstracted' - local instances buried really deep with obscure names
> and such. OK for most uses UNLESS you wanna automatically put text
> into annoying prompts/forms over and over and over.

If you want to insert characters for subsequent reading into your
terminal’s input buffer, you want the TIOCSTI ioctl. See
https://linux.die.net/man/4/tty_ioctl.

If you want to completely control the input to a process then you can
often just use a pipe as its input, _unless_ it expects to use a
terminal (e.g. to turn off echo when accepting a password).

In that case you will need to create and manage a psuedo-terminal.
* https://linux.die.net/man/7/pty is probably a good starting point if
you want to do it “by hand”
* https://docs.python.org/3/library/pty.html wraps it up in a Python API
* You could also run script as a subprocess, feeding it input via a pipe
and (if you need to) capturing its output from a pipe.

None of these are “latest tricks” - TIOCSTI, pipes and psuedoterminals
are all multiple decades old.

> Gotta see what P4 is gonna DO to my P3 programs
> though. They'll have a new, "improved", paradigm
> after all and it'll take YEARS to port over all
> those old libraries :-)

There is no Python 4 and probably never will be.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Dan Espen]

Richard Kettlewell <inv...@invalid.invalid> writes:

> "26C.Z968" <26C....@noaada.net> writes:
>> DO wanna know the latest trix in poking the keyboard buffer though
>> ... FINDING it is the first big trick. These days it's all very
>> 'abstracted' - local instances buried really deep with obscure names
>> and such. OK for most uses UNLESS you wanna automatically put text
>> into annoying prompts/forms over and over and over.
>
> If you want to insert characters for subsequent reading into your
> terminal’s input buffer, you want the TIOCSTI ioctl. See
> https://linux.die.net/man/4/tty_ioctl.

An ioctl is called by the application.
Pretty sure you want to use X11's synthetic keystrokes.
Some applications accept them, some don't.

--
Dan Espen

[Richard Kettlewell]

That’s a good additional option to include. If OP has been more specific
about their needs then I missed it.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Dan Espen]

Well, he missed a lot. Starting with, there's nothing wrong with the
way Python reads it's input now.

--
Dan Espen

[26C.Z968]

Nothing WRONG with it at all ... but limitations MAY be
encountered. Alternatives are always good. They can get
you out of that corner you inadvertently painted yerself
into :-)

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 2/7/23 22:28, 26C.Z968 wrote:
> On 2/7/23 9:46 PM, Jack Strangio wrote:
>> vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com writes:
>>>
>>> How do you put a partition inside a partition?
>>>
>>
>> A partition, or a filesystem??
>>
>> We tend to use both of these terms interchangeably, but they ARE NOT THE
>> SAME THING.
>
>   VERY true !
>
>> Normally we fill a disk-partition with just one filesystem, though  MBR
>> 'extended partitions' can hold several 'logical partitions'.
>
>
>   GPT has effectively ended the need for 'extended' partitions.
>   However it's still good for people to KNOW about them. I still
>   have a couple older boxes/systems that are MBR with extended
>   partitions and no UEFI. If you CAN do it the older, simpler,
>   way - why not ? Lots more documentation.

The older and simpler way did not look so to me but then I learned to
do partitioning on the Amiga 1000 with an expansion box
and GVP tools on a SCSI disk and the Amiga's own Rigid Disk Block
(which I am surprised I remembered the RDB proper name). It was more
like the present GTP than the MBR. The limitation of the MBR used
to drive me up the wall trying to figure out what was failing in
a Logical Partition. Of course the disks were a small fraction of
the present sizes and the AmigaOS was 32 bit much before the i386.

Indubitably.

bliss - on the ever-faithful Dell Latitude E7450, PCLinuxOS 2022
KDE Plasma 5.26.5 Kernel Version: 6.1.10-pclos1 (64-bit)
KDE Frameworks 5.102.0 - Qt Version: 5.15.6
Graphics : X11 - Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 5500
15.5 GiB of RAM CPU 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
Actually 2 real cores and 2 virtual cores.

[26C.Z968]

Amiga-OS was indeed "ahead of its time" for PCs of
that era. Yes, you COULD buy some UNIX versions
like (MS) Xenix and SCO Unix, but the prices were
prohibitive.

The big horrible problem is that they released the
A-1000/AOS maybe a year too early - before the bugs
were worked-out. 'Marketing' decision fer sure. They
knew the PCs and MACs were moving in the same direction
and HAD to beat them.

And UNIX didn't do all those cool graphics - it was
kinda 'academic' at the time.

There was considerable debate at IBM over whether to
use the M68000 series or the Intel chips back in the
day. They SHOULD have gone with Motorola - but there
were some reasons for the 8088. First of all it needed
less wiring. Secondly its instruction set was similar
enough to the Z80's so it was easy to port CP/M. That
was their backwards-compatibility promise ... at the
time BIZ=CP/M and IBM was BIZ. It turned out DOS was
the much more popular system - but IBM just HAD to
offer CP/M-86. CP/M-68k came out a little later. Still
have one of those 86 disks somewhere and it WOULD boot
up until Intel decided not to support 8-bit code anymore.
I think the Core2-Quad was the last best chip CP/M-86
would boot with (still have a couple of those boards
and they ain't all so bad either). You can still run
CP/M-86 on VirtualBox however.

Ya know, I did like the original MACs - the "bricks".
They were 'cute' and did lotsa stuff that was really
hard to do on PCs. The mindset was kinda alien however
and I came to dislike it intensely. Also, these days,
I'd have to wear magnifying goggles to READ the damned
tiny little screen ! Had to do that while setting up
a bunch of iPads recently :-)

[Rich]

26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
> There was considerable debate at IBM over whether to use the M68000
> series or the Intel chips back in the day. They SHOULD have gone
> with Motorola - but there were some reasons for the 8088. First of
> all it needed less wiring. Secondly its instruction set was
> similar enough to the Z80's so it was easy to port CP/M. That was
> their backwards-compatibility promise ... at the time BIZ=CP/M and
> IBM was BIZ.

The reasoning given not long (as in early 'history' articles) after the
release of the IBM PC indicated a much simpler reasoning.

Intel had an official licensed second source supplier for 808x chips
(that second source being AMD) and Motorola was, at least at the time
IBM's PC group was picking a CPU, single source (with a promise to have
a second source within X time, like a year or something).

And IBM's corporate policy was to always have two sources for all
critical components.

So while 'less wiring' and 'could run CP/M if need be' may have figured
into the choice, if these history articles were correct, the actual
reason was much simpler.

Wikipedia as of today
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC#Design_process) cites that the
68000 was not production ready at the time:

Several CPUs were considered, including the Texas Instruments
TMS9900, Motorola 68000 and Intel 8088. The 68000 was considered
the best choice, but was not production-ready like the others. The
IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was
considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due
to the design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts.

IBM chose the 8088 over the similar but superior 8086 because Intel
offered a better price for the former and could provide more
units,[19] and the 8088's 8-bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of
the computer. The 8088 had the advantage that IBM already had
familiarity with the 8085 from designing the IBM System/23
Datamaster. The 62-pin expansion bus slots were also designed to
be similar to the Datamaster slots, and its keyboard design and
layout became the Model F keyboard shipped with the PC, but
otherwise the PC design differed in many ways.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-10 15:08, Rich wrote:
> The reasoning given not long (as in early 'history' articles) after the
> release of the IBM PC indicated a much simpler reasoning.
>
> Intel had an official licensed second source supplier for 808x chips
> (that second source being AMD) and Motorola was, at least at the time
> IBM's PC group was picking a CPU, single source (with a promise to have
> a second source within X time, like a year or something).
>
> And IBM's corporate policy was to always have two sources for all
> critical components.

I heard of this.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[26C.Z968]

On 2/10/23 9:08 AM, Rich wrote:
> 26C.Z968 <26C....@noaada.net> wrote:
>> There was considerable debate at IBM over whether to use the M68000
>> series or the Intel chips back in the day. They SHOULD have gone
>> with Motorola - but there were some reasons for the 8088. First of
>> all it needed less wiring. Secondly its instruction set was
>> similar enough to the Z80's so it was easy to port CP/M. That was
>> their backwards-compatibility promise ... at the time BIZ=CP/M and
>> IBM was BIZ.
>
> The reasoning given not long (as in early 'history' articles) after the
> release of the IBM PC indicated a much simpler reasoning.
>
> Intel had an official licensed second source supplier for 808x chips
> (that second source being AMD) and Motorola was, at least at the time
> IBM's PC group was picking a CPU, single source (with a promise to have
> a second source within X time, like a year or something).
>
> And IBM's corporate policy was to always have two sources for all
> critical components.

The 8088 was just cheaper and "safer" in several respects,
so that's what they went with. CP/M compatibility WAS a
significant issue as well. CP/M-68k didn't come out for
another year or two (Radio Shack DID have a dual-board
computer that'd run CP/M-68k, once it arrived).

> So while 'less wiring' and 'could run CP/M if need be' may have figured
> into the choice, if these history articles were correct, the actual
> reason was much simpler.

BIG company, LOTS of issues - real or imagined - LOTS
of meetings and meetings about meetings about .....

A terrible thing they DIDN'T go with the 68 series
though, it WAS a much better chip - which Apple soon
exploited. By now we'd have the 680990 chip and Intel
would still be making accessory hardware.

> Wikipedia as of today
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC#Design_process) cites that the
> 68000 was not production ready at the time:
>
> Several CPUs were considered, including the Texas Instruments
> TMS9900, Motorola 68000 and Intel 8088. The 68000 was considered
> the best choice, but was not production-ready like the others. The
> IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was
> considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due
> to the design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts.
>
> IBM chose the 8088 over the similar but superior 8086 because Intel
> offered a better price for the former and could provide more
> units,[19] and the 8088's 8-bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of
> the computer. The 8088 had the advantage that IBM already had
> familiarity with the 8085 from designing the IBM System/23
> Datamaster. The 62-pin expansion bus slots were also designed to
> be similar to the Datamaster slots, and its keyboard design and
> layout became the Model F keyboard shipped with the PC, but
> otherwise the PC design differed in many ways.
>

I have a little experience with the TMS-9000 series. AT THE
TIME it was a 'clever' chip - hardware-support for multi-user
environments. However it was big and expensive and TI was
super-anal - a reason the TI Home Computer died so soon. Also
the 9900's only easily supported 64kb "workspaces" for users
apps which would have been too limiting given the way the
future was developing.

I have no experience with the IBM-801 so I can't say much.
Their PowerPC chip probably evolved from it and was kinda
successful (most Linux's still have a PPC version).

In any case, a lot of factors went into the Final Decision.

In the latter 80s there were SAGE computers - intended for
the same niche as the IBM-PCs and LOOKED almost exactly
like them. They used the 68000 series though. Alas they,
like the Amiga's, used a proprietary OS that just was
not THAT much better and ultimately could not displace
MS/IBM or MAC. There were also production issues, one
developer BOLTED a board to his desk so they couldn't
sneak in and steal it for retail :-) SAGE still has a
sort of cult following, they WERE good computers. Alas
I could never afford, or likely GET, one.

VAST number of good chips/systems have come - and DIED -
since the late 70s. Some maybe WERE the Better Idea, but
IBM/Apple just overwhelmed them. There was SOME old chip
that had a few ultra-high-speed serial links to other
chips so you could implement almost unlimited multi-
processor/multi-processing ... just scale up forever.
Can't remember the name now - but they'd have been a
different, perhaps advantageous, way to approach the
issue.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In the end what wins is good enough, a bit cheaper, and readily available.
Just look at all the wives.

--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your
oppressors."
- George Orwell