UNIX SIG Notes By Christopher J. Fearnley Linux Notes For those of you with Intel 386-16 or higher processors, we have made Linux available for download by PACS members (Atari and Amiga ports have been released but are not yet available on PACS' system). The files are in the files area of the PACS Multi-SIG BBS. Choose BS menu from your individual login account's main menu (choose area "linux" for the installation files or area "unix" for additional files). The menu system should allow you to find the files and download them. Extensive help documentation for Linux is available in the Unix area of the Magpie board (ump Linux to get there quickly). Several BETA kernels are available in the "unix/linux" area. Files with names like: 1.1.52.tgz, are the latest BETA versions of the kernel source code. Several patches to this file can also be applied (patch53.gz, ...). These must be applied in order: see the README file for details on installing the kernel. The Linux Documentation Project proudly presents the Linux Network Administrators' Guide by Olaf Kirch, version 1.0 (released 18 August 1994, 295 pages). It is an excellent discussion of all the issues involved in networking from the beginner's perspective. It is general enough to be useful to non-Linux users. The book is freely usable and distributable according the the permission notice in the file COPYING included in the distribution. It is also being published in finely-bound book form by SSC and other publishers. Probably the best way to order it is through your favorite bookstore or ACC Bookstore 1-800-546-7274. I have put three files in the "unix/linux" area of the BS files area: nag-asci.tgz - the plain ASCII version; nag.dvi.tgz - the TeX DVI version (it was written in LaTeX); and nag.ps.tgz - the Postscript version. You will need gzip and tar for your platform to uncompress and unarchive the files. These two programs are freely available with source so compiling them shouldn't be too difficult on any platform (assuming you have a compiler :) Let me know if there is any trouble with any of these files or the instructions. I installed Linux on friend's machine with the umsdos filesystem. This filesystem allows Linux to live and run on your DOS partition, yet it supports long filenames and file permissions when under Linux. The big advantage of the umsdos filesystem is that you don't need to repartition your disk. So if you suddenly needed a few extra MEGs of space for Linux (or DOS) you could simply rm some files or directories (under DOS, deltree was able to remove the files Linux created, though other commands failed). The big disadvantage of umsdos are speed (noticeably slower than Linux's native ext2 filesystem). But even though Linux and DOS coexist on the same filesystem, it seemed to me to be precarious to create files under the \LINUX tree from DOS and/or to create files outside the \LINUX tree from under Linux. Whereas with the standard partitioning scheme, Linux can create DOS files without complications (except perhaps the CR/NL problem). The umsdos filesystem is a viable option for those who want to test drive Linux or who may need to change their Linux-to-DOS disk proportions occasionally. During this installation I also needed to use the loadlin boot manager for Linux. All my experience has been with LILO (the LInux LOader). So this was new. Loadlin can boot Linux from DOS or a boot floppy - which seems nifty to me. But I don't yet know a way to boot Linux with loadlin automatically (except by adding a loadlin command to your autoexec.bat :) At any rate, I'll be sticking to LILO and I even plan to delete my DOS partition soon (I never use it anyway). Loadlin is the most reliable way to run a Linux system running the umsdos filesystem and thus is useful to those DOS users who need to boot Linux during a DOS session (or to impress your friends). I also had the opportunity to see if Linux could handle a Micropolis 1 Gig SCSI drive and ethernet. Even with the 1.1.54 kernel no SCSI hosts were recognized, but the ethernet and Adaptec 1542 controller were recognized. The SCSI HOWTO suggests that all SCSI devices are supported if the controller card is supported. But it seems that some BIOS/drive/lun parameters are confusing the Linux kernel. To fix this the kernel can accept command line options giving the actual disk geometry, controller characteristics, and etc. Since the Micropolis documentation didn't give full disk geometry information and I couldn't guess it, the project is on temporary hold. Hopefully, by our next meeting I will understand SCSI support under Linux better. When I first installed Linux, I read all documentation and I had no problems at all. I ran into some difficulties with this installation for several reasons. First, I didn't read all the docs again and it has been some 6 months since my last full installation of Linux on my home system. And new hardware and software factors (SCSI and umsdos) threw new kinks into the equation. Actually everything went fairly smoothly, but it does seem that reading the documentation is necessary!! :) Since version 1.1.41 of the Linux kernel, support is provided for various and sundry "oddly" formatted floppies. I just installed the superformat and updated mtools utilities which let one take advantage of these new features. The most exciting thing is being able to convert my 1.44 M floppies into 2M floppies. It was very easy. I downloaded the fd utils package from ftp.imag.fr:/pub/Linux/ZLIBC/fdutils/ there are ALPHA and BETA subdirectories. I got the latest version from the ALPHA subdirectory of course (Beta testers are weenies)! Everything built easily. To save disk space I replaced the mtools utilities with symbolic links to /usr/bin/mtools (someday they should make this the default option - but it is alpha software after all). The documentation is very good except for some typos. The only thing that took me awhile to figure out was that I needed to copy the file mtools.etc that came with the package to ~/.mtoolsrc. So far I can only access the floppies as root, but if I change the owner of the floppy device to my user id I should be able to play as a user too. To format a 2,019,840 byte floppy I issued two commands: "floppycontrol --tracks 83 -d /dev/fd0H1743" and "superformat -s24 -t83". NB. Some floppy controllers are not capable of reading past the 80th track and could become damaged. Mine works -- a test procedure is provided in the docs. I have about 20 floppies, so when I get them all reformatted I'll have an additional 10M of floppy storage! Next Month: Q&A at PACS' new location University City High School, 36th and Filbert Streets.