Linuxers June 2003

linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

111 participants
121 discussions

Preemptive Kernel patch
by Nikhil Joshi 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

Hi! After unsuccessful attempt to build 2.5.70 kernel I applied preemptive kernel patch on 2.4.20 http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rml/preempt-kernel/v2.4/ The improvement is noticeable. XMMS runs smoothly even when running Mozilla ( yes Mozilla is sort of benchmark for me :) ) I've compiled my soundcard module into the Kernel. Those who cannot wait for preemptive feature but are finding it difficult to make 2.5.70 work should certainly check this out. System Config: Cyrix MII 233 MHz 64 MB RAM CMI 8738 PCI Sound Card bzImage size = 724K -- Nikhil Joshi http://nikhiljoshi.cjb.net

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Problem related to kernel-2.5.70
by Tapeshwar Nath 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

Hi all, I am trying to upgarde my kernel from 2.4.18 to 2.5.70. I have downloaded the latest kernel and enabled preemptive nature in it. I have also modified the .config file to suit my needs. I did "make modules " and then "make modules_install". After this "make bzImage" . Everything went fine and i got the image. I copied that image in the /boot directory and modified lilo.conf and ran lilo. While trying to boot into this new kernel i get this message "....... Uncompressing LINUX ok... " and then the machine hangs. Is there anythign special that needs to be done. If i can get any pointers then it will be of great help. Thanks Ciao Tapesh __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] gnome/kde ?
by linuxdev 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

I refuse to be drawn into the small "goodies" feature by feature comparison of gnome/kde anymore. simply because one man's food is another guy's poison. Both are equally valid in different environments. >Trust me file chooser is a first year programming >project, but at the same time most used dialog. C >and callback mechanism of event handling in UI is a >stumbling block, and in absence of OO, things >quickly become bad. You answered your own question there. And i add that they do have a nice roadmap in place and almost there. They have managed to a hell of a job without OO. Kudos to the gnome team for working out things. >So you mean you dont care if some corporate biggies >comes and exploits GPL, plays hostile and demeans >OSS projects? AS a glug member I was expecting >something else from you. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is not on this side of the line, believe me. Your reference to KDE's slowness was an article of the year 2001 with gcc 2.95 in question. and even there the author points out that the faults lie with kde and not gcc. I seriously disagree on the point of RH exploiting GPL. They give you freedom to modify whatever stuff you get from them. So you simply cannot whine. Don't like it then change it or don't use it. But don't blame it for not including your favorite ice-cream with a cherry on top. The "demeaning" theory that you talked about only started floating around when rh modified kde (m'be even stripped it a little) for its 8.1 psyche. for 9.0 they give you the full dosh. >IceWM! IceWM! Its the coolest one. ?? >Using GTK is the biggest mistake done by gaim AND by abiword and by openoffice and by few hundred other perfectly useful other apps. And guess what ? they separated the core and the gui in the latest release of gaim. The plugin architechture has been cleaned up too. :D > pain to minimum. I don't expect to go on a tweaking trip as soon as i > install a desktop. I would like the options sensible enough. Gnome does > that. KDE might, i'll leave that question. >Please justify your claim in Gnome doing any better >than KDE. Gnome simply doesn't do it better than KDE for you because you choose it not to. For me it does :D. The default options of both kde and gnome suck equally for me and am not talking of redhat. both need a good theme set besides really big toolbars, flashy scrollbars, plump buttons etc. Gnome has one in place called Mist while KDE does it with a combination of 2 or three modifications. I forget the names. >My recommended option has been FTP install, but you may not access to a filthy >Net connection as I have ;) I got Mandrake 9.1 CDs too, and would be willing >to share with you, if Sameer lets us, next meeting would be in IITB, and IF >my DDP lets me, I am planning to attend it. Ah yes i do lack the access to the 2mbps(or 4 for iits?) ernet connection. so its still cds for me. I'll try to make it to iitb too. cya, C P.S: I'll keep my next post on filesystems. enough of gnome/kde. its choice and no more no less. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!

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Meeting on June 8th
by Nagarjuna G. 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Is the meeting planned, venue and agenda. Let me know in advance if HBCSE venue is required. Due to science olympiad camps presently going on at the centre unless I make reservation the lecture room may not be available. We also need volunteers to maintain the keep the informations uptodate. Even if the drafted material is sent to me I will update the site. Will find it difficult to manage writing it myself. We had several workshops and at least two monthly meetings, and the website is not updated. Is there a write up on recent workshop at Hubli. Nagarjuna -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ nagarjun at hbcse tifr res in. http://www.gnowledge.org/ I support Public Library of Science http://www.plos.org/

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Problem related to kernel-2.5.70
by linuxdev 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

There could be 3 points where you are having trouble 1. you haven't selected the proper config for yer sys. 2. selected your boot fs as a module 3. not used the latest modutils avlbl. at ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/modules/module-init-tool… There is one very imp. point i happened to note while working with 2.5.x kernels. It picks up the configuration of your current kernel if its lying around in your /boot or in /usr/src/xyz . This creates problems due to introduction of unwanted extraneous symbols and values. So the best way is to touch .config before make xconfig or menuconfig. also please read the readme in the modutils bzball closely else you'll end up messing up ur distro. If you are uncomfortable with the modutils the best way is ofcourse compile nothing as a module. Build-in all possible options and check if it works. hope that helps, C Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!

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filesystems and a little gnome/kde ;)
by linuxdev 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Alright, here's a mail on my filesystems. But please note its a end-user experience rather than a highly scientific study with stats of any kind. Tho i do provide a link where a server admin from Oregon state did that recently. First and foremost ext2 is a winner for speed because it lacks journalling. So its more or less unfair. Secondly for journalled fs, its slightly dependent on the distro you use since the kernel _may_ be patched for improving the performance on a particular fs. A journal is a sort of double entry to state it crudely. so you don't lose the data even if you crash. It simply reverts to the older copy on disk on next boot. thats faster booting time. Ext2: This is one of the oldies and the fastest fs on the block. But also the most yuckiest in crash recovery. If you have a nice big installation (most of the libs,devel rpms are in place.) you'll have loong startups after crash. Then again if you are low on space ext2 wastes a little more than others since its block allocation is fixed. Ext3: Basically ext2 with a journal. Now by general logic one would think that it ought to be nearly as fast as ext2. But no, ext2 wasn't meant to be a journalling fs so its more like an addon to it. A heavy addon which pulls down its performance. There are options to ext3 journalling : ordered,writeback,journal. of which writeback is fastest since journalling is put off for sometime. Now my experience with this has been a little unhappy on a default rh. i guess its their patches. But moment i recompiled my kernel with rc6-ac2 patch to boot i got a good perf. not as good as reiserfs tho. Reiserfs: This is a fs written from scratch and under heavy development. It uses B+ trees for its structure and consequently packs in more data in smaller space. This option of packing in smaller data into smaller spaces takes a little calculation and hence time. Turn it off by the notail option and you have a fast fs on your hands. Now this fs has a peculiar characteristic. Its fast for small filesizes about 6mb max. beyond this the performance in terms of read/write times degrades a bit.This however is true of current version 3.6 in 4 they claim to have addressed it. Its coming up this month. Its performance in the upcoming 2.5.x kernels is tops. for 2.4.21 the performance goes great with rc6-acX patches. This fs is generally recommended by most. For websites and servers its the best. As for JFS and XFS: JFS is a unique fs in the fact that you can recover data from JFS in case of a really bad crash by mounting it as ext2 ! Its a fs from IBM and is quite under development. Its performance is good but lower than Reiserfs. XFS is best avoided at present because of its unstability. There have been reports of data corruption in case of crashes. This fs comes from SGI and promises superb performance for big file sizes. For small sizes this isn't good enough. Now to give you a little conclusion here's what i say : Since most of the binaries, conf. files on a regular linux systems don't go beyond 10mb reiserfs is a really good option. big files are far and few. Here's a little tasty trick for rh 9.0. while installing rh doesn't present reiserfs in disk druid. So when you boot type "linux reiserfs" instead of pressing enter and disk druid will list it. :D hope that mumbling of mine made sense ! For figures and facts check this out... http://www.net.oregonstate.edu/~kveton/fs/ i'll try to be a little more organized in my next mail, cya, C ------ cut here for some gnome/kde 8>< --------- gnome is doing fine for me. others i dunno. thankyou. I have very good reasons to say that kde is slow even with the latest gcc. Slower than gnome. If there's some special way i could compile kde for faster performance please let me know. And no its not a myth that i am spreading. I could definitely mail the KDE list as you say. Buts thats a little way off track. As they stand now they are slow given their own instructions for compiling and performance improvement. what a distro includes or excludes is the distro's decision. not others, tho it is the distro's responsibility to respond to the users which Redhat does quite well. and if a user doesn't agree he/she is free enough to change it or ditch the distro. > >IceWM! IceWM! Its the coolest one. > ?? >Google! Google! Its the coolest one :-) frankly gnome/gtk works for me and am happy. Others did not after having given them a fair trial on my part. End of discussion. >BTW are you sure Abiword and OO.o are Gnome apps? I never said they were. They use gtk for the "final rendering" as you say and not qt. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!

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Apache module on OSX
by Satya 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

mod_auth_any works on Linux but not on OSX. apxs i -c, and then apachectl: Syntax error on line 271 of /etc/httpd/httpd.conf: Cannot load /usr/libexec/httpd/mod_auth_any.so into server: (reason unknown) Any ideas? Line 271 is: LoadModule auth_any_module /usr/libexec/httpd/mod_auth_any.so Relevant screen dumps: [root]~/mod_auth_any/src# uname -a Darwin macserver 6.6 Darwin Kernel Version 6.6: Thu May 1 21:48:54 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.34.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc [root]~/mod_auth_any/src# httpd -l Compiled-in modules: http_core.c mod_so.c suexec: disabled; invalid wrapper /usr/sbin/suexec [root]~/mod_auth_any/src# httpd -v Server version: Apache/1.3.27 (Darwin) Server built: 01/15/03 19:22:17 [root]~/mod_auth_any/src# httpd -V Server version: Apache/1.3.27 (Darwin) Server built: 01/15/03 19:22:17 Server's Module Magic Number: 19990320:13 Server compiled with.... -D EAPI -D HAVE_MMAP -D USE_MMAP_SCOREBOARD -D USE_MMAP_FILES -D HAVE_FCNTL_SERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D HAVE_FLOCK_SERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D HARD_SERVER_LIMIT=2048 -D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/sbin/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="/var/run/httpd.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="/var/run/httpd.scoreboard" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="/var/run/httpd.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="/var/log/httpd/error_log" -D TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="/etc/httpd/mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="/etc/httpd/httpd.conf" -D ACCESS_CONFIG_FILE="/etc/httpd/access.conf" -D RESOURCE_CONFIG_FILE="/etc/httpd/srm.conf" And google is very unhelpful. -- Satya. <URL:http://satya.virtualave.net/> 'Press to test.' <click> 'Release to detonate.'

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anybody home?
by Amit Upadhyay 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 hi, am new to this list, but am disappointed to see lack of traffic here.. anyone listening, lets revive it if its possible.. i am running single boot linux on my PC since about two and a half years, and am a great fan of Mandrake distribution. i came across http://dot.kde.org/1053201681/ -> "KDE/Qt Gain Increased Support for Indic Languages", and the screenshots look good. - -- Amit Upadhyay Senior Undergraduate Student Department of Mechanical Engg. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai-76, India Phone: (91) 9820325940 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+2864B9EzZHCJyNkRAu52AJ43VtRKf1cPYOe+cAoCxhbHUYNHnQCeMbiR 2Y87AktphQ81AEdfDmWIpSo= =7e4Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] gnome/kde ?
by linuxdev 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

hey there, surprise ! kde is nice stable and quite complete on redhat 9.0. What is the statement "kde rpms are privately created" supposed to mean ?! They are available with the official distribution. And as for the argument of "more official". Its not the aim of the site you mentioned. They mean it to be a site for the *latest* kde rpms for those who can't deal with sources. Agreed rh is slow in releasing but that's applicable to even gnome packages! And remote networking, ssh capabilities of a file manager is not exactly a regular guy's dream. I don't envision any normal user going ga-ga over remote editing in a file dialog box given that 80% of the users would save on an internet bill. And regarding your lament of a relatively featureless gnome open file dialog box, its going to be true only till 2.3 after the development plan is shifting aggresively to adding features to widgets. For 2.4 they are specifically addressing the needs of a more powerful dialog box. And frankly if kde developers hate me for using redhat i don't give a damn. Hey rh is times better for any serious developing work/ enterprise env. Besides i recompile most of my packages for p4 for which currently no binary distro is optimized for, by default. So there's no question of missing candy. then again, number of releases *along* with the introduction of new features is something to be reckoned with. Try mailing the nautilus dev list for a feature and you'll probably find it implemented in the next release. Thats what they want right now. feedback. And unless you give them that there's no chance of your favorite gizmo turning up in it. >Its more a c++ "feature" than KDE's. KDE is well >aware of this thing yet there >is little short of improving gcc that can be done >about it. blaming bad implementations on gcc is really uncool. KDE is slow. the developers know it. That they are working on it is a good sign. something that would make me consider KDE in the future. > again memory usage: on rh 9.0 with gnome the usage on immediate startup is > 128 mb. for kde ? 213 mb. eh ? A quick look at system-monitor will tell you > all the story. and my suggestion use gnome-monitor. >Frankly I dont care, I mean I can play DivX movies >while simultaneously downloading them and having 3 >connections on my FTP server downloading from me at >near top speed with KDE running in all its glory, >and I have only 128MB RAM. Stats are for staticians. And for developers. well i do care about free RAM. coz compiling needs plenty of it. thats top priority for me :D besides watching divx movies and file sharing and editing web pages. Ever faced disk thrashing ? On a sidenews : there's this file sharing client out there mldonkey - works for quite a lot of filesharing n/w gnutella, edonkey, fasttrack (yeah!), bittorrent, directconnect. its really good and fast, check it out. And they use gtk :P And of good reasons of gtk over qt ? m'be you could ask the developers of evolution, gaim, mldonkey, mplayer gui, xmms, gnucash. and many more perfectly useful software that you could shake your stick at. >Anything that is GPL gives equal level of powers to >modify it At what level is the question. I don't expect most users to go patch my software to get it looking the way they want it to. gtk tries to keep the pain to minimum. I don't expect to go on a tweaking trip as soon as i install a desktop. I would like the options sensible enough. Gnome does that. KDE might, i'll leave that question. I may give the newer mandrake a whirl as soon as i get hold of a set. (can you help me there?) Indeed if you have used mozilla firebird you wouldn't say konqueror is better. The only complaint of long startup times for mozilla is being actively worked on will be taken care of in few months. Simple reason: they are moving away from XUL to platform dependent gui. Atleast for the framework. Now what exactly are you missing in gnome toolbar is beyond me. regards, C Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!

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gnome/kde ?
by linuxdev 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

hi, Just as you said its shifting from the platform to the realm of distribution, i can very well state that your experience of KDE is distribution dependent. And well talking of my distro its RH 9.0 with a nice stable complete gnome/kde distribution. If you wanted screenshots I could send you plenty. But well the question comes of posting them. I don't really like the idea of posting them on a list. And about there's lot more going on in KDE is quite not the case. If you checked the release schedules of gnome and all the gtk based software i'd say gnome is far more active ;) Both the desktops have been releasing neck to neck. As far as memory usage, startup times is concerned i can say a trifle unscientifically that gnome starts about 5-6 seconds faster than kde. Then again memory usage: on rh 9.0 with gnome the usage on immediate startup is 128 mb. for kde ? 213 mb. eh ? A quick look at system-monitor will tell you all the story. and my suggestion use gnome-monitor. i don't think its right to call the decision of selecting gtk over kde for programming as legacy. Even the latest and the finest software that turns out today on freshmeat.net is gtk based. While there is a wide difference in the philosophies of these two toolkits both have very stable and viable reasoning behind them. On a general principle developers prefer gtk for its "lightness" and simplicity with enough power to modify it. The visual clutter that i referred to is not due to bad distro. I wouldn't go so far as to call debian-sid,rh9.0,knoppix3.2 as bad distros. The visual distraction is what the gnome developers trying to fight. Agreed there are many sharp edges to gtk but they are rapidly being addressed by the developers. That is what exactly the lead developer for gnome recently gave a call for. What software you prefer is matter of personal taste. I prefer mozilla for my surfing and mail. I dislike konquerer for too many reasons that i do not care to list here for the sake of sanity. There are far too many non-default softwares that work n-times better than the default softies of kde or gnome. And if you are talking of startup times etc. gnome beats the pants off kde anytime. U definitely don't need me to give quanitative comparisons for that ? I don't know what customization you are talking of but its equally easy to customize a gnome toolbar/desktop ! Its all a matter of personal taste,familiarity and as far as mine goes i love speed, neatness and min. of visual clutter. gnome fits the bill. I was a lover of kde till rh 8.1(psyche) until rh 9.0 came along. Its no going back now for me. The choice is yours buddy, thats what linux about ~! later, C Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!

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Linuxers June 2003