rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott M. Rose) (03/05/91)
Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 15 Mon Mar 4 10:50:31 CST 1991
Today's Topics:
Comp.os.coherent
RCS 5.5 Port is available
New files on piggy
.ZIP and other nightmares
printer not working?
libcurses
RCS
Re: libcurses
Re: .ZIP and other nightmares
Administrivia:
The Coherent Digest is a forum for discussion of the MWC Coherent 3.x
operating system. Send submissions to "coherent@cs.wisc.edu" and
administrivia to "coherent-reqeust@cs.wisc.edu". Previous issues are
archived for anonymous FTP access on piggy.ucsb.edu in the directory
"pub/coherent/mail-list".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 91 16:01:24 CST
From: Scott Rose <rose>
To: coherent
Subject: Comp.os.coherent
This is from the administrator of the Coherent list.
It has been suggested that I reassure subscribers that the prospective
emergence of comp.os.coherent will not mean the death of coherent@cs.wisc.edu-
neither the echo, nor the digest, will wither away as a result of the
formation of this group. Rather, it is my intention to
1. Digest postings to the newsgroup and redistribute those digests to
a. All subscribers of the Coherent Digest.
b. Any subscriber to the echo that requests it.
2. Forward the Coherent Digest to the newsgroup.
I think that this scheme together with the creation of the newsgroup make for
better service for everybody, Usenet readers and non-readers alike-- better
because the number of participants will increase, without anybody being shut
out. I hope most people can agree with that.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 91 22:01:49 CST
From: rosevax.rosemount.com!grante%rutgers.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (Grant B. Edwards)
To: coherent@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Subject: RCS 5.5 Port is available
I have posted the Coherent port of RCS version 5.5 to:
cs.umn.edu /pub/grante/rcs/rcs.tar.Z
This is a VAST improvement over the port of version 4.2 that was
previously posted. Version 5.5 had been rewritten and cleaned up so
that it required far fewer changes.
Version 5.5 also includes a test script that verifies all of the
commands and options, so I'm pretty confident that the port hasn't
introduced any bugs.
The gnu version of diff3 is included with RCS, as well as my
implementations of the getopt and install commands found on other
systems.
If you want to build RCS without any editting you will need to get and
build dmake first. If you want to use Coherent make you will have to
do some work on the RCS makefile. I highly recommend dmake, and you
can get it from:
cs.umn.edu /pub/grante/dmake/dmake/tar.Z
cs.umn.edu seems to have problems with transferring large files, so the
compressed tar files for both dmake and RCS have also been split into
63K chunks, which you can cat together into zcat. For example, RCS is
split into 7 pieces named rcs.tar.Z00 through rcs.tar.Z06. You need to
get those 7 files from /pub/grante/rcs, and then do something like:
$ cat rcs.tar.Z0* | zcat | ustar xvf -
dmake is the same, but I believe it is in 11 chunks.
Grant Edwards
Rosemount Inc, CB7 He who dies with
12001 Technology Drive grante@hydro.rosemount.com the most manuals
Eden Prairie, MN 55344 uunet!rosevax!hydro!grante wins.
------------------------------
Date: Sun Mar 3 22:32:28 1991
From: Bill Henning <bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca>
To: coherent
Subject: New files on piggy
I have posted the following files on piggy:
chess.zip (a curses based chess game)
trek73.zip (a Star Trek game)
sc.zip (a simple spreadsheet)
month.zip (a visual calendar)
I downloaded chess.zip right back, unzipped it, and untarred it
successfully, therefore it should be all right. The sdb.uu files
are also confirmed good on piggy. Enjoy!
p.s.
Everyone should get the new libcurses.a from mwcbbs, it fixed the
bugs that prevented chess, month, and sc from working properly under
coherent.
- --
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Amiga// | UUCP: bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca /* preferred address */ |
| 1000// | |
| \\ // | -or- uunet!van-bc!bhami!bhenning \___ last resort |
| \X/bhami | -or- uunet!wimsey.bc.ca!bhami!bhenning / may not work! |
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
------------------------------
Date: 4 Mar 91 05:33:17
From: root%trystro.uucp@Think.COM (Richard Nickle)
To: coherent
Subject: .ZIP and other nightmares
I don't know if it's been brought up before, but can we
exclude the .ZIP format from piggy? I personally don't
trust the unzip routine I have here, and the one on the
much larger system I ftp to/from doesn't even work as well.
Since I can't unzip it on the remote system, I have to bring
it here before I can look at it, and there's no gaurantee
then that it'll work.
This would not be such a big problem, but so far, about 1 out
of every 2 of these .zips trashes my filesystem and
forces a reboot, then I gotta spend 5 minutes or so clearing
i-nodes. (Like month.zip just did about five minutes ago).
In fact, month extracted the second time. I'd say it was
a fluke, but this is not the first time it has happened with
.zip files brought from piggy. I did everything right,
used binary mode for transfer via FTP and kermit.
I do not think it's likely that the .ZIP format is going to
knock down years of tradition within the unix world. I would
also like to see the tradition stand, since I can pretty much
take any file from any unix system in .tar, .ustar, .pax or
.sh (and any .Z format compression) and move it to my system
without any data loss. If there was an adequate, public-domain
ZIP utility for Unix, I wouldn't see any problem at all, but
there isn't, and since ZIP at its heart is proprietary, it just
ain't going to happen within a convenient timeframe.
ZIP may yield a tighter compression ratio, but what of it?
Standards are not nescessarily based on performance, they
are based on commonality. C doesn't yield the tightest
code or have the smallest source size of any language, but
Unix systems use it because it's a common denominator across
all systems, or as close as you can get. If the reverse was
true, we'd be writing code in compiled APL, and no one would
ever get anything done.
My suggestion? Either exclude .zip from piggy, or have .zip
as an alternate upload format (secondary) with .Z compression
taking primacy. I would also be interested in hearing any
suggestions about how I upload software (I normally use shars,
just to be on the safe side. Tar in itself is sometimes a
problem, but this is probably just habit from before ustar
was available, I also suspect not everyone has ustar.) Should
I be uploading software in .tar as opposed to .sh?
Thanks for listening to my grumbling, I hope this doesn't turn
into a standards-battle. But if anyone has any constructive
input, please reply.
Sincerely,
Rick
__|__ __ __ __|__ __ __ __
| | | ||__ | |__| | | |
|__ | |__| __| |__ |__ | |__|
__| 2400bps (617) 625-7155 fcsys!trystro!rick@think.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 91 13:23 CET
From: Gert Eldering <BUROGE@HLERUL2.BitNet>
To: coherent
Subject: printer not working?
I'm new to Coherent (and Unix as well), so this may be a simple
question to answer:
Why is my printer apparently not working under Coherent?
If I issue the LPR command and enter some lines and conclude with
CTRL-D I get a message like:
lpd: /dev/lp: no such device or address
My computer is an EPSON AX-2 (probably comparable to an EPSON Equity II)
The printer is an good old MX-80 connected to the paralel port.
When I installed Coherent I left out the manual pages.
Any help is welcome, thanks,
Gert Eldering, Leiden State University, The Netherlands.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 91 09:01:09 CST
From: G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu
To: coherent
Subject: libcurses
Subject: libcurses
1.
Would it be possible for SOMEONE to send libcurses.a to me? I have
not been able to get UUCP to work, and it's very expensive to try as
it's a long distance call to mwcbbs. The other update files look like
they would be nice too, but I think libcurses is the only critical.
2.
Where is the manual entry for swap? What is swap, and what does it do?
It's in the Lexicon under system maintenance, but nowhere else.
3.
What is /dev/modem? I can't find it referenced in the manual anywhere.
(neither is modeminit, but I can figure that out....)
4.
Is there a way in Coherent to find out, if a file is linked, what it is
linked to?
5.
Lastly, a comment about dmake. Someone on some post here had a program
that need dmake to make. My first thought was, ok, I'll get dmake. Then
I got on piggy and looked at the size of dmake -- over 900,000 bytes.
Let me remind the people who use these kinds of tools that Coherent was
designed with "small is beautiful" in mind. I don't have 1 meg of disk
space to waste on a utility that replaces something that already works
pretty well in the delivered version. Is there a justification for the
size? (is there some reason to use text files instead of compressed files
at an FTP site? - it would appear to be a waste of bandwidth)
Later,
Gerry
ps to bill henning...I've been trying hard to send e-mail to you
unsuccessfully. (I'm getting yours - thanks) I'll try some more.
Gerald Skerbitz University of Minnesota
612/626-5379 g-sker@vm1.spcs.umn.edu g-sker.uminn1.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 91 09:39:41 CST
From: G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu
To: coherent
Subject: RCS
Subject: RCS
What is RCS???
Gerald Skerbitz University of Minnesota
612/626-5379 g-sker@vm1.spcs.umn.edu g-sker.uminn1.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 11:22:47 -0500
From: chench@rrdstrad.nist.gov (Frank Chen)
To: G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu, coherent
Subject: Re: libcurses
>From G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu Mon Mar 4 10:15:42 1991
>
>Subject: libcurses
>1.
>Would it be possible for SOMEONE to send libcurses.a to me? I have
>not been able to get UUCP to work, and it's very expensive to try as
>it's a long distance call to mwcbbs. The other update files look like
>they would be nice too, but I think libcurses is the only critical.
>
Me too! Or, is that possible to put on piggy?
>3.
>What is /dev/modem? I can't find it referenced in the manual anywhere.
>(neither is modeminit, but I can figure that out....)
>
/dev/modem is a link to one of the serial port(the one you specify in the
installation procedure.(I think mine is /dev/com2r). modeminit is located
in /usr/bin/modeminit.
BTW. It looks like some conflict in modeminit file with that suggested by
a mail from MWC a while back about dial-in modem access. The modeminit
use /dev/modem(in my case, link to /dev/com2r). Don't we need to use
/dev/com2l to configure the modem?
>4.
>Is there a way in Coherent to find out, if a file is linked, what it is
>linked to?
>
"ls -i" will show the i-number(i-node). Write up a script using ls -i and
grep commands you sure can find out. There might be easier way to do.
Right now, I just use 'ls -ilR > file.list' and use editor or scat(more)
to search for the same i-number.
>
>From G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu Mon Mar 4 10:49:15 1991
>Subject: RCS
>
>Subject: RCS
>What is RCS???
>
I never use RCS on any system. The man page from my SUN's account shows:
The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple revisions
of files. RCS automates the storing, retrieval, logging,
identification, and merging of revisions. RCS is useful for
text that is revised frequently, for example programs, docu-
mentation, graphics, papers, and form letters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Chih-Hung Chen (Frank) || Bitnet : CHEN@NBSENH.BITNET |
| Bldg. 235/E-151 || Internet: chench@rrdstrad.nist.gov |
| Reactor Radiation Division || Internet: chen@enh.nist.gov |
| Ntl. Inst. of Standards & Technology || Fax : (301) 921-9847 |
| Gaithersburg, Md 20899 || Phone : (301) 975-3959 |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|
| UNIX, VMS, DOS, MAC, TCP/IP, DECnet, AppleTalk, Novell, PASCAL, C, FORTRAN |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 09:22:34 -0600
From: lark@greylock.tivoli.com (Lar Kaufman)
To: coherent, root%trystro.uucp@Think.COM
Subject: Re: .ZIP and other nightmares
I only trust the ZOO format, myself.
- -lar
------------------------------
End of Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 15
****************************************
--
Scott Rose
rose@cs.wisc.edu
(608) 238-3801