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To: freebsd-hackers-digest@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: hackers-digest V1 #1657
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hackers-digest Tuesday, 19 November 1996 Volume 01 : Number 1657
In this issue:
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
Kernel calls - args in registers
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
Ipx to ip routing
Re: Announce: Alternative Mail Archive
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Creating a device driv., Pb with outb, outw...
Re: Kernel calls - args in registers
Re: Ipx to ip routing
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Paul Richards <paul@originat.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:10:18 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
In reply to Jonathan Lemon who said
>
> > This is the rub. PERL is not stable over the release cycle period for
> > FreeBSD. People are *always* complaining "why don't you upgrade your
> > PERL?", even when it it well known that an upgrade frequently requires
> > updating all of the PERL-dependent scripts to the new syntax, since
> > the syntax is not sufficiently stable.
>
> I take exception to this. The only syntax changes were from perl4 -> perl5,
> and were extremely minor. (actually syntax cleanup, to be pedantic). There
> haven't been any syntax changes internal to the p5 releases, unless you count
> the addition of new features.
The converse is infact generally true. You can run perl4 scripts under perl5
with very minor changes. Most perl5 scripts have no chance of being
back-ported to perl4. Things have changed a lot. Unless you're writing
very basic scripts you're going to be using all the new features like
dereferencing, new C-like function syntax, prototypes (well actually that's
a 5.003 thing) and objects. It's almost certainly the case that you're going
to be making heavy use of modules too.
Really, perl4 is a dead language.
- --
Paul Richards, Originative Solutions Ltd.
Internet: paul@netcraft.co.uk, http://www.netcraft.co.uk
Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1225 447500 (work)
------------------------------
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 13:28:31 -0700
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
In message <199611191814.LAA09210@phaeton.artisoft.com> Terry Lambert writes:
: At STP, Lithium is a gas. 8-).
At STP (20 C, 1 atmosphere), Lithium is a whitish metal solid.
Warner
------------------------------
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 13:31:46 -0700
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
In message <199611191933.TAA26518@right.PCS> Jonathan Lemon writes:
: > At STP, Lithium is a gas. 8-).
:
: Really? Then, are my lithium batteries pressurized, or are they bound in a
: molecule that changes their properties? (eh, physics was not my strong suit)
Lithium batteries are made of a Lithium compound, which is likely
disolved in ion form in some liquid or pseduo liquid to allow for the
chemical reaction (Ion exchange) that gives them their power. This is
glossing over a lot of details...
Warner
------------------------------
From: Richard Wackerbarth <rkw@dataplex.net>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:35:55 -0600
Subject: Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
>"Behind the times" mean anything to ya? :-)
>
>Now I know why I tell folks to buy from WC.
I suggest that you look at the WC catalog before you jump to conclusions.
Their catalog does not always reflect the latest release either. (Even
after they have shipped it)
------------------------------
From: roberto@keltia.freenix.fr (Ollivier Robert)
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 21:07:59 +0100
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
According to Terry Lambert:
> FreeBSD. People are *always* complaining "why don't you upgrade your
> PERL?", even when it it well known that an upgrade frequently requires
> updating all of the PERL-dependent scripts to the new syntax, since
> the syntax is not sufficiently stable.
Between Perl4 and Perl5, the changes are documented in perltrap. Between
5.x there have been very few syntaxic changes. You won't notice many
changes between 5.003 and 5.004 in that respect.
> For FreeBSD, the biggest problem is PERL dependent ports and MajorDomo;
> PERL upgrades have been delayed for MajorDomo more than once in the
> past.
Majordomo has been Perl5 compatible as of 1.93. 1.94 runs fine under it.
- --
Ollivier ROBERT -=- The daemon is FREE! -=- roberto@keltia.freenix.fr
FreeBSD keltia.freenix.fr 3.0-CURRENT #28: Sun Nov 10 13:37:41 MET 1996
------------------------------
From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 15:02:47 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
> >"Behind the times" mean anything to ya? :-)
> >
> >Now I know why I tell folks to buy from WC.
>
> I suggest that you look at the WC catalog before you jump to conclusions.
> Their catalog does not always reflect the latest release either. (Even
> after they have shipped it)
No, but usually WC ships you the latest release.
... JG
------------------------------
From: Travis Hassloch x231 <travis@EvTech.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 15:06:53 -0600
Subject: Kernel calls - args in registers
In message <199610231240.MAA05218@orchard.medford.ma.us> you write:
> of course, if you're going to pass syscall arguments in registers (and
> do the syscall.c-equivalent in hand-massaged assembler) you might find
> that you'll get a bigger *system* performance gain (at least on "CISC"
> systems like the i386 and m68k) by using a more RISC-like calling
> convention with the first few arguments in registers..
I've been looking at this a bit lately, and noticed that, as you
point out, gcc doesn't use registers on the x86 by default (IMHO it should
have, at least if you can configure that for free Unixes -- it's not like we
had a historical baggage commercial compiler to be call-level compatible
with).
One thing I thought might make a worthwhile gain is to make all
intrakernel calls use registers -- and if possible, all kernel calls.
Obviously this would require rewriting a bit of the system call
dispatch code. The next obvious step would be to change the
system call structure so that copying a stack around wasn't necessary
on most system calls.
I'm thinking it may screw up LKMs, possibly other things;
someone a bit more experienced could probably run through
the implications better than I.
CC'ed to tech-kern and hackers.
------------------------------
From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:00:19 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
> > FreeBSD. People are *always* complaining "why don't you upgrade your
> > PERL?", even when it it well known that an upgrade frequently requires
> > updating all of the PERL-dependent scripts to the new syntax, since
> > the syntax is not sufficiently stable.
>
> Between Perl4 and Perl5, the changes are documented in perltrap. Between
> 5.x there have been very few syntaxic changes. You won't notice many
> changes between 5.003 and 5.004 in that respect.
I realize this. However, it requires going over your existing PERL
code to make sure it doesn't break from the syntactical changes.
The problem is the dependencies for the existing code, and that fact
that if the maintainers of the code haven't "upgraded", then we become
promary support for the "upgraded" scripts.
This would have been less of a problem in the 5.x changeover if the
PERL distribution had a tool to upgrade scripts over the syntactic
changes.
> > For FreeBSD, the biggest problem is PERL dependent ports and MajorDomo;
> > PERL upgrades have been delayed for MajorDomo more than once in the
> > past.
>
> Majordomo has been Perl5 compatible as of 1.93. 1.94 runs fine under it.
What was the delay between when people started saying we should upgrade
to PERL 5.x and the release of MajorDomo 1.93?
The problem, again, is that the change cycle on PERL has historically
been too short to base a FreeBSD release on a PERL release... PERL
is moving faster than FreeBSD, in other words.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
- ---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
------------------------------
From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:01:19 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
> In message <199611191814.LAA09210@phaeton.artisoft.com> Terry Lambert writes:
> : At STP, Lithium is a gas. 8-).
>
> At STP (20 C, 1 atmosphere), Lithium is a whitish metal solid.
LiO2 or Li2?
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
- ---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
------------------------------
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:18:36 -0700
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
In message <199611192101.OAA09538@phaeton.artisoft.com> Terry Lambert writes:
: > At STP (20 C, 1 atmosphere), Lithium is a whitish metal solid.
:
: LiO2 or Li2?
Li. Lithium doesn't form a molecule like Hydrogen unless heated to
high temperatures. Lithiums melting point is around 30C and its
boiling point is around 40C or 50C. It isn't until it boils off that
you get Li2, a gas.
I don't have my CRC handy to look up the actual values here, but this
is what I recall from my college Chemestry labs. Li is violently
reactive when exposed to anything, which is what makes Li+ Ion
batteries so powerful (and so dangerous).
Warner
------------------------------
From: Don Yuniskis <dgy@rtd.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:30:07 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Turbo FreeBSD CD
It seems that Richard Wackerbarth said:
>
> >"Behind the times" mean anything to ya? :-)
> >
> >Now I know why I tell folks to buy from WC.
>
> I suggest that you look at the WC catalog before you jump to conclusions.
> Their catalog does not always reflect the latest release either. (Even
> after they have shipped it)
Yes, the 2.1.5R CD arrived with a catalog listing only the 2.1R disc!
:>
- --don
------------------------------
From: Chris Coleman <root@bb.cc.wa.us>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 13:53:18 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Ipx to ip routing
I work at a local community college. We have two FreeBSD boxes running
all of the internet services.
My question is: Does Freebsd support ipx to ip routing. I know that BSDi
does. (And they want $6,000 for their system because of it.)
Do we have any plans for implementing it?
We need it to solve two problems. number one, we are running out of ip
addresses on campus. We want to eliminate most of them and make them use
ipx routed through a FBSD box to communicate through the internet.
And we want to eliminate the need for so many ip addresses so that we
can get rid of all the ip address conflicts that we can't seem to trace
down.
Any one have a good method of finding an ip address conflict?
Thanks in advance
Chris Coleman (chris@aries.bb.cc.wa.us)
Computer Support Technician I (509)-766-8873
Big Bend Community College Internet Instructor
Death is life's way of telling you you're fired.
------------------------------
From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:07:41 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Announce: Alternative Mail Archive
Hi,
> First, browsing, as hypermail sets it up, is of very limited
> utility for finding anything in list archives of FreeBSD scale
> (currently about 300 megabytes and growing fast). Browsing is
> much better suited as a second step after an initial search has
> identified a few key messages. Using those keys, it is then
> useful to retrieve the thread context. Being able to re-sort a
> chunk of message by date, subject, author is useful, but only if
> the searcher has control over what is in the chunk. Hypermail
> just blindly chops things up into time segments and the chunk
> composition is static. The proper place for chunk sorting is on
> a set of retrieved messages.
That is probably true, but (at least when I am searching the lists)
I usually have some idea what time frame I am interested in. I am
usually looking to quote something back at somebody, etc. It is
very frustrating to type in a bunch of terms and still have it hit
a hundred messages, half of which are from 1995.
Often I would much rather just see a thread of messages, and look
through them. A lengthy list, of course, is unmanageable and unwieldy,
I was looking through the gated-people lists the other evening and
swearing that it took five to ten seconds every time I read a message
and then hit "Back" to return to the zillions of messages long list.
> The problem is that good IR systems are proprietary, and free IR
> systems are crap. Of course, I've spent quite a lot of time
> reading and writing about IR theory, so I'm pretty cynical about
> the whole field. (Since this is the direction of my Ph.D.
> research, maybe it isn't such a good thing?)
Write a good free IR system? :-)
In general I am frustrated with the current search engine and often I
would rather go to the raw list archives and search backwards for a
keyword or two, because that way at least I am assured of getting the
date relevance I usually desire.
The size of the current list archives are rather hefty...
19954856 Nov 19 13:32 freebsd-bugs
15828458 Nov 4 14:26 freebsd-commit
34684292 Nov 19 11:47 freebsd-current
76949942 Nov 19 13:31 freebsd-hackers
6535669 Nov 19 11:25 freebsd-isp
14245498 Nov 19 12:50 freebsd-ports
72657153 Nov 19 13:07 freebsd-questions
That is a LOT of data to look through, and dates back to early 1995..
... JG
------------------------------
From: Wilko Bulte <wilko@yedi.iaf.nl>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 21:20:36 +0100 (MET)
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
As Terry Lambert wrote...
> > A point to consider : I _loathe_ Perl. Reading it gives me a
> > headache, and I would sooner snort powdered lithium than program in
> > it. Understand that I think Perl is relevant for what it is, and not
> > what I feel about it.
>
> At STP, Lithium is a gas. 8-).
>
>
> Terry Lambert
Interesting. Very soft greyish metal the last time I saw it...
Wilko
_ ____________________________________________________________________
| / o / / _ Bulte email: wilko@yedi.iaf.nl - Arnhem, The Netherlands
|/|/ / / /( (_) Do, or do not. There is no 'try' - Yoda
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
From: J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 23:07:43 +0100 (MET)
Subject: Re: Creating a device driv., Pb with outb, outw...
As Emmanuel Duros wrote:
> #include<machine/cpufunc.h>
>
> void main(void){
>
> outb( 0x300, 1 );
> }
>
> I always get a BUS ERROR. I also tried on the parallel port (0x378)
> without success.
>
> Any comments on this, why does this happen ?
Because user programs are normally not allowed to fiddle with the
hardware directly; that's the kernel's domain.
You can circumvent this restriction by keeping a descriptor on the
/dev/io ``security hole'' open.
- --
cheers, J"org
joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
------------------------------
From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 15:30:34 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Kernel calls - args in registers
> > of course, if you're going to pass syscall arguments in registers (and
> > do the syscall.c-equivalent in hand-massaged assembler) you might find
> > that you'll get a bigger *system* performance gain (at least on "CISC"
> > systems like the i386 and m68k) by using a more RISC-like calling
> > convention with the first few arguments in registers..
>
> I've been looking at this a bit lately, and noticed that, as you
> point out, gcc doesn't use registers on the x86 by default (IMHO it should
> have, at least if you can configure that for free Unixes -- it's not like we
> had a historical baggage commercial compiler to be call-level compatible
> with).
What about processor emulation environments?
For instance, running my NetScape binaries on an Alpha using a processor
emulator that converts traps to native kernel calls?
I think that in this situation, calling in registers would complicate
(and in some cases, because of alignment, make nearly impossible) such
cross-processor ABI emulation.
I find it extremely unlikely that NetScape will be porting to BSD or
Linux on a PowerMAC (for example) any time soon, and this ABI/processor
hybridization is about the only way you will be able to use commercial
apps on that platform.
FWIW: I agree on intra-kernel calling; I'd go so far as to suggest using
callee-pop conventions, in fact.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
- ---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
------------------------------
From: Hal Snyder <hal@vailsys.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 17:02:42 -0600
Subject: Re: Ipx to ip routing
Chris Coleman wrote:
> I work at a local community college. We have two FreeBSD boxes running
> all of the internet services.
>
> My question is: Does Freebsd support ipx to ip routing. I know that BSDi
> does. (And they want $6,000 for their system because of it.)
>
> Do we have any plans for implementing it?
>
> We need it to solve two problems. number one, we are running out of ip
> addresses on campus. We want to eliminate most of them and make them use
> ipx routed through a FBSD box to communicate through the internet.
Huh? Where do you want your IPX traffic to go once it hits the router?
> And we want to eliminate the need for so many ip addresses so that we
> can get rid of all the ip address conflicts that we can't seem to trace
> down.
Why not just set up one or more proxy hosts between your local net and
the Internet? It's a common way of a)conserving Internet addresses and
b) protecting a LAN from the Internet.
Your Internet IP addresses, which are in short supply, go on the
perimeter net where you will only have a handful of interfaces. Then
use the RFC 1918 addresses for the rest of your network. I like to use
the 192.168.x.x addresses, using one Class C per segment.
> Any one have a good method of finding an ip address conflict?
Use arpwatch and/or tcpdump in arp mode.
------------------------------
From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 09:38:50 +1030 (CST)
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
Jonathan Lemon stands accused of saying:
>
> I take exception to this. The only syntax changes were from perl4 -> perl5,
> and were extremely minor. (actually syntax cleanup, to be pedantic). There
> haven't been any syntax changes internal to the p5 releases, unless you count
> the addition of new features.
Fine. You realise by standing up and saying something about it you get
nominated as a maintainer? 8)
> Also, the "official" release version is still 5.003, nevermind that the
> development version of _08 is coming out this week or the next.
Ok; does this mean that new major release is imminent? What sort of
'product life' would you anticipate the the current 'stable' version
has left?
> > At STP, Lithium is a gas. 8-).
>
> Really? Then, are my lithium batteries pressurized, or are they
> bound in a molecule that changes their properties? (eh, physics was
> not my strong suit)
Lithium batteries use salts of lithium. Lithium is not useful as a metal
other than as fantasy material for teenage chemistry students who aren't
happy with the curriculum's shockingly poor explosives content.
(Yes, the ex-keeper of the rec.pyrotechnics FAQ lives in Adelaide, and
I know him and several of his lunatic friends 8)
Terry; I'd consider pressurising my head before snorting perhaps if
you like; the net result would _still_ be comparable to my reaction to
Perl 8)
- --
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[
]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[
]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[
]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
------------------------------
From: Tim Pierce <twpierce@bio-3.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 17:21:17 +0600
Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do!
> From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
> Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:00:19 -0700 (MST)
>
> The problem, again, is that the change cycle on PERL has historically
> been too short to base a FreeBSD release on a PERL release... PERL
> is moving faster than FreeBSD, in other words.
I don't believe this is the case, either. In the last two years,
Perl has gone from 5.000 to almost 5.004, the same time frame in
which FreeBSD has gone from pre-2.0 almost to 2.2-RELEASE. Do you
really find the differences between Perl 5.000 and 5.004 to be
*more* significant than those between FreeBSD 2.0 and 2.2-RELEASE?
I don't get that impression; if anything, FreeBSD seems to be
outstripping Perl in speed of development.
------------------------------
End of hackers-digest V1 #1657
******************************
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