jgifford@attmail.com
Date: 06/14/92


From: jgifford@attmail.com
Subject: More from jim, hd question
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1992 05:33:29 GMT

I am diligently backing up my 100 MB HD to a 40 MB HD (both IDE).
loads of fun, been at it for two days.....
Anyway, I was trying to make a new root partition on the 40, and I was doing a
cp /bin/* /mnt/bin
and I suddenly got a zillion hd timeouts, and device errors
device 0301(hda1) and 0341(???what is this device???)
Anyway, to make things short, I had to re-mkfs hdb1, and things are a little
better, I ended up tarring and compressing, copying to other hd, and untarring.
to copy a lot of files(whole directories) Things like /usr/src will remail tarr
ed...
well, gotta run,
Hope to get new root up with uucp again sometime tomorrow, so please respond
to jgifford@attmail.com, as raskol is not receiving mail at the moment.

BTW, FYI, I had over 5.5 MB arrive by uucp last night(I had some ftpmail stuff
arrive, surprise, surprise) I had the second drive mounted under
/usr/spool/uucp, and there was no prob, then to run elm, I had to put the 40MB
partition under /tmp(not enough disk space)

Now for a small question:
My father and mother have this crazy idea to start a company that is a bbs.
(we are in a geographically isolated area, with 200-500 computer users,
and the nearest bbs is over 60 miles away) They want a 486-50(NOT a DX2)
EISA with a 200MB IDE as root partition, and a 1GB SCSI as everything else,
and a SCSI tape backup, and a CD-ROM for shareware. video is not an issue.
They are getting a deluxe tower(two fans, room to crawl around inside, 10 bays,
300W p/s place for LOTS of serial ports) I can build them a custom serial
board, but I saw a terminal server advertised that can handle 16 serial devices
and connects to the main computer either via ethernet, or a special cable.
Will there soon be easy support for TCP/IP over ethernet? (Oh yeah, they
want to offer Internet access) ;) I would like to be able to use linux,
but if it won't do what I need, I will have to buy a commercial version. :(
I am personally keep a mirror of all linux software when it is up and running.
(lofty goals, huh?)
What I really want to know is:
        1) will linux support SCSI fairly flawlessly?
        2) will linux soon have a bigfs? >64MB?(14 char is ok, even if limiting)
        3) is there a problem with speed and EISA?
        4) how many serial devices can linux handle(I thought I saw a reference
           to there being 64 or 128 reserved???)
        5) is a terminal server better?(less heat in cabinet...)
        6) is ANYONE working on tcp/ip for linux that will be painless?
        7) does any experienced bbs'er out there have a better idea of the best
           setup for these goals?
now for a selfish question:
is anyone willing to put ftp'd files on floppy and mail them to me for a modest
fee? I need a lot of things real bad when my hd returns from the shop.
Thanks in advance,
Jim Gifford
jim@raskol.attmail.com (temporarily inactive)
jgifford@attmail.com
Thanks!!!