From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie) Subject: Re: A few question, mostly about pl8 Date: 14 Apr 1993 22:26:55 GMT
> I would appreciate any assistance anyone could offer with the
> following problems with Linux (0.99pl8 Initially installed by SLS, then
> I updated the kernel):
> 3) Now that I have upgraded my kernel to pl8, I assume that there
> are (or will be) updates to some of the affected bins. Most of mine are
> probably quite old. Any idea what ftp sites I should check and which
> commands need to be updated?
If your commands still work then there is probably little need to
upgrade. Binary compatibility is as much a function of the system
shared libraries as it is of the kernel - kernel upgrades go to great
lengths not to break existing code, but rather to fix bugs and to
provide extra functionality.
You can use the "ldd" command (part of the Linux binary utilities in
the GCC directory on tsx-11.mit.edu) to find out which libraries an
application depends on. The current main library is now
libc.so.4.3.3, available in the same GCC directory; by following the
instructions in the release note you should be able to upgrade from
any libc.so.4.x without changing your binaries. You might however
want to replace any programs that depend on libc older than
libc.so.4.0, or on X libraries older than libX11.so.3.0.
Between them, sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu hold pretty much all
of the significant Linux binaries and source.
> 4) Does Linux support memory, disk space, or number of child
> process limitations on a user? Is ulimit supported by Linux? How is it
> used?
Only partially. There is no support for quotas (although there are
patches around which add quota support to older kernels). ulimit is
partially supported; currently, only the core-size limit is respected,
and (for ext2fs filesystems only) the file-size limit.
The easiest way to use these is to use the builtin ulimit command of
the bash shell. "help ulimit" will help you get started.
> 5) Every once in a while I accidentally cause non-printable text
> to be sent to my console. Sometimes this results in all future text from
> Linux coming out garbled. Setterm doesn't seem to help, nor does logging out
> and then back in. It seems that that virtual console is basically worthless
> until I reboot. Any fix?
Try "echo ^Q^O". You will need to type control-Q twice to get the ^Q
character, and use control-Q control-O to get ^O. (This is again
assuming you are using bash.)
Cheers,
Stephen Tweedie.