RE: Some little bugs in 2.0.5

Rob Riggs (rriggs@tesser.com)
Sat, 13 Jul 1996 01:08:53 -0600 (MDT)


On 11-Jul-96 piercarl@sabi.demon.co.uk wrote:
>Here are four patches for some small bugs in 2.0.5 (and probably also in
>all 2.0.x releases so far.
>
>The first is that for some reason, as originally reported by Bob Riggs:
>
[snip]
> Robert Riggs: "[BUG] ppp/slip fails with 1.3.6[78]" (Feb 24, 5:04):
> > I traced my problems with ppp/slip not working to this
> > section of the 1.3.67 patch:
> >
> > --- include/asm-i386/termios.h Sat Feb 24 04:23:03 1996
> > +++ include/asm-i386/termios.h.new Fri Feb 23 11:35:15 1996
> > @@ -268,6 +268,8 @@
> >
> > #ifdef __KERNEL__
> >
> > +#include <linux/string.h>
> > +
> > /*
> > * Translate a "termio" structure into a "termios". Ugh.
> > */
> >
> >
> > Reversing this allows slip/ppp to connect.
> That definitely does not make sense. What compiler are you using? The
> only way I see for the above patch to break anything at all is a
> compiler bug when compiling the kernel.
> Or maybe some old out-of-date object file just got re-compiled correctly
> when you changed termios.h?
> Linus
>
>I know too it does not make sense -- but I have had the same problem,
>that termio calls fail, as reported by Bob originally, as I have had it
>since 1.3.69:
>
[snip]
>
>The solution is to use '__builtin_memcpy':
>
[snip]

There is a reason Linus never "fixed" this...

The solution to my problem was to power cycle the computer. I
had rebooted numerous times when I reported this. Actually
powering down the computer fixed this problem for me. Definitely
a hardware problem.

>Then compiling the kernel as ELF fails to produce a compressed version
>on intel machines because 'arch/i386/boot/compressed/Makefile' does not
>include the rules file, and thus the config information:
>
>========================================================================
>--- linux/arch/i386/boot/Makefile~ Sun May 5 07:05:58 1996
>+++ linux/arch/i386/boot/Makefile Wed Jul 10 21:36:48 1996
>@@ -94,3 +94,5 @@
> rm -f zImage tools/build compressed/vmlinux.out
> rm -f bzImage tools/bbuild compressed/bvmlinux.out
> @$(MAKE) -C compressed clean
>+
>+include $(TOPDIR)/Rules.make
>========================================================================
[snip]

I can (and do) produce compressed kernels without this patch.

>
>I still have some terrible problem with my PPP connections dropping
>every few minutes (at random) while the line stays up; this happens both
>an ISP (demon) and with SLiRP 1.0c, and leads me to suspect that the
>problem is within the PPP code (either ppp-2.2.0f or ther kernel PPP
>code).
>
>

My PPP connection is rock-solid to my ISP. I connect at 28.8K
every time, and aside from *one* node on my ISP's terminal
server, everything works well. Note that 28.8K modems can
cause some *very* strange problems on noisy lines. When
noise levels change, the modem will try to renegotiate its
connection speed. This can cause all sorts of trouble as
the connection can seem to go dead for well over 30 seconds.
This may be wreaking havok on the PPP layer. Your may want
to increase pppd's logging level. This may give you enough
information to isolate the problem.

My guess is that all of your problems are hardware related.

Rob
(rriggs@tesser.com)