September 2003 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Oberon Database
by Dan Parnete 19 Sep '05

19 Sep '05

Hello, I have read this list archives, the documentation inside the distributions, some extra found on the web and I understood. Database is a Tabu word in this community, and is better to not talk about. There is no trace in any distribution (excluding the commercial BlackBox) and the new Bluebottle project doesn't intend to implement one. Ok. It's a choice of live. But don't tell me none of you never needed to put some data altogether. I can't believe nobody extended at list the Library code to more flexible collections management. I saw some database projects started long time ago. Where are this implementations? In other words: if I need a database, have I write it myself? Dan

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Re: [Oberon] Support for Realtek RTL-8139 with Native Oberon
by frey＠inf.ethz.ch 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

> I'm running Native Oberon on a Pentium-II class machine. > How can a network card such as, Realtek RTL-8139 be > configured in Native Oberon ? PCITools.Scan was able to > detect this card as a PCI device. The driver is currently only available for the new Bluebottle OS. http://bluebottle.ethz.ch It should not be too difficult to make a Native Oberon driver out of the Bluebottle OS driver. But... I have no time to do this myself. --Thomas Frey

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Over-Reliance On Microsoft Endangers Business And National Security
by Douglas G. Danforth 24 Sep '03

24 Sep '03

Oberon Folks, Here is an interesting posting in the US press. -Doug Danforth Study: Over-Reliance On Microsoft Endangers Business And National Security Sept. 24, 2003 A panel of security experts blasted Microsoft for vulnerabilities in its software and said the company's monopoly on operating systems is a security risk. By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News A panel of leading security experts Wednesday blasted Microsoft for vulnerabilities in its software and warned that reliance on the company's software is a danger to both business and national security. The group, which debuted its report at the first day of a two-day conference hosted by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), was headed by Dan Geer, chief technology officer of @Stake, a security consulting firm. "As fast as the world's computing infrastructure is growing, vulnerability to attack is growing faster still," Geer said. "Microsoft's attempts to tightly integrate myriad applications with its operating system have significantly contributed to excessive complexity and vulnerability. This deterioration of security compounds when nearly all computers rely on a single operating system subject to the same vulnerabilities the world over." Ed Black, the CEO and president of CCIA, whose members include Microsoft competitors such as Sun and Oracle, was even more blunt. "Microsoft's monopoly threatens consumers in a number of ways," he said. "It's clear it is now also a threat to our security, our safety, and even our national security." According to the report and its seven authors--security consultants and leaders of several security firms--the biggest problem is the over-reliance by businesses and governments worldwide on Microsoft's products. "The problem is that of monoculture," said Bruce Schneier, one of the authors and a co-founder of security firm Counterpane. "As long as all computers are running the same operating system, they're all vulnerable." Using several agricultural analogies of the danger of relying on a single crop-- from attacks of boll weevils on cotton to the Irish potato famine--the authors stressed that reliance on Microsoft dooms IT to a continued plague of vulnerabilities. "We need operating-system diversity," said John Quarterman, another of the report's authors and the founder of InternetPerils, an Internet risk-management company. "If there's one thing to take away from this report, it's that a single attack can take out all the computers running a single operating system." The monopoly that Microsoft enjoys--Windows is by far the world's most popular operating system--insures that attackers will focus their efforts on its software. More important, these attacks will have rapid and broad effects. "Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an environment in which Microsoft's program interoperate efficiently only with Internet viruses," Geer said. The complexity of Microsoft's software--the report claims that integrating applications with Windows results in code 15 to 35 times more complex-- results in a similar increase in vulnerabilities. And simply patching the vulnerability, as Microsoft has increasingly had to do on the fly as vulnerabilities are disclosed, only exacerbates the problem. "I don't think that Microsoft can ever fix this," said Geer. Businesses, organizations, and government agencies must wake up to the fact that there are ramifications to their decisions to buy Microsoft, added Schneier. "Because everyone's buying it, there are security implications to your decision to buy what everyone else is buying," he said. "You need to take that into consideration." Among its other recommendations, the report, "CyberInsecurity: The Cost Of Monopoly," urged the federal government to diversify the software it uses, demand that Microsoft design its products to work well with other companies' software, and require Microsoft to open its source code to other developers. Some of its advice is sure to become controversial, because it hinges on government stepping in, perhaps on an antitrust basis, to make specific demands of Microsoft. Among these recommendations: Microsoft should not be allowed to release Office for any one platform, such as Windows, until it releases comparable Linux and Mac OS versions. While the report's authors note the seriousness of their recommendations, they stood by them. "When the government uses a product whose monopoly position undermines its security," said Geer, "antitrust becomes a national security issue."

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debug output from OFSFATVolumes.AssignDirectoryEntry
by Peter Easthope 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

The only way I can investigate the problem with ET.StoreAscii applied to a FAT file is by debug output. OFSFATVolumes.AssignDirectoryEntry already contains many Writes to the Kernel.Log. The flags Trace and Detail are already set TRUE in OFSFATVolumes. Yet the debug output does not appear in the Kernel.Log. Why is this? How can I make this extensive output visible? Thanks, Peter E. http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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Spam problems hinder WebDAV
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 14 Sep '03

14 Sep '03

Hi, originally I wanted to do some work on WebDAV on the weekend beside some family things. But this didn't work out. Besides normal spamming (About 10-20 a day) for a while somebody flooded my forums with spam (I think I stopped that for the moment). Perhaps this angered the spammer. On friday I began to receive bounce messages for spam mails which couldn't be delivered. So it seems somebody is happily sending thousends of spam messages with an invented sender address like john_doe(a)edgarschwarz.de. Can you imagine that I'm happy when I open my mailbox and most of the mails are "normal" spam ? I wonder when the forger will switch to another domain. I consider this an attack on my domain. Because perhaps somebody out in the internet is getting a lot of spam from john_doe(a)edgarschwarz.de and decides that edgarschwarz.de is a spammers domain which should be blocked. Nevertheless I decided to archive these bounced forged messages and to put them online. Perhaps somebody can help me to find the forger ? If you are curious have a look at "http://www.edgarschwarz.de/spam/" BTW, to do this I added two small commands to Mail.Panel to allow me either to log spam headers to a file (For normal spam) or log the complete message (For bounced forged messages). Cheers, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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New mailing list server test
by Pieter Muller 10 Sep '03

10 Sep '03

This is a test message to see if the list is still working. The server has been migrated and upgraded to a new software version. There is no need to reply. -- Pieter

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Re: [Oberon] Strange problems with WinAOS and WebDAV
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 08 Sep '03

08 Sep '03

Hi John, I was on holidays (Spending a day at JMLC2003 at Klagenfurt, showin WebDAV), my wife is in hospital now and in a couple of minutes I will go to the birthday of a nephew. So perhaps you will understand that I can only give short answers at the moment. Sorry but I don't have time to go into details just now > After taking a break from trying to get WebDAV to work > right under WinAOS I took another shot at it. I'm > using the latest WebDAV build (WebDAV.1.0.0.Zip) and > the latest version of WinAOS (Version 1.03, although > for some reason it still says "1.02" in the log and > in the Distribution.Text file. But I know I > downloaded from the 1.03 link, and I did this twice > just to make sure). You could't try to get http://webdav.ethz.ch/davzip/WebDAV.1.2.0.Zip I will update my homepage soon. After my holidays I gave it at try with WinAOS Version 1.03. > Oberon locks up hard. I traced the lock up to a > call to procedure WebHTTP.ParseReply(). This is probably the same problem I have. In AosTCP.Mod I get in loop because Receive only gives 0 all the time. Here some checking the state of the connection and perhaps leaving after some timeout should be added. > Another wierd problem. In the procedure > DCT.CheckIn there is the following > line: > > IF resHeader.statuscode # WebHTTP.MultiStatus THEN In the newest bluebottle you will probably find a newer WebHTTP.Mod with more HTTP status codes. BTW, MultiStatus = 209. > I'm not sure what to do next. So if you could verify whether your lockup is also this AosTCP.Receive loop and perhaps fix it, this would probably also solve my problem with WebDAV 1.2.0 on WinAos and would allow me to make a release also for WinAos. This would be nice, because I got a request for my client from the makers of the Tamino WebDAV server and so they wouldn't need a Bluebottle partition to try it. Cheers, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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re: [Oberon] Rembrandt > Scale :html (gif) ?
by eas-lab＠absamail.co.za 07 Sep '03

07 Sep '03

--- Peter Easthope <peter_easthope(a)gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca> wrote: > > cg> Q1. does this only apply to *.Pict ? > > > > Probably. Can Rembrandt open any file other than > > Pict? > > John Drake wrote: > Yes. In fact Rembrandt used to be the only tool > for opening gif and other files. But now by > default ImageDocs is associated with gif files > instead of RembrandtDocs. In Windows System 3 > this is changed using IniEdit.Panel. I'm not > sure how it's done under N-O. > > cg> Q3. Since converting: *.gif <--> *.Pict is > > possible under n-o > > > > PictConverters has *.gif --> *.Pict. Where is > > *.Pict --> *.gif ? > > It's right there in the PictConverters.Tool at the > bottom. The example given is: > > PictConverters.PictToGIF Clown.Pict => Clown.gif ~ > > I use this facility to create graphics from > Leonardo for web projects. I'll sometimes > create graphics using Leonardo/Vinci and then > export them using PictConverters to GIF or > other formats. > > > cg> Q3. Since converting: *.gif <--> *.Pict is > > > possible under n-o, can > > > I rescale *.gif ? > > > > Converting to Pict seems too inefficient for Web > > browsing. > > I don't think that would be a problem since since > is very fast on modern computers. But module > Pictures can directly load Gif files anyway. In > fact that's what I believe the HTML browser is > already doing (converting to Pict on the fly). > Look at the documentation from module Pictures: > > (* Open the picture file with name from disk. Any > graphic file format listed in the PictureConverters > section of the Registry can be loaded (e.g. GIF, JPEG, > XBM, BMP). *) > > PROCEDURE Open (P: Picture; name: ARRAY OF CHAR; > color: BOOLEAN); > > > How about writing fast scaling commands as part of > > the Images package? > > GfxImages does precisely that. And Images is better > than Pictures/Rembrandt anyway since it supports > more than just 256 colors. > ________________________________ System.Directory GfxImages* = GfxImages.Obj only ?? Where is the documentation ? == GfxHowto.html , GfxOverview.html Watson.ShowDef GfxImages.Obj == PROCEDURE HScale ( PROCEDURE LinearHScale ( PROCEDURE LinearVScale ( PROCEDURE Scale ( PROCEDURE VScale ( !! This should be able to do it ?? file:GfxHowto.html > How do I scale the current coordinate system? By calling one of Gfx.Scale(ctxt, sx, sy); Gfx.ScaleAt(ctxt, sx, sy, x, y); I'd still like to use existing Oberon pictures. How? If you have an Oberon picture stored in a file, you can directly load it into an image using the following code: VAR img: Images.Image; done: BOOLEAN; NEW(img); Images.Load(img, "MyImage.Pict", done); IF done THEN ... END; __________________________________ Let's see what Rembrandt.Panel can do ? System.Directory *.gif == > SaveLife.gif System.CopyFiles SaveLife.gif => Temp.gif ~ Desktops.OpenDoc Temp.gif ~ <--- a small one: width < UserTrack PictConverters.GIFToPict Temp.gif => Temp.Pict ~ Desktops.OpenDoc Temp.Pict ~ == same except black text now = green Desktops.OpenDoc Rembrandt.Panel > [Scale icon] ; position ^ RM inside Pict ; Position at top-left corner; MM & move inwards while noting the scale scroll. Release at suitable scale to see scaled picture in newly created viewer. == OK = can scale *.Pict == Now try: *.gif == NO=fails. Try: System.CopyFiles Techn:DataSlicr.gif => Big.gif ~ Desktops.OpenDoc Big.gif ~ === width > UserTrack PictConverters.GIFToPict Big.gif => Big.Pict ~ Desktops.OpenDoc Big.Pict ~ == lines to light-green and some missing ? > [Scale icon] > select=MR > MM to scale = picture more managable but 'parts' missing. > Store as Reduced.Pict Desktops.OpenDoc Reduced.Pict ~ == looks the same PictConverters.PictToGIF Reduced.Pict => Reduced.gif ~ Desktops.OpenDoc Reduced.gif ~ == grenn-lines back to black but some lines are lost. __________________________________ OK, in principle *.gif can be converted to *.Pict for scaling and then converted back (if need be). Test with: SYS:PICscope.html

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Re: [Oberon] Strange problems with WinAOS and WebDAV (Retry)
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 06 Sep '03

06 Sep '03

Hi John, perhaps my post some hours ago didn't work. I didn't get it yet. I was on holidays (Spending a day at JMLC2003 at Klagenfurt, showing WebDAV), my wife is in hospital now and in a couple of minutes I will go to the birthday of a nephew. So perhaps you will understand that I can only give short answers at the moment. Sorry, but I don't have time to go into details just now. > After taking a break from trying to get WebDAV to work > right under WinAOS I took another shot at it. I'm > using the latest WebDAV build (WebDAV.1.0.0.Zip) and > the latest version of WinAOS (Version 1.03, although > for some reason it still says "1.02" in the log and > in the Distribution.Text file. But I know I > downloaded from the 1.03 link, and I did this twice > just to make sure). You could try to get http://webdav.ethz.ch/davzip/WebDAV.1.2.0.Zip I will update my homepage soon. After my holidays I gave it at try with WinAOS Version 1.03. > Oberon locks up hard. I traced the lock up to a > call to procedure WebHTTP.ParseReply(). This is probably the same problem I have. In AosTCP.Mod in Receive I get in a loop because Available gives 0 all the time. Here some checking the state of the connection and perhaps leaving after some timeout should be added. > Another wierd problem. In the procedure > DCT.CheckIn there is the following > line: > > IF resHeader.statuscode # WebHTTP.MultiStatus THEN In the newest bluebottle you will probably find a newer WebHTTP.Mod with more HTTP status codes. BTW, MultiStatus = 209. > I'm not sure what to do next. So if you could verify whether your lockup is also this loop in AosTCP.Receive and perhaps fix it, this would probably also solve my problem with WebDAV 1.2.0 on WinAos and would allow me to make a release also for WinAos. This would be nice, because I got a request for my client from the makers of the Tamino WebDAV server and so they wouldn't need a Bluebottle partition to try it. Cheers, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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Re. [Oberon] Library
by eas-lab＠absamail.co.za 05 Sep '03

05 Sep '03

Dan Parnete wrote: > I'm writing a simple database engine based on Library. Practically I'm > collecting objects in lib and store libs in a database file. For now I > have a running version with volatile indexes, witch is a nice experience > with less the 5000 libs stored, but above that, building indexes on the > fly is no more funny. Expecialy do to an anoing problem with > Objects.LoadLibrary procedure. > > I should like to do that: > > PROCEDURE ReadLib*( f: Files.File, pos: LONGINT ): Objects.Library; > VAR i, len: LONGINT; > L: Objects.Library; > BEGIN > NEW( L ); Objects.OpenLibrary( L ); Objects.LoadLibrary( L, f, > pos+1, len ); > RETURN L > END ReadLib; > > But the result is: > > TRAP 7 Index out of range in thread Oberon.Loop > > Files.ReadString PC = 7278 > R = 00411878H Files.Rider > ch = 00000020X > i = 64 > x = " > " ... > Objects.LoadLibrary PC = 6475 > @for = 8223 > @for = 13 > L = 014E0200H Objects.LibDesc > N = 8224 > R = 00411878H Files.Rider > dict = 00000000H (Objects.ListDictDesc) > dorg = 595 > entry = 00000000H (Objects.EntryDesc) > f = 01C1CA20H Files.File > gorg = 512 > i = 14 > ind = 014AAF40H Objects.ArrayIndexDesc > key = 8224 > len = 597 > n = 0 > pos = 200017 > version = 1380272450 > DpsDb.ReadLib PC = 11734 <----- compare with source code > L = 014E0200H Objects.LibDesc > ch = 00000000X <---- this does not correspond with code above > f = 01C1CA20H Files.File > fl = 00000000H (Files.File) > i = 0 > len = 597 > rl = 00411878H Files.Rider > size = 597 !! This trap info does not come from the code above !! > And is nothing wrong with the data because doing that: > > PROCEDURE ReadLib*( size: LONGINT; f: Files.File; r: Files.Rider ): > Objects.Library; > VAR i, len: LONGINT; > ch: CHAR; > fl: Files.File; rl: Files.Rider; > L: Objects.Library; > BEGIN > fl := Files.New( "TempLib" ); Files.Set( rl, fl, 0 ); > FOR i:=0 TO size-1 DO Files.Read( r, ch ); Files.Write( rl, ch ) END; > Files.Register( fl ); fl := Files.Old( "TempLib" ); > NEW( L ); Objects.OpenLibrary( L ); Objects.LoadLibrary( L, fl, 1, > len ); > RETURN L > END ReadLib; The trap info could be from this code. My 2001 ver. of Files.ReadString looks different. But I'm guessing that LEN(x) = 64 [0...63] and you had an overflow ? Just look at the source code of the last 3 [before it trapped] procs. Files.ReadString < Objects.LoadLibrary < DpsDb.ReadLib and compare the reported values of the varialbles to what you expect. This usually allows you to debug it. Perhaps put some trace info in proc DpsDb.ReadLib , to help see how the arg 'ripples-through' to trap in Files.ReadString ? -- Chris Glur.

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