Re: Y2K.

["Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org>]

Moin RSL,
On Wed, Jan 05, 2000 at 08:19:21PM +0100, R.S.L. wrote:

> this is the changelog.debian file for the package util-linux version
> 2.9g-6.0.1:
> 
> util-linux (2.9g-6.0.1) frozen unstable; urgency=high
> 
>   * Binary only NMU to include a working hwclock for m68k
>   * quick fix for bug #32916
> 
>  -- Christian T. Steigies <cts@debian.org>  Fri, 05 Feb 1999 10:00:57 +0100
> 
> util-linux (2.9g-6) frozen unstable; urgency=low
> 
[...] 
>  -- Vincent Renardias <vincent@waw.com>  Tue, 26 Jan 1999 23:51:57 +0100
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
> I read all the documentation and I was surprised to read that name Christian
> T. Steigies.
Funny, eh? Yes, sometimes I do a little more than answering questions.
 
> So, Christian, you are the maintainer of the last version of util-linux, which
wrong, wrong

> includes the hwclock program. You can't answer our questions about y2k
> problem?
> Why, there is a reason?
I explained allready twice...
 
> This is one of your answer:
> 
> "...I would not want to set the date back and try it whit slink only. No idea
> what your problems are, I cant (dont want to) test it, as I dont have that
> problem anymore... as to what can you do, well, use your imagination, download
> the source (util-linux) and play whit it. ... Do i have to list verry option
> that comes to my mind?
> Just try it..."
> 
> I don't think that this is a good answer. A good maintainer must accept every
> kind of problems. You can't say that you don't want to try...thank for your
right. Report a bug then. I am NOT the maintainer...
> help...Chris
you do not know what happend at that time...

> Where is your collaboration?
I do not collaborate with you, I think (Im not a native speaker either) you
mean cooperation.

> Why are you a maintainer of this program if you don't want to resolve any
> problems caused from it. I can't understand...
> I think that you are an arrogant person, and you don't want to accept the
> errors that your program has. I don't like your comicity too. So please be
> more tollerant towards other people. We are beginners and not so experts as
> you. My english is not good, sorry, but I try to understand and to talk you.
> Please consider this message as a friendly one. I don't want to have an
Its your lucky day, I am at home and I had enough trouble allready with
people sending me much more stuff than I ordered, with people not paying
there bills, with people cutting their bills without reason...

I will try to explain you lots of things, I hope you will understand then.

I am not the maintainer of util-linux, Vincent is the maintainer as you
quoted in the changelog. What I did was just a binary NMU (non-maintainer
upload) of util-linux for m68k. Why did I do that? Well, I wrote it in the
changelog, "to include a working hwclock for m68k". You have no idea what
the problem was at that time, do you? hwclock at that time froze my machine,
and it seemed only my machine, nobody could explain why. What I did, was
including a working hwclock in the util-linux package, I hacked the hwclock
from hamm (which was probably from a package maintained also by vincent 
at that time) into the slink package. I did not compile the binary,
I just copied the existing hamm binary into the slink package, because that
one worked. Do you know what a "freeze" is? The machine simply stopped
working, and that on every boot and on every shutdown, a little more
annoying then the problem you have now, but thats not meant as an excuse for
not fixing your problems. At that time I asked many people (the linux-m68k
list) for help, but nobody could help, because only I had that problem at
that time. So I had to do something myself, otherwise all of you users with
an A1200 or A2000 with a blizzard (maybe also other) 060 accelerator would
not have been able to run debian/slink. I think that was a very good deed of
me, but what do I get?

When I ran the "original" hwclock the machine froze and I could only do a
hard reset. On the next boot the filesystem had to be checked, which takes
an awful lot of time, because I have 11GB of harddisk in my system (do you
know why I bought so many hard disks? because I wanted to help debian).
After e2fsck, hwclock is called, but it froze the system and all started
again. It took me two weeks to find out where the problem was, in that time,
I did probably 20 reinstalls of debian...
The only solution I found (we were close to the freeze for slink) was to use
hwclock from hamm, the other debian/m68k maintainers had no objections on that,
I hope you dont have either... I have no idea, if that version has a Y2K 
problem or not, at that time, the schedule for the next debian release was 
every 6 months or so...

Ok, do you undestand now, that I am not the maintainer of util-linux?
The second wrong is, that version is not the latest version of util-linux.
My amiga currently runs util-linux_2.10d-4.deb. 2.9.something is the latest
"stable" version, but not "the" latest. I am running unstable on my amiga,
somebody has to build the packages for unstable, which will become stable
sooner or later. Unfortunately I am one of the few people compiling packages
for m68k. If you dont want to use packages which I compile, you can
start deinstalling xfree and a few other ones. Check debian-devel-changes
for upload announcements.

So I am not the maintainer (I am a porter in that case), its not the latest
and I solved a problem... got that? Oh wait, there was one "right".

If you think thats arrogant, so be it. hwclock is not my program, I think
Andries Brouwer is the author, but I dont have the source here to check that
right now.
I am not being comic, I am being sarcastic, I know people have problems with
that, but thats the only way I can stand all this. I dont want to solve
problems with fists, I prefer words for that.
I am no expert, I only learned a lot in my two years working for debian and
on the linux/m68k kernel. I am not a computer scientist, this is just a hobby
for me. 

A hobby which costs me a lot of time and money. I am tying to finish my
thesis, which I started 4 years ago. I think debian is partially a reason
why I did not finish it last year. And what am I doing instead of writing
papers? I answer (sorry) clueless newbie questions, if you think thats not
tolerant enough, I should probably stop working for debian completely now.
I was thinking of that allready after your (or was it the other italian with
no real name?) last insulting mail...

I considered debian as a hobby, where I could learn a lot, I learned a lot
about people allready during my university work, spent a long time abroad
the recent years (besides working for debian, I discussed problems with the
others, while I was in japan, should have gone drinking tea instead...). In
debian I learned a lot about linux, spent quite some money on an obsolete
machine, I bought a MO drive and lots of disks, to carry debian sources
home, an IDE controller with a large disk, to have enough space to build the
packages (after I backported the driver for the IDE controller), a grafics
card, so that I could use and compile X packages (after I fixed the driver
for the card), a network card, so that I could use my amiga in my home
network (after I backported the driver), a PC and a CD-R, so that I could
burn debian CDs (well, I bought the PC to write my thesis...). I dont want
to calculate how much I spent on this, mostly for debian. And what did I
get? Oh, yeah, I sold allready 4CDs, one set cost me additional money, on
one set I made 5DM (but lost a lot of nerves, because the guy had some
severe trouble to get debian running, sorry, no offence ment, but that was
a tough time for me).

Today I downloaded about 100MB of source codes to compile for debian/m68k,
no more a problem, since I moved to a new flat, so my amiga has its own room
to make a lot of noise while I sleep, it was horrible last year. You know
how long xfree takes to compile? I had many nights with a very bad sleep,
because the machine is so very noisy.

So all in all, I think I did quite a lot for debian/m68k and I dont think I
deserve being insulted or accused. What did you do for debian besides
stealing the maintainers time?

Why do I waste my time on a dead machine, a dead processor? Because it was
fun to hack on the kernel? It took me more than one year until the grafics
board worked for me, I asked many times for help at that time, but I did not
annoy Jes too often, he would have killed me. Now many people are using that
code, but nobody ever thanked me for it, I only here complaints "aargh, its
not working on my A1200 with the strange Z2 extension board, fix it!". So
what... but now you come and insult me, steal my time, dont follow my
advice.

Do I have to say more, or do you understand something now? Debian and Linux
are volunteer projects, nobody can force me to do anything, I dont even get
a cent for all of my work, it only costs me time and money... and I dont
think it improves my job possibilites, I dont really want to work in the 
computer field...

Now back to your problem, Ill explain it again, for the last time. I booted
my Amiga on jan 1st (potato of course) and hwclock did not work properly
(different problem than yours probably). On the next reboot, it worked
again, problem "fixed". Then I also booted slink, because at that time two
people had reported Y2K problems (did any other debian/m68k maintainer boot
slink to test it???). I have seen no problems with slink then, so what shall
I do? Shall I try to create this problem by force on my machine where I know
that it is working (more or less) well with potato? slink is fairly obsolete
for me, I only installed slink recently again, since some debian people
where crying for slink Y2K updates. I built them all, as fast as I could,
had to download them from home, because the maintainer forgot to note that I
had to recompile several other important packages first. I had to pay for
those downloads, for slink, which I will never use again. So what...
If you want fixes for the, in my eyes obsolete, slink distribution, try to fix
it yourself. Or find out what to fix and how, maybe I find the time to build
proper slink packages from this, but I can not afford the time to
investigate this now. I HAVE TO FINISH MY THESIS!
I gave quite detailed instructions, did you try some of them?
Download util-linux and READ the source.
Try playing with your clock, under AOS and under Linux, and try to track
down that problem. "It does not work" is not a very good bug report. I can
not reproduce it, what shall I do? I said what I would do to find the
problem, shall I do all that myself? If you will pay me 100 Euro for every
hour I work on this, but I think 100 Euro would be by far too little for
that.

Did you ever notice that linux/m68k is not quite the mainstream linux? The
other day, we m68k maintainers had to stand complaints from other debian
developers, because we did not react fast enough when they asked for
recompiles. Now the users revolt, time to leave the ship. Do you know how
many people are working on the m68k port, compared to the rest of the world?
I think there are maybe 20 kernel hackers around, with maybe 5 being quite
active. Yesterday we counted 7, maybe 8 debian/m68k maintainers, and none of
them has sufficcient time to spend on the project. We are having three and
two half machines, with only one of them available on the net, so it seems
several of our "plenty" maintainers dont even have a machine to work with.
Besides, only two of the machines are 060s, I guess David has an 040, the
best possible for a MAC. Then there are some 030s lurking around, how many
days for one xfree compile, James?
So we are lacking time, more powerful machines with good network connection.
Right now the run for the debian freeze has started, this morning 178
packages had to be rebuilt, and not few of them were rather large ones. The
daemons will need a few days for these, lets hope they are all bugfree, so
that the compilation does not fail (har, found a nasty one in postgresql, but
it pops up only when you want to install it...).
Still, with none of us really having time to waste on this, we have not
given up, we are building packages (do you know that m68k was the first
"complete" debian port besides i386? And that allthough we have the slowest
machines in the world...), we are answereing new user questions, allthough
there are FAQs around, installation guides and books. Oh, books you say,
they cost money. Yeah, Linux is free, but you have to pay for it, be it
money for CDs and books, be it time to learn and understand. I would be very
thankful, if people read the FAQs and asked only what is not explained
there. If you dont understand the FAQ, you should not be using linux anyway.
This is harsh, I know, but it seems you dont understand my subtle humor,
mabye I spend too much time in front of keyboard, instead of reading good
books, yeah, its all my fault...

I lost my thread now, but I hope you can understand some of my reasoning and
stop spitting fire on me. If you want to _use_ Linux, buy a PC, every m68k
machines is simply much to slow for serious usage. If you want Linux on your
m68k machine, help. Thanking the kernel hackers for their marvellous work,
does. Insulting your favorite maintainer, does not.
If you dont like what I said, just drop me a note and Ill quit (somebody
explain me killfiles before, please). Otherwise, just let me work in peace.

Now I didnt write a single line for my paper, again. My boss will kill me
tomorrow morning...
-- 
Christian