[tex-live] Runtime limitations on open files?

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Aug 19 01:58:18 CEST 2007


Philip TAYLOR writes:

 > [...] there are ten million computers in the world running *X, and
 > each and every one of them has different libraries, different
 > compilers, different versions, different this, different that,
 > different everything.

I'm using Gentoo Linux, a source code distribution, and I'm glad to
see how good it works.  I'm not a C programmer and I'll certainly have
a problem if not everything compiles without manual interaction.  But
everything works perfectly.  Yes, there are many different libraries
with different version numbers.  But it doesn't matter because
programs usually know which (versions of) libraries they need.   

There are different versions of .DLL files on Windows too,
unfortunately the file name doesn't contain the version number.  If
people always use standard tools to install software, the installer
certainly looks into the .DLL file and prevents a recent version from
being replaced by an older one.  But there are people you called
monkeys in a previous mail.  And there are many monkeys in the Windows
world. 

I often get CDs containing data sheets.  They usually contain PDF
files.  Some of them come with a toc file in HTML, but some require
that you have to install them, whatever this means.  Some even require
that you have admin rights.  These CDs go into the trash can
immediately.  Either they want to break my system deliberately, what I
don't believe because they want me to buy their products, or they are
what you call monkeys.  I doubt that anybody who doesn't know what an
admin account is good for is able to install software on my system
properly. 

There are probably monkeys in the UNIX world too, but I think that the
fact that shared libraries provide the version number in the file name
is much more robust than the Windows approach (which is definitely not
monkey proof).

What you said about UNIX was an assumption.  If you have some time,
why not install a Linux system, maybe on a virtual machine, and play
with it?  You'll see that all your assumptions are wrong.

There are many Linux distributions available but I think that Gentoo
is the best one for you because, as far as I know you, it's imortant
for you to know how things work.  You have to do things manually while
other distributions provide menus.  But you immediately see how things
work.  I really hope that you find some time to play with it.

 > Yes, there is a ?registry? tweak that will stop explorer from
 > trying to enumerate remote (networked) files; it is a pain, and I
 > completely agree.  When I find the reference, I'll forward it to
 > you (and your administrators !).

That would be nice.  The problem exists on XP but not on 9x.  My first
assumption was that it is a DNS problem but specifying the IP number
instead of the hostname didn't help.  I now also believe that there is
something wrong either in the network setup or the registry.  A
colleague already looked into the network setup and found a few
improvements but the main problem still exists.  Fabrice said that the
registry is a distributed database, so I assume that I can't make a
backup before I edit it.  Hence, I'm interested in some hints from
people who know what has to be changed.  Making own experiments is too
dangerous.  I'm on vacation at the moment, but I'll come back to the
issue later.

 > P.S. About as "intuitive" as [con]cat[enating] a file with
 > nothing in order simply to see it on the screen ...

You *can* [ab]use 'cat' to print a file to screen but the UNIX tool
designed for this task is 'more' and not 'cat'.  There is also 'less',
which allows you to scroll backwards but it's probably not installed
on every UNIX system.    

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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