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On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message from Steven
> ===================
> Sindi wrote:
> > wget http://www.grex.org/~keesan/resume.txt | less
> > also gives me only (END).
> >
> > How do you pipe from wget?
>
> wget -O- http://www.grex.org/~keesan/resume.txt | less

That works!

wget help says:
-O   save to filename ('-' for stdout)

I never would have guessed that -O- meant save to stdout (screen).

I tried piping to pico instead of less and it froze up the terminal after 
loading the file into pico.  Pico also froze the terminal without the -O- 
and I had to kill -bash process for that terminal.

> > Does BL3 loop boot more slowly on older computers because
> > it uncompressess fs.gz?
>
> fs.gz?  Do you mean fs.img?  fs.img is not compressed.

Yes fs.img.  Which the 2-floppy version presumably does not have.

> > Would a upx'ed gzipped executable unpack any faster
> > or slower than a non-upx'ed one?
>
> Obviously un-UPXing a file will take time.  So executing
> a non-UPXed file will be faster.

Yes, but if the upx'ed file is 1/3 the size, will the gzipped version of 
it unpack faster?  If Samir succeeds in making a upx'ed BL3 we can compare 
booting speeds on various computers.

> > ~10 MB/sec on an ancient Pentium 133,
>
> I use BL3 on four laptops that are slower than 133 MHz.

So do I, but that is the only info they provided at upx site.

> > How fast would a 33MHz 486 decompress?  1MB/sec?
>
> I suspect it would be much slower than that.
What is the operating speed ratio of 33MHz 486 to 133Mhz pentium?
I figured 1/4 x 1/2 = 1/8.

> > The advantage of UPX would be if you are short of hard disk space (in a
> > 20MB loop that you don't know how to enlarge) or for floppy disk if you
> > want to include more programs.
> >
> > Kermit shrinks from 2.1MB to 760K.  It took about 2 sec to load
> > (longer to type).  Non-upxed kermit loaded perceptibly faster (instant)
> > but perhaps it was already in cache from loading the upx-ed version.
> > This is on a very fast (1.2GHz) computer.
>
> 2 sec delay on a 1200 MHz system.  Wow, that's worse than I expected.

I just tested again, and non-upxed kermit took 1-2 sec to load, then upxed 
kermit took no longer, possibly shorter.  Last time I reversed the order 
and the non-upxed version was loaded second and was faster.

Maybe something is loading from buffer.

Opera.  7.23 was 9MB, 8.52 12MB, 9.23 14.4 MB.  28 passes to upx 9.23. 
Shrank to under 5.7MB.   Will not run from the directory it was unpacked 
to, unlike earlier versions.  Wants english.lng in /usr....
install.sh.

7.23 shrank to about 5MB.

2 sec to load opera 9.23 non-upxed.  (Probably parts are already in buffer
from the failed load as it took 7 sec to try to load 7.23 first time). 
9.23 upxed also loaded in 3 seconds.

Is there a way to clear programs from buffer?

upx could be useful in the 20MB loop, on a pentium.

Sindi