Sun-Spots Digest, v7n15
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at Rice.edu
Thu Nov 17 15:11:33 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 16 November 1988 Volume 7 : Issue 15
Today's Topics:
Re: Get together at SUG (2)
Re: The poll (2)
Re: Comments (flame) about lack of 3/50 memory upgrade
Re: Video backup
Re: Frame Maker to (di)troff translator
Re: Anchored Frames in Maker
Re: Leonardo - illustration package for Sun-3
Re: locking down systems
Re: Silicon Graphics tapes
Re: process killed due to text modification
Re: dvipage crashes on SUN 4/110's
TTY windows
the worm that wasn't...
CDC Wren-V
Sun 386i opinions - A summary
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 07:46:53 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Get together at SUG (1)
By all means, let's have some sort of meeting at the SUG! I can't wait to
put faces and voices with all the words I have seen this past year. We
could try one of those BOF meetings, maybe in the afternoon so that we
could gradually break off for dinner, if that worked out. I'd like to
talk to tooltool users, and they should be there also.
I think the only logical thing is to put a small "spot" on your name tag,
to the left of your name, or maybe to the right of the Sun logo, if it is
present. I am looking forward to meeting all the other "spots" in Miami.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 88 15:25:59 CST
From: William LeFebvre <phil at Rice.edu>
Subject: Re: Get together at SUG (2)
The Sun-Spots SUG SIG is ON! Thanks to Dave Howard, the manager of SUG,
for making the arrangements for me. SUG has set aside the Club Atlantic
room on Tuesday night from 6 to 7:30. The room will hold about 200
people. Dave says that soft drinks and light snacks will be available.
The really nice thing about this time slot is that it doesn't conflict
with anything at all (except maybe dinner).
I'm still open for ideas on what kind of mark to use on the name tag.
Some kind of spot, but everyone will have different ideas on how to make
that spot.
William LeFebvre
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 88 19:35:16 est
From: mohamed%popvax at harvard.harvard.edu (Mohamed Ellozy)
Subject: Re: The poll (1)
Reference: v7n5
This is quite an achievement. You have actually been willing (and able)
to satisfy both sides. WOW. Not very often do we see that on our beloved
net (I speak from the USENET side).
Many thanks.
mohamed
[[ I try to remember the reason that this list exists: the readers.
--wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: 7 Nov 88 01:38:16 GMT
From: mkhaw at teknowledge-vaxc.arpa (Mike Khaw)
Subject: Re: The poll (2)
How about a hand for our moderator for listening to the readership: Those
of us who want sun-spots digestified (digested?) can continue to get it in
that form, while those who don't can get it as separate articles.
Thanks, Bill!
Mike Khaw
--
internet: mkhaw at teknowledge.arpa
uucp: {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|ames|hplabs}!mkhaw%teknowledge.arpa
hardcopy: Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 12:48:31 EST
From: bernhold at qtp.ufl.edu
Subject: Re: Comments (flame) about lack of 3/50 memory upgrade
Reference: v7n6
I agree with your flame on Sun, but most regrettably, there is a good deal
of precedent for these maneuvers in the industry.
I think what the user community really needs to do it educate the
marketing people who make these kinds of decisions: What we want is
"upgradable" hardware - not forced obselesence (sp?). Apple was very good
about this with their Macintosh's, why can't other people be? Software
houses have learned a lot about this in recent years too. I would think
that knowing that you can upgrade to an improved version of the hardware
when it comes out would be a plus in marketing.
I can't imagine the economics actually favor not providing upgrade paths:
We have 60 3/50's on our local network. It would be nice to have more
memory on them (for example), but the only way to get this until recently
was to buy a whole new model of workstation. So I'm going to unload 60
3/50's and buy 60 3/60's to replace them? I think the bureaucrats would
throw a fit! Now, If I could go out and simply buy a memory upgrade,
that's no trouble, and Sun gets the income for 60 sets of memory upgrades
instead of nothing at all!
Would somebody (maybe a Sun marketing person?) care to poke holes in my
analysis? I readily admit to being a scientist and knowing very little
about trying to sell computers... But I'm curious as to where my logic
fails.
David Bernhold bernhold at qtp.ufl.edu
Quantum Theory Project bernhold at ufpine.bitnet
University of Florida
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 07:39:32 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Video backup
We use an Exabyte 2.3 Gbyte 8mm backup system, which does an excellent job
for us. I wrote some custom networked backup software for us, and we do
daily backups of 15 machines each night, and a complete dump each month.
We can fit the entire monthly on one tape, with plenty of room to spare,
and and all the dailies fit on another tape. We can do a year of backups
on 24 tapes ($240 of media). We only change tapes twice a month.
The installation instructions for the Exabyte (from Delta Microsystems)
were not that great, and it took us a day or two to get it working. It
would not work reliably on our 3/280 under 3.4, but works great on our
3/180 (again, 3.4). Overall, I recommend this product, but it could be a
little better. The convenience of massive storage outweighs a lot of
other problems.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 07:53:49 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Frame Maker to (di)troff translator
Frame Maker already produces MIF (Maker Interchange Format) files, which,
while not the most delightful thing in the world, are as easy to edit as
troff or TeX. In addition, maker has an open front and back end, and you
can write any sort of conversion tool you want. Once again, its just a
SMOP (Simple Matter Of Programming).
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 07:59:06 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Anchored Frames in Maker
In order to adjust frame position in maker, I do the following: write the
document, put the anchor points at some initial spot, and forget about it.
When your are done writing, make one pagination pass over your document,
moving anchor points, adjusting widows and orphans, and the like. Note
that the anchor point for a frame need not go near it's reference in the
text. I put it where it makes the anchored frame go to the right spot.
It is clear that discussions of maker are not completely appropriate for
sun-spots. Are there enough maker users out there to justify the creation
of a frame maker news group or digest? Reply to me and frame, and maybe
we can get something going. I've wanted such a group for some time.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 07:29:59 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Leonardo - illustration package for Sun-3
I sent away for a demo tape, but I haven't gotten it yet. I think Qubix
is a little bitty company, with a really slick brochure. I certainly hope
they get their act together and send my tape. I'm anxious to check out
Leonardo.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 07:50:23 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: locking down systems
We had to lock down a Sun 3/50, and had one of those PC locking kits with
a cable with a loop at one end and a little steel ball at the other. The
little ball was designed to fit into a special plate you bolted to your
PC. We took the monitor off the 50, and then took the plastic
(fiberglas?) cover off, and hacksawed a little notch in the back which was
wide enough for the cable, but not the ball. That way, we can put the
cable in the notch, put the 50 back together, lock the cable to something
sturdy, and the 50 is (more) secure. Be careful not to mack the notch too
deep, and to make sure the cable doesn't short out anything inside the 50.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 00:29:59 EST
From: attcan!utzoo!henry at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Re: Silicon Graphics tapes
>We have some software on a cartridge tape that was written on a Silicon
>Graphics Workstation running UN*X. We would like to read it on a Sun
>3/60. Has anyone tried to do this? ...
Our 3/180S reads tapes from our SGI Iris 4D/60T just fine... except that
the stupid Iris appears to be byte-swapping the data somewhere along the
line! We usually just "dd conv=swab" the stuff in onto disk, and then
feed the disk file to tar.
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 07:49:56 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: process killed due to text modification
This occurs when someone modifies the binary executable on disk of the
program you are running. When the system tries to run it again, it finds
inconsistencies with the copies in memory, and has a heart attack. If the
executable is on a local disk, this shouldn't happen, but we often have it
happen on NFS disks, because NFS does not track the "text in use"
attribute of an executing binary. The solution is to be careful about how
you modify your binaries.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 17:56:30 EST
From: chuck at morgan.com
Subject: Re: dvipage crashes on SUN 4/110's
I am answering my own question here. I found that a number of dvi
routines expect the stack to be organized in a particular way. In
otherwords, a varargs-like interface was being used but was hard-coded
assuming a sun3 stack arrangement. We modified the routine
strings_prompt() to actually use varags (even though the routine is called
only once and doesn't need variable calls) and dvipage no longer crashes.
Some other questionable routines were fixed as well. Is there someone I
should forward fixed versions to?
Chuck Ocheret
Morgan Stanley & Co, Inc.
1251 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
(212)703-4474
chuck at morgan.com
------------------------------
Date: 7 Nov 88 12:43 -0500
From: Srinivas Eswara <eswara at deervax.concordia.ca>
Subject: TTY windows
> ...Is there a hard limit on the number of TTY windows in one
>application?...
The problem I have noticed here is that window_destroy does not reclaim
these open descriptors so if you keep creating windows (as I had to in my
application) even after destroying previous ones, pretty soon you are
going to run out of file descriptors and the program crashes with ..too
many open files.. The way I got around it is to call the library routine
_cleanup() after every window_destroy and to open the terminal for writing
or reading if required. Use ctermid to get the terminal name. This seems
to me to be the only way, especially as I was using multiple textsws.
Srinivas Eswara
Concordia University, Montreal
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 16:28:05 EST
From: sgf at lfm.brown.edu
Subject: the worm that wasn't...
(don't know it this has been mentioned before, but...)
A remarkably alarming but benign phenomenon occurs when the inetd of a Sun
(pre 4.0) without a /tftpboot fires up /usr/etc/in.tftpbootd as the tftp
server.
The inetd happily continues to fork and exec the tftpbootd even after the
requesting process decides that it's had enough (or not enough) and
meandersons off. The forked tftpbootd (chroot'ed ftpd) before exiting
steps all over its argument list with random strings that it seems to get
from disk.
The one time this happened here a renegade cisco box somewhere was
ffffffff-casting tftp requests and all our diskless clients were coming
unglued (I changed the tftp server in all our 3.5 machines /etc/servers
files).
One of the first ps's that I did on one of the machines showed a
cycle-burning process called "Always Active, Never East", that was shortly
replaced by another with gibberish in its arg list. Sure, it sounded like
something out of a defaults list, but what a name....
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 21:45:56 +0100
From: Jan Henriksen <mcvax!eik.II.UIB.NO!jan at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: CDC Wren-V
I saw somebody was asking about the new CDC Wren-V 702MB disks.
Unfortunately, he gave an e-mail address that I don't believe I will be
able to reach. So I am posting this to Sun-Spots, and hope it is of
interest to others too.
I have just installed one of them on a Sun-4/110. This is the output
of the 'dkinfo sd0' command:
sd0: Emulex MD21 controller at addr a000000, unit # 0
1532 cylinders 15 heads 51 sectors/track
a: 39015 sectors (51 cyls)
starting cylinder 0
b: 120870 sectors (158 cyls)
starting cylinder 51
c: 1171980 sectors (1532 cyls)
starting cylinder 0
d: 420750 sectors (550 cyls)
starting cylinder 335
e: 207315 sectors (271 cyls)
starting cylinder 885
f: 14535 sectors (19 cyls)
starting cylinder 1156
h: 273105 sectors (357 cyls)
starting cylinder 1175
The important info is #cyl=1532, #heads=15, sectors/track=51. The total
formatted data capacity is roughly 600MB.
Hope this helps.
Jan Berger Henriksen
Institute of Informatics E-mail: jan at eik.ii.uib.no
University of Bergen jan%eik.ii.uib.no at tor.nta.no
Allegt. 55
N - 5007 Bergen,
Norway
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 16:28:32 EST
From: Gary L Dare <gld at cunixd.cc.columbia.edu>
Subject: Sun 386i opinions - A summary
These are the most interesting opinions I received on Sun's 386i, their
Intel-based PC-compatible machine. Many thanks to everyone who replied!
>From: hundt at wind.bellcore.com (Thomas Hundt)
>
>The Sun 386i seems to me to be a "toy" sun (esp. when seen in our
>terminal room next to the "real" ones). The screen resolution is not
>up to par, the termcap is different from a regular sun's, and the
>keyboard is *really bad*.
>
>As far as networking, and DOS-under-unix, I don't know. I try to
>avoid that machine after having tried it...
>From: ulowell!applix!jim at eddie.mit.edu (Jim
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