Sun-Spots Digest, v6n264

William LeFebvre Sun-Spots-Request at Rice.edu
Thu Oct 20 13:51:00 AEST 1988


SUN-SPOTS DIGEST         Tuesday, 18 October 1988     Volume 6 : Issue 264

Today's Topics:
                         Re: 4.0/nfs bug followup
                      Re: VME Bus Errors on the Sun4
                           Re: .cshrc vs .login
                Mail Notification:  "plug-compatile" biff
                        ftpd under SunOS 4.0 (FIX)
                          SUN INR 5.0 Weirdness
         netstat -r is broken with sub-netted Class B nets (LONG)
                   Looking for 'line drawing' programs
        Using a HI-res Console with a SUN 3/280 Rack Mount Server?
                             adding SMD disk?

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 18:52:18 EDT
From:    ekrell at ulysses.att.com
Subject: Re: 4.0/nfs bug followup

I was told by a Sun instructor in a 4.0 administration seminar that if you
were going to mix 4.0 and 3.x machines in a YP domain, you better make
sure that the slave and master servers and 4.0 machines.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 13:58:38 EDT
From:    sky!paavola at swan.ulowell.edu (Steve Paavola)
Subject: Re: VME Bus Errors on the Sun4

We were having a number of problems porting support for our array
processor products from the Sun3 to the Sun4.  The problems all centered
around moving floating point data to/from VME bus memory.  The symptoms
when moving single precision data varied from storing incorrect data to
Bus Error messages.  This is all to/from a 32d32 device.

Sun has produced an ECO #4314 which brings the Sun4 cpu board to rev 13.
This took several iterations, but appears to fix all the problems moving
single precision data that we know about.

However, there remain problems with moving double precision data.  The
symptom is Bus Error.  The problem happens only when moving 8 byte aligned
data because the compilers generate ldd/std instructions.

Sun has stated that they don't plan to change the hardware to fix this.
Instead they will produce a software fix - they won't generate ldd/std
instructions from C or Fortran unless they are references to the stack, or
the user has specified a switch saying 64 bit accesses are ok.  They will
also recompile all math libraries in this mode, so they never generate
ldd/std instructions.  This will be released at some as yet unnanounced
date in the future (SunOS v4.1, Fortran 2.0).

This means that all Sun4 customers will see a performance hit, whether
they have vme memory devices or not.  I don't know what the actual
performance difference will be, however.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 17:04:56 EDT
From:    Michael DeCorte <mrd at sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Subject: Re: .cshrc vs .login

I disagree with the advice given here that setenv variables go into your
.login.  This will cause the following alias to work incorrectly. 

alias rxterm 'rsh \!* -n "xterm -display `hostname | sed s/\.clarkson\.edu//`:0.0" &'

This is used to start another Xwindow on a remote host.  If I put my
setenv's into my .login this would fail.  The only thing that I use my
.login for is to do a few stty's set my terminal if I am on a dialup line
(I do not use tset, it is cursed) and print a few things of interest such
as the process load of the machine.

Michael DeCorte // (315)268-2292 // P.O. Box 652, Potsdam, NY 13676
Internet mrd at sun.soe.clarkson.edu  // Bitnet   mrd at clutx.bitnet        

Clarkson Archiver Server
archiver-server at sun.soe.clarkson.edu
archive-server%sun.soe.clarkson.edu at omnigate.bitnet
dumb1!dumb2!dumb3!smart!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!archive-server

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 9 Sep 88 18:15:17 EDT
From:    Mark Moraes <moraes at csri.toronto.edu>
Subject: Mail Notification:  "plug-compatile" biff

We had a similar problem on our network of Suns. Our solution was to
provide a plug-compatible 'biff' which basically sat around watching the
mailbox.

People who now use X11 (a rapidly growing community here) just use xbiff
instead.

[[ The shar file has been placed in the archives under "sun-source" as
"biff.shar".  It is 23421 bytes long.  It can be retrieved via anonymous
FTP from the host "titan.rice.edu" or via the archive server.  For more
information about the archive server, send a mail message containing the
word "help" to the address "archive-server at rice.edu".  --wnl ]]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 14:42:33 EDT
From:    dpk at morgan.com (Douglas P. Kingston)
Subject: ftpd under SunOS 4.0 (FIX)

David writes:
> The problem manifests itself in several ways.  First, root can login and
> transfer files with no problem.  A normal user (who can login) gets 'User
> <name> access denied.' when they try to ftp login.

This is probably because root has a normal shell but the user has some
shell that is not /bin/sh or /bin/csh.  The 4.0 ftpd is based on 4.3BSD
and it expects the file /etc/shells to have a list of the valid normal
login shells if the system has alternates.  These days, common alternates
are ksh and tcsh.  See the man page on getusershell(3) for details.  By
the way, /etc/shells was long overdue.

-Doug-

[[ Thanks also to Joe Ramey for a similar suggestion.  --wnl ]]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 10:41:55 PDT
From:    geoffb at ale.ind.trw.com (G. Geoffrey Baehr)
Subject: SUN INR 5.0 Weirdness

Users of SUN INR 5.0 router code under OS 3.5, have you seen this totally
bizarre problem ? We have a fairly complicated internal network here, one
of the solutions we implemented for connection of remote sites to the
internal backbone nets was to use SUN's INR with 9600 baud sync modems
attached to 3/50's for use as routers. This provided remote nets with
access to the internal nets, Internet etc.  However, some TCP connections
were being reset due to timeouts with the remote host when using an INR
route.  Analysis revealed that the INR will not send an IP packet of
exactly 108 bytes through from one side to the other. When a IP packet
arrives that is 108 bytes in length from the Ethernet side, it is digested
by the SUN. The remote router never sees this packet, as first the router
never sent it along over the serial line. For TCP connections, this meanes
that the sender never has this packet ack'ed, retransmits n times, sees no
ack's as the remote has never seen anything to ack and then resets the
connection, assuming that the remote host has died. Cute, eh ? Some
peripheral information, changing the MTU on these lines to prohibit/force
fragmentation, netmasks, trailers etc has no effect. The same problems
occur on a subnetted Class B net as on a Class C or Class A. We have also
run up an down in packet size, no other sized packets fail to get through.
SUN has no idea, says that they are unable to reproduce this weirdness;
anyone else seen this ?

Thanks in advance

geoffrey

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 12 Oct 88 10:33:05 EDT
From:    ehrlich at shire.cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich)
Subject: netstat -r is broken with sub-netted Class B nets (LONG)

Machine Type:   Sun 4/260S  O/S Version:    SunOS 4.0
Organization:   Computer Science Department, The Pennsylvania State University
                333 Whitmore Laboratory, University Park, PA   16802
Phone Number:   +1 814 865 9723

Description:

Netstat appears to not understand sub-netting correctly.  At Penn State we
are using the Class B network number 128.118 with sub-nets.  If 'netstat
-r' is run on a Sun4 running SunOS4.0 all sub-nets of 128.118 are reported
to be 128.118.  This works correctly on a VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD UNIX.
(Sigh... will Sun ever get these things right?)

The ethernet interface on the Sun4 is configured thusly:

SUN4% ifconfig ie0
ie0: flags=63<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING>
	inet 128.118.6.4 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 128.118.6.0

Running 'netstat -r' one gets:

SUN4% netstat -r
Routing tables
Destination          Gateway              Flags    Refcnt Use        Interface
localhost            localhost            UH       1      26         lo0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      523        ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
temple               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
default              whitmore             UG       1      7749       ie0
psu-edu              sunws2               UG       0      11193      ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      302        ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
u-pitt               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
drexel               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      4          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       2      38725      ie0
cpw-psc              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
cmu-net              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
prpnet               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              sol4                 UG       0      838        ie0
upenn                whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
u-pgh-net            whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
alcoa-net            whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      6          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      34         ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
lehigh               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      4391       ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
pscnet               whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              shire                U        35     242092     ie0
psu-edu              shire                U        0      333        ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0
psu-edu              whitmore             UG       0      0          ie0

The ethernet interface on the VAX 11/750 is configured thusly:

750% ifconfig de0 inet
de0: flags=63<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING>
	inet 128.118.6.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 128.118.6.0

Running 'netstat -r' on the VAX 11/750 one gets:

750% netstat -r
Routing tables
Destination      Gateway            Flags     Refs     Use  Interface
localhost        localhost          UH          0       36  lo0
default          Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          5    61843  de0
otc-backbone     Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       80  de0
cac-ether1       Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0     1181  de0
cmu-net          Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0      132  de0
willard-ether1   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
alcoa-net        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
tb-ether1        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       69  de0
ee-ether1        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          1    10406  de0
cs-main          psuvax1            U           8    89431  de0
cs-sys           sunws2             UG          0        0  de0
cs-terminal      Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
psu-cmpsc        gondor             UG          0     3209  de0
cs-work          morelock           UG          0        0  de0
cpw-psc          Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
u-pgh-net        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0      205  de0
biotech-ether1   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
boucke-ether1    Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       19  de0
mcalistr-ether1  Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0      132  de0
drexel           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
otc-rs232        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       56  de0
hendersn-ether1  Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        3  de0
upenn            Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        1  de0
osmond-ether1    Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
walker-ether1    Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       58  de0
davey-ether1     Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0      191  de0
cac-ether2       Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
temple           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
ie-ether1        Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
areo-ether1      Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
findlay-ether1   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       11  de0
mystery-ether1   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0       16  de0
cac-ether3       Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        1  de0
otc-testnet      Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
willard-ether2   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
dieke-ether1     Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        2  de0
mystery-ether2   Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
u-pitt           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
lehigh           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
pscnet           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        0  de0
prpnet           Whitmore.psu.edu   UG          0        2  de0

Repeat-By:
	Run 'netstat -r' on a machine connected to a sub-netted
	class B network.  Making sure the netmask is set correctly.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 15:32:07 edt
From:    osu-cis!chemabs!lwv27 at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Larry W. Virden)
Subject: Looking for 'line drawing' programs

We are looking for commercial sources for drawing programs.  The users are
familar with Macs so the best way they have for describing what they are
looking for is 'MacDraw-like' - they want to generate technical drawings,
slide presentations, etc.

The environment is Sun 386i model 150 , SunOS 4.0 or newer.

Thank you for your responses.

Larry W. Virden                 UUCP:   osu-cis!chemabs!larryV
674 Falls Place,                BITNET: lwv27 at cas.bitnet
Reynoldsburg, OH 43068-1614     CIS:    [75046,606]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 13:38 EST
From:    STELLABO at CSHLAB.BITNET
Subject: Using a HI-res Console with a SUN 3/280 Rack Mount Server?

REQUEST FOR HELP:
We have a rack mounted Sun 3/280 with a High Res (1600x1280) monitor.  We
We have a rack mounted Sun 3/280 with a High Res (1600x1280) display.  We
would like to locate the display, keyboard, and mouse about 30 feet away
from the CPU box, to get it out of the Noisy computer room.  When we tried
to use cable extenders we lost the video signal after appox 6 ft.  Does
anyone know of a viedo signal repeater that will work in this
configuration.

Thanks for your help.

Fred J. Stellabotte
stellabo at cshlab.BITNET
Cold Spring Harbor Lab
(516)367-8420

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 13 Oct 88 16:05:26 EDT
From:    betty symonds  <symonds at chagall.cad.bnl.gov>
Subject: adding SMD disk?

This is a first time sending a request for information, so please bear
with me.  We have a Sun 3/160 C-4 with a 71 mb SCSI drive.  We would like
to add an SMD drive to avail ourselves of the larger disks.  Can anyone
tell me what we need in terms of hardware for connecting one and what one
has to do to get the XYLOGICS controller to be known to the system.  Also,
where would we obtain a formatter tape for such a disk.  This is
information needed should we choose to purchase from other than our Sun
dealer.  We are currently running 3.2 on this system.  Any information
will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Betty Symonds
symonds at chagall.cad.bnl.gov

------------------------------

End of SUN-Spots Digest
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