Sun-Spots Digest, v6n247
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at Rice.edu
Tue Oct 4 08:03:44 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Sunday, 2 October 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 247
Today's Topics:
Re: Force periodic password changes
Re: TAAC-1 application accellerator
Re: Getting a dead 386i serviced
Re: Problem: UUCP and detached processes
Re: Need Help with graphics on a Sun
Re: cc:Fatal error in ccom: Killed
Problems with VME address spaces
Booting SunOS 4.0
Collected info on Sun 386i
How to make a device driver awake with Ctrl-C?
Follow up question on Bigger Icons?
interactive spelling checker?
gettimeofday() bug?
Coral-66?
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 02:45:06 EDT
From: attcan!utzoo!henry at uunet.UU.NET
Subject: Re: Force periodic password changes
> Does anyone out there have software to force users to change password
> every so often on a SUN?
Are you sure you want to do this? It is likely to result in much poorer
passwords, especially if it comes as a surprise at login time. (Grampp
and Morris, in the second Unix BLTJ, say: "...the most incredibly silly
passwords tend to be found on systems equipped with password aging".)
Our own policy is to *encourage* people to change password every six
months or so -- a simple shell script sends them mail if they haven't
changed in that long -- but we don't force it on them.
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 12:22:49 EDT
From: sorensen at hstbme.mit.edu (Gregory Sorensen)
Subject: Re: TAAC-1 application accellerator
We have a beta release TAAC in a Sun 4/260. I've only spent a month or
two programming it, so I am probably on the worst part of the learning
curve, but let me give you my impressions of it.
First, it does provide nice color. Our 24 bit images are easily
displayed, and it is easy to take R,G, and B bytes and load them in and
get a display.
And, from their demos, it appears to be nice and fast.
However, in my opinion, it has two extremely serious flaws.
First, the display is "video keyed", meaning two things: first, there is a
sizeable subset of colors which you cannot display, as it is used for
keying. For many people, this is not a problem, but I want to display
arbitrary data sets, with potentially arbitrary colors, and the TAAC will
not do this. second, you cannot have another non-TAAC window open using
that color -- so in effect, you lose part of the color spectrum --
negating some of the TAACs benefits, in my opinion.
Second, it does not multitask. This means only one process can use the
TAAC at once -- so, I can't have two display windows open, nor can I even
start two jobs, or have two diskless workstations utilize the TAAC at the
same time.
A non-fatal flaw is how difficult it is to program. While the software
library is getting better, even with the new release it is not free from
assembly-code like programming. Also, as of right now, it does not handle
double precision arguments. And, of course, it does no I/O itself, so you
have to write special code to handle all of that. You have to treat it as
a very fast, very picky asynchronous processor that is kinda dumb.
So, in summary, we have one, and so I am not going to let those 12 MFLOPS
(or so they claim!) sit around, but if I was going to spend $75K for a
Sun4 with a TAAC, I might see if I could get a deal on a Stellar GS1000
instead. After all, it supports X-windows...
Greg Sorensen
sorensen at hstbme.mit.edu or
sorensen at athena.mit.edu
PS: I would happily be proven wrong on any of my points above, but even
after asking the TAAC gurus at Sun, they say that's the way it is. Then
they mutter promises about the TAAC-2....
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 10:19:26 PDT
From: paladin at sun.com (Joe Davis)
Subject: Re: Getting a dead 386i serviced
Dan Davison writes:
>Calling Sun (local TSEs and sales, and two separate calls to the hotline)
>has resulted in a machine dead for the past 8 or 9 weeks. The local
>hardware people know nothing about the machine; apparently the Right Coast
>Sun people do not talk to the Left Coast Sun people.
Dan, I have two questions for you, (1) are you under warranty? and if not
(2) are you under contract. You stated the the system failed after only 2
or 3 weeks, this would put you under warranty and someone from the Western
Support Center would be helping you after you had put a service call
through the Sun 800 number. If your on onsite contract support a Sun FSE
should have come onsite and (1) checked the SCSI fuse (2)checked the SCSI
terminator (3) replaced the CPU/Mother board. If warranty, then you will
have to send in your system for repair with a turn-around of about 3 to 10
days. If you have a service order open please email it to me and I will
look into it.
Joe Davis
Western Support Center Engineer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Milpitas, Ca.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 88 12:03:45 PDT
From: Vaughan Pratt <coraki!pratt at sun.com>
Subject: Re: Problem: UUCP and detached processes
>Scene is this: User logs in over the modem, starts up a process in the
>background, then exits. Uucp tries to dial out, and gets a NO DEVICE
>error....
>I want UUCP to get in. Is there any easy way of doing this?
Start up your background process from another session, e.g. by rlogin'ing
(rloggingin?) back to yourself.
-v
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 07:42:11 EDT
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Re: Need Help with graphics on a Sun
If all you want to do is draw simple objects, create a window with a
canvas in it, and start drawing using the pw_* routines. Unfortunately,
you will have to read the manuals; no one ever got off easy when writing a
windowed application. Forget the notifier stuff; just read the chapter on
canvases, and the chapter in the pixrect manual on the pr_* routines.
There are pw_* analogs for canvases.
Really, you should take the time to learn the new window system. It is
fairly powerful, not too hard to learn, and your end users will benefit
from your windows expretise in the form of better user interfaces.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
------------------------------
Date: 28 Sep 88 00:05:04 GMT
From: munnari!spinifex.eecs.unsw.oz.au!gordon at uunet.uu.net (Gordon Rowell)
Subject: Re: cc:Fatal error in ccom: Killed
Reference: v6n235
I had the same problem with our Sun 3/50, notably when using dbx within X
windows and trying to do a make from inside dbx. If you only have one or
two xterm windows up, no problem. With more than that, cc or cpp die
continually. The death is usually accompanied by a "Text: table is full"
message on the console window.
The solution: I patched the kernel to allow more effective users on the
Sun. The default value for MAXUSERS is 4, and I changed this to 10 and
re-installed the kernel. I have had no further problems, and we can now
happily have someone on the console with many windows and two remote users
over the ethernet (although the Sun is somewhat slow as a result of all
the activity). I would suggest this patch to all heavy X users.
To do it: Read your "Installing UNIX on the Sun workstation", notably
Section 8: "Configuring the System Kernel". It is relatively painless for
simple modifications such as this (all you need to do is make a new
template file and change the maxusers value from 4 to 10). You do not need
a source distribution to do this.
Gordon Rowell (gordon at spinifex.eecs.unsw.oz)
Department of Computer Science,
University of N.S.W., Sydney, Australia
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 88 13:38:00 GMT
From: denis <mcvax!gec-rl-hrc.co.uk!denis at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Problems with VME address spaces
We are considering writing a device driver for Sun 3 and 4 under OS3 and
OS4. Sun told me it should be no problem. According to a recent posting
from Scott Williamson <scott at memex.co.uk> there are incompatibilities in
VME access between Sun 3 and Sun 4. Anybody else had any (good or bad)
experience with this?
Denis Howe uunet!mcvax!ukc!gec-rl-hrc!denis
G15 GEC Hirst Research Centre denis at uk.co.gec-rl-hrc
East La. Wembley MDDX HA9 7PP UK +44 (1) 908 9220
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 11:14:10 PDT
From: Richard Smith <smiddy at spam.istc.sri.com>
Subject: Booting SunOS 4.0
Sounds to me like someone out on your net is running some derivative of
the Wollengong software. We had this problem here, and Tim Ehrhart and I
chased it for months. The basic problem is that the Sun client sends out a
broadcast RPC request to the portmapper port (on all machines on the net).
The RPC request is the portmapper "indirect" RPC call. That is, the client
is asking the portmapper to do all of the work of talking to some other
RPC program, in this case the "bootparamd" program. The client then
expects the portmapper to return the information supplied by the other RPC
program, if and only if the indirect call has succeeded. There is no reply
allowed if the indirect call did not work. The problem is that Wollengong
only has a partial implementation of the portmapper service, and it does
not support indirect RPC calls. It returns an error, and the poor client
freaks and dies.
This is not really Wollengong's fault, btw, as this bug was in the
original software we are running at SRI. Dave Kashtan was kind enough to
fix it for us.
We have told Sun about this, so SOMEONE there knows. It sounds like the
info is just taking a little time to filter out.
Thanks,
smiddy at spam.istc.sri.com
PS to Jerry. I don't think Sun has bothered to tell you folks about this
either, so I thought I would CC this to you. I don't know if I am talking
to the right person, but who ever ends up working on this can feel free to
contact me for more info.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 88 16:56:01 EDT
From: gld at cunixd.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Collected info on Sun 386i
This machine has just come to my attention, and I'm a bit behind on any
discussion that's taken place. Has someone collected a file of postings
regarding this machine?
I'm concerned about it's behaviour as:
1. A Sun station
2. A PC
3. How good is the DOS they run under UNIX?
4. Is the networking any good?
Your responses will be gratefully appreciated.
gld
PS: RSVP to this account. Thank you!
Gary L. Dare > dare at eevlsi.ee.columbia.EDU
> gld at cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU
@cunixc.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 88 11:01:24 GMT
From: Chris Brown <mcvax!aivru.sheffield.ac.uk!chris at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: How to make a device driver awake with Ctrl-C?
(I am posting this for a friend. If you reply, use the address given at
the end, and NOT the one in the header!)
I am currently writing a device driver for a simple VME device on a
Sun3/140 running SunOS 4.0.
The device consists of a simple byte orientated register interface
(similar to the "skeleton" device described in the "Writing Device
Drivers" Manual as supplied by Sun).The device also has interrupt
capability when it is ready to send or recieve a byte.
THE PROBLEM:
One of the tests for the driver is that it is told to read some bytes from
the device when there are no bytes present at all ! What I discovered
during this test is that the driver was seen to "hang up" forever awaiting
an input. I typed CTRL-C (again and again and again !!) but the driver
still remained asleep.
How do I get Sun device drivers to stop when the user supplies a CTRL-C
interrupt signal. From what I have read in the manual there is a "PCATCH"
flag available for the "sleep" kernel routine and this ORed with the
priority, supplied to sleep, should allow the driver to pick up the user
interrupt.
My driver seems to be asleep in the "physio" kernel call for my read, it
has the form:
xxRead (dev, uio)
dev_t dev;
struct uio *uio;
{
int Unit = xxUNIT(dev); /* Use the UNIT macro to pull out the unit no */
return (physio (xxStrategy, &xxBufs[Unit], dev, B_READ,
xxMinphys, uio));
}
When the driver has gone into its forever sleep and I do a "ps -lax", this
says that the driver is awaiting input on the "xxBufs" buffer.
So, it looks as if the sleep is happening in the physio routine.Does this
mean that I have to write my own "physio" routine and lower the priority
in the "sleep" call ?
I would be very grateful for any help with this problem. Thank you.
* NAME: Richard Onyett
* COMPANY: INMOS LTD
* ADDRESS: 1000 Aztec West
* Almondsbury
* Bristol
* BS12 4SQ
* England
*
* TELEPHONE: (0454) 616616
* Email : rich at inmos.uucp
*
* PROBLEM: Using CTRL-C with a device driver.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 09:40:19 EDT
From: jwm at stdc.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt)
Subject: Follow up question on Bigger Icons?
Sridhar Acharya asks:
> Is there a tool which takes the bitmaps
> reated out of the iconedit, and forms icons of dimensions 128x64 (Width X
> eight)?. I could easily produce icons of width -64 pixels and any height
> by concatenating the two images and increasing the height, but found it
> too painful to put together two icons side by side.
Is this applicable? I made a tool that could extract and insert 64x64
icons into a rasterfile. You can build up the raster file by putting
icons whereever you want them (use mouse) then save the rasterfile, then
use the pic2icon program to turn that into an icon. A bit of a hack, but
on hand.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 88 17:09:21 EDT
From: "Arthur Wouk" <wouk at brl.mil>
Subject: interactive spelling checker?
I am looking for an interactive spelling checker which runs under SUNOS
3.2. I have long used Fix2 which compiles under BSD4.x and Gould UTX/32
but fails under SUNOS, and the unix 'spellfix' which fails which does not
run under SUNOS.
An interactive spelling checker uses spell to compile a list of apparent
errors, presents them for correction first on a word by word basis, to
which responses and corrections can be made, and later in context for
correction in context. As a last step it corrects the document and updates
and maintains a private dictionary.
Does anyone have such a working spelling checker, or can anyone point the
way to one?
------------------------------
Date: 29 Sep 88 00:10:24 GMT
From: Sven-Ove Westberg <mcvax!cad.luth.se!sow at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: gettimeofday() bug?
The routine gettimeofday always returns a pattern in the micro seconds
part. Run this small test program.
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
struct timeval tp;
struct timezone tz;
while(1)
{
gettimeofday(&tp,&tz);
printf("s %ld us %07ld \n",tp.tv_sec,tp.tv_usec);
}
}
and the output will be:
dd00dd where d is any digit 0-9 and 0 is always 0.
Sun is the only machine where I found this kind of timegap.
Can someone explain the two 0 in the middle??
Sven-Ove Westberg, CAD, University of Lulea, S-951 87 Lulea, Sweden.
ARPA: sow%cad.luth.se at ucbvax.berkeley.edu (only dumb ARPA mailers)
Internet: sow at cad.luth.se
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 88 16:16:49 BST
From: mcvax!gec-epl.co.uk!James_House at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Coral-66?
Does anyone know of a Coral-66 compiler for Sun (besides the one from
Mach-One computing), or failing that, a Unix compiler that could be ported
fairly easily? Thanks for any help,
James House
Systems Design Division
GEC Electrical Projects Ltd
Boughton Road, Rugby, CV21 1BU,
England.
Email: JAH at gec-epl.co.uk
or ...mcvax!ukc!uk.co.gec-epl!JAH
Tel: (+44 788 or 0788) 542144
------------------------------
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