Sun-Spots Digest, v6n258
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at Rice.edu
Fri Oct 14 06:11:55 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 12 October 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 258
Today's Topics:
Re: amazing dump speed with 4.0
Re: .cshrc vs .login
Re: PC-NFS & Western Digital 8003 e-net board
Re: videoing a sun screen
Re: Nfs mounted /usr/spool/mail
NFS mount mail
SUNOS vs Ultrix S/W Support prices
mailtool disappearence solved!
Wren IV with SCSI embedded
IP queue overflow on Sun 4/280 with added ie1
Reliability of Sun systems?
Experience with CDC Hardware Maintenance?
/usr/lib/rasfilters/convert.2 broken on 386i?
Anybody running ksh and/or nmake under 3.[45]?
Need 386i things: tape, serial card, floppy drive
Greek fixedwidth font?
Wanted: 41XX emulator for sun 3/110.
interactive spelling checker for SUN
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 16:41:28 EDT
From: paul at morganucodon.cis.ohio-state.edu (Paul Placeway)
Subject: Re: amazing dump speed with 4.0
Reference: v6n253
< From: maeder at symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Roman E. Maeder)
<
< I just upgraded the rest of our sun network to 4.0. An amazing improvement
< is with dump....I can do a 98MB backup (1.63 tapes) in less than
< 20 minutes. Well done, Sun!
< ...
< Roman Maeder
Well, yes and no. For the lion's share of the speadups, you should say
"Thanks Cal Tech!". Cal Tech provided them to Berkeley, who included them
in 4.3. Sun picked them up about a year later, so the spead improvement
is no new thing, and "it's about time" as far as Sun goes.
BTW: In response to the rumor that I have a faster (than 4.3) compatible
format dump, the short answer is yes, I do. On a 3/180, from an Eagle on
a 450 to a local 1/2" 6250 drive, I am getting about 400K/sec (or about
8min/tape) and on a 3/180, from a Fuji 2372K on a 753 (not 7053)
controller to a 1/2" 6250, we stream it at 500k/sec (my calculations show
that if we had a tape drive that would run at 700k/sec, we would be
streaming it too).
Needless to say, 2372Ks on a 753 is a _real_ nice disk combination. The
disks are faster than than Eagles, and the 753 is quite a bit faster than
either the 450 or 451 controllers. Good job, Xylogics!
As soon as we are REAL SURE that it is working correctly, I will make the
diffs availiable (but please don't ask about it until then).
-- Paul Placeway
ps: Thanks to everyone for all the pointers on serial flow control.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 13:46:27 PDT
From: Darin McGrew <mcgrew%ichthous at sun.com>
Subject: Re: .cshrc vs .login
Reference: v6n250
In v6n250 Bennett Todd <bent!bet at mcnc.org> writes:
>..., it is considered wise to start off .cshrc with the following
>incantation:
>
> if ($?prompt == 0) then
> exit
> endif
>
>This will cause non-interactive shells to exit .cshrc immediately...
The exit can cause scripts to exit prematurely. A better solution is to
make anything that should only happen in an interactive shell conditional,
eg:
if ( $?prompt ) then
# the following applies only to interactive shells
...
endif
Darin McGrew McGrew at Sun.COM
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 88 16:04:48 BST
From: mcvax!gec-rl-hrc.co.uk!trw at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Re: PC-NFS & Western Digital 8003 e-net board
Reference: v6n241
We had a problem and had to remember to install the 8003E as COM2 on our
standard site PC/AT clone.
TREVOR WRIGHT
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 88 00:36:19 EDT
From: attcan!utzoo!henry at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Re: videoing a sun screen
>Has anyone successfully managed to video a sun screen? We have tried but
>have had considerable flicker problems... I hope you don't have to get a
>genlock video camera!
In the CHI+GI 87 demonstrations track we pointed our video camera at Sun
screens fairly routinely and had no particular problems. It was fairly
good video gear, but we definitely didn't do anything to sync it to the
Sun in particular. I don't recall any notable flicker problem, although
since I was running the track I didn't get much chance to sit and watch!
I was actually expecting problems with using our camera on screens, and
was pleasantly surprised that we didn't have any trouble with a variety
of workstations and such. Maybe we lucked out.
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 16:41:32 EDT
From: white at cs.unc.edu
Subject: Re: Nfs mounted /usr/spool/mail
We NFS-mount a mail spool directory on a Sun-4 server and route all mail
to that server via sendmail.cf, since sendmail runs as root. Here are the
diffs of our sendmail.cf files with and without the forwarding to the Sun
with the mail spool partition:
71d70
<
432,433c431,432
< R@ $#$M$@sunmail$:$n
< R$- $#$M$@sunmail$:$1<@sunmail>
---
> R@ $#local$:$n handle <> form
> R$- $#local$:$1 user
We use "sunmail" as an alias for the machine that has the mail spool
partition so that we can change this easily in the event of an OS upgrade
or crash.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 18:26:41 EDT
From: Wayne Folta <folta at tove.umd.edu>
Subject: NFS mount mail
In response to a query about NFS mounting the /usr/spool/mail directory:
The requester noted that the mail all ends up being owned by nobody, which
can cause problems. But they didn't want to use their VAX as simply a
mail router.
As I remember it, we solved the problem as follows:
1. All users must be known to the NFS server. For us, this was easy,
since all users were already in the Yellow Pages passwd file.
2. All users are mail-aliased to reside on the NFS server. That is,
user 'usera' was aliased to 'usera at nfshost' in the Yellow Pages
mail aliases file.
3. NFS mount the /usr/spool/mail from the NFS server to all the other
hosts.
That's it. What this does is use mail forwarding to send mail to the NFS
server, which guarantees that the mail files are properly owned. When the
NFS server receives mail, it sticks it in the /usr/spool/mail, where it is
instantly accessable on all hosts. No muss, no fuss. And you are NOT
simply using the NFS server host to _forward_ mail!
Wayne Folta
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 88 17:52:37 PDT
From: John Lekashman <lekash at orville.nas.nasa.gov>
Subject: SUNOS vs Ultrix S/W Support prices
What you may havew noticed is that you are pleased with certain people
within Sun who are performing good technical work. What other people have
been complaining about is that the adminstrative and sales end has not
been keeping pace.
Most of the complaints I've recently been seeing are about long order
time, lousy capability at dealing with source licenses, policy on Boot
Proms, etc. Yes, some people at Sun have been losing about it. Others
are very good at dealing with such issues effectively. It did take me
about 12 phone calls before I found the right person to deal effectively
with the source license issue, for us. No, its not your salesperson,
except they do have to process the order.
They do make policy decisions that they feel is in their best interest.
(I of course sometimes disagree, and we have this internal policy here,
from Mr. Dave Tweten, "if its not source, its not software, and we don't
want it. Thank you." which we bend a little when we must, but usually
eventually get around to following, either by finding a way to buy it, or
changing to another vendor.)
john
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 88 19:17:46 PDT
From: frame!topgun!stk at sun.com (Steve Kirsch)
Subject: mailtool disappearence solved!
I am running 3.5 and had a severe problem with mailtool, cmdtool, etc.
disappearing. These windows would disappear when they were "Exposed" by
clicking on them, or closing a window that was on top of them.
Sun tech support was not able to help me at all.
I thought it might be the famous EMT trap bug (I am running on a 3/50),
but we checked the Rev level of the board, and it was supposed to be fixed
in the Rev I had. We changed the board anyway to a more recent rev (16 Rev
A), and I haven't had any problems since then!
Conclusion:
Either I had a "bad board" (it worked fine with 3.2!) or there is a good
reason that Sun is continuing to rev the 3/50 board.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 10:29:41 PST
From: Barry Lustig <barry at ads.com>
Subject: Wren IV with SCSI embedded
Try the following:
ncyl=1545, acyl=2, pcyl=1549, nhead=9, nsect=46, rpm=3600
bpt=20833
If you are running 4.0, uncomment the parameters for the drive in
/etc/format.dat.
Another thing to be aware of is the addressing. If your drive is jumpered
for drive 0, the UNIX configuration file should be drive 0. If you are
jumpered for drive 1, then the configuration file should look for drive 8.
These drives, because SCSI is embedded, are different then ESDI drives
that hang off of an Emulex MD21.
Barry Lustig
Advanced Decision Systems
------------------------------
Date: 5 Oct 88 11:41:04 GMT
From: Hans van Staveren <mcvax!cs.vu.nl!sater at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: IP queue overflow on Sun 4/280 with added ie1
We regularly see on a Sun 4/280 with added ie1 that all IP packets are
thrown away because an internal queue is full. This rather hampers it's
performance as a fileserver :-) The only cure we know is rebooting.
We know that it is the IP queue since telnet localhost aborts due to no
space. This only started to happen after we put the second ethernet board
in function. Sun just replaced the board but I am sceptical. Given the
enormous amount of spurious interrupts and other strange things that seem
to be normal with these boards I tend to think that there may be design
problems.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Hans van Staveren
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, Holland
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 88 12:23:23 BST
From: mcvax!gec-epl.co.uk!James_House at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Reliability of Sun systems?
We are hoping to use Sun kit as part of an industrial process control
system. At the moment we use Suns principally for software development,
but have no experience putting one in such a control system. My question
is
How reliable are Sun systems? (Take for examples a 3/50 with local
SCSI disk, and a rack mounted 3/180 with SCSI or other disk)
Can we expect better than 99.9% availability? What sort of MTBF
can be expected?
Thanks for any feedback
James House
Systems Design Division
GEC Electrical Projects Ltd
Boughton Road, Rugby, CV21 1BU.
Email: JAH at gec-epl.co.uk
or ...mcvax!ukc!uk.co.gec-epl!JAH
Tel: (+44 788 or 0788) 542144
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 88 23:17:22 PDT
From: versatc!tran at sun.com (Tony Tran 982-4317)
Subject: Experience with CDC Hardware Maintenance?
CDC recently gave us a proposal to maintain all of our SUNs workstations
and file servers (about 65+). While we have no problem with CDC taking
care of our VAXs (their local FE are superior to DEC's FE we worked with),
we've never heard of CDC maintaining SUN workstations.
Does anybody have any experience with CDC taking care of the SUN's ? Any
known problems ? Thanks in advance.
Tony Tran
Versatec, Inc.
{pyramid|sun|daver|mips}!versatc!tran
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 11:01:05 EDT
From: jtsv16!kevin at uunet.uu.net (kevin)
Subject: /usr/lib/rasfilters/convert.2 broken on 386i?
Recently I decided to convert a group of rasterfiles to RLL format, by
using convert.2 on them. I used this C-shell'ism:
foreach i(*)
/usr/lib/rasfilters/convert.2 < $i > $i.rll
mv $i.rll $i
end
I took a quick look at a couple of the images using screenload and they
looked ok. When I used NeWS to look at the images they were scrambled, as
though they were in the wrong Endian order. Running them back through the
filter again to decompress the files cured the problem but I still have
all these large files around.
Has anyone else seen this problem? By the way I am running SunOS 4.0FCS
and NeWS 1.1-RR-Alpha1 on a 386i. The images are on a filesystem NFS
mounted from a 3/280 running SunOS 3.5.
Kevin Brighton UUCP: {geac,utzoo,utgpu}!syntron!jtsv16!kevin
JTS Computer Systems Ltd. or: suncan!jtsv16!kevin
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA or: uunet!jtsv16!kevin
+1 416 665-8910 Internet: kevin at jtsv16.jts.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 11:26:21 PDT
From: Jim Frew <frew%huevos at hub.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Anybody running ksh and/or nmake under 3.[45]?
I have the ATT Toolchest sources for ksh and nmake, and would appreciate
hearing from anybody who has gotten either/both of these running on a
under SunOS 3.4 or 3.5. Thanks.
James Frew CSL/CRSEO, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 (805)961-8413
frew at hub.ucsb.EDU ucbvax!ucsbcsl!frew frew at ucsbuxa.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 88 15:32:04 PDT
From: grand!day at uunet.uu.net
Subject: Need 386i things: tape, serial card, floppy drive
My Sun salesman says not to expect 1/2" tape for the 386i any time soon.
If you know of a 3rd party vendor supporting this now or someday, please
let me know.
Also, if you know of companies supporting extra serial ports on the 386i,
please let me know.
And, if you of a 5.25" floppy that can run on a 386i, please let me know.
I'll post a summary.
--dave yost
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 17:29:37 EDT
From: carson at sylvester.cs.pittsburgh.edu (David C. Carson)
Subject: Greek fixedwidth font?
I'm interested in doing some text editing in Greek on my Sun. However,
the only font I could find on our installation is a variable spaced font,
not suitable for screen editing. I'm wondering, before I go to the
trouble of converting this font to a fixed width font, if someone out
there has already saved me the trouble. If so, could you please tell me
how I can get a hold of your work. Thank you.
David Carson carson at sylvester.cs.pittsburgh.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 88 14:58:06 -0700
From: sma at csun.edu
Subject: Wanted: 41XX emulator for sun 3/110.
Does anybody have any information re 41XX emulators for suns? I know
Bristol Group markets one called Isotek, but are there any others?
Preferably public or freeware, but any information is appreciated.
Thanx,
Steve Acheson
CSU Northridge, Computer Center
sma at csun.edu
------------------------------
Date: 28 Sep 88 21:03:46 GMT
From: wouk at smoke.arpa (Dr. Arthur Wouk )
Subject: interactive spelling checker for SUN
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?
[[ If you have been reading recent digests, you have seen several
recommendations for "ispell" and instructions on how to get it. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
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