SunOS 4.x ar library problems

[lwv27 at cas.BITNET]

For the past 2-3 years we have been seeing a peculiar problem on our
various Sun workstations.

Background:

1. We are running Sun 386i/Model 150s and Sun Sparcstations 1 and 1+.
2. We are running SunOS 4.0.2 on the 386is and SunOS 4.1 on the SS1 and 1+.
3. We are using the SunOS System V software as the default.
4. Our archive libraries are stored on disks connected to a VAX 11/785
   running Ultrix 3.1 .
5. Only one process at a time updates the archive library.
6. Sporatically we find ourselves with an error message from ar concerning
   either a malformed archive library or a mangled string table.

We cannot find a pattern to the corruption.  We do not seem to be able to
get this problem to repeat itself regularly.  In the past 3 months it has
happened approximately 10 times, and most of those have been in the last 3
weeks.  But before that, there was little regular activity in terms of
updating the libraries.  There has been a large set of changes being
logged against the files during the last 3 - 4 weeks.

Has anyone else seen this problem?  Does anyone have a solution to the
problem?

Larry W. Virden
Business: UUCP: osu-cis!chemabs!lwv27  INET: lwv27%cas.BITNET at CUNYVM.CUNY.Edu
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Proline: lvirden at pro-tcc.cts.com   America Online: lvirden    CIS: [75046,606]