Broken software using ULTRIX 1.2

[Jeff Janock]

In article <4621 at sun.uucp> chuq at sun.UUCP writes:
>> We recently "upgraded" a vax750 to ULTRIX 1.2.  
>> Suddenly the following don't work anymore:
>> 
>> finger (core dumps occasionally)
>> sps
>> top
>> uw (windows program)
>> sccs (admin command bombs)
>> 
>> Has anyone else seen this?  Has anyone figured out how to fix?  Or is there
>> something wrong with our installation of ULTRIX?
>
>Did you recompile the programs? Most or all of those programs use nlist() 
No problem with you...  The upgrade was installed correctly!!

Several points about this having just done the upgrade on
our VAX 11/780:

1) finger was modified be DEC and has a problem with commas
in the password file that are present in typical berkly fashion.  
These commas causes the bus error message to be issued and core
to dump (unless 'limit core 0' is done :-)

2) In addition to the utilities mentioned, basename is also
broken.  echo `basename xx.c .c` produces a newline when
the old 1.1 binary is used the output is as expected: xx

3) The responce given to recompile is absurd (mostly) because
the predmoinate number of ULTRIX sites have binary only
licenses for the cost of a source license is prohibitive
unless you are an educational institution, but it still costs!

4) there are probably other binaries that we have not found yet
that are broken.  My suggestion to all who applied the ULTRIX
1.2 upgrade to their 1.1 systems; talk to your software service
person and tell them you got bad binaries on your 1.2 upgrade
tapes and request the 1.2 full set of installation tapes.
The tapes will be sent out ASAP as this has become a more 
widespread problem for DEC.

This means that work will have to be duplicated, but you may
at least be resonably sure about the integrity of your system
and utilities.

Good luck...

Jeff Janock
NEC-EL

uucp: ...{ihnp4!inmet | decvax!frog | encore!necis}!necntc!jeff