novice trys to set up PI

[Tom Kirkman]

I tried to mail this direct, but the mail bounced to

 ACSVX::IN%"sgi!shinobu!odin!rains.wpd.sgi.com!bobg at ucbvax.berkeley.edu"


>If you or anyone else have more comments I would greatly
>appreciate hearing from you.  You can either post to the net
>or mail to me directly.  It also doesn't matter what the subject
>matter is with respect to SGI.  I'll make sure your concerns are
>fed to the right people.

>Thanks,
>Bob Green

At this moment my feelings RE SGI boil down to two problems: mail & the
hotline.

In my posting I also complained about the absence of a readme.1st manual.
I took another look at the PI owner's guide & remembered that it was
a great help.  If anything it was written on too low a level for me.
My problems started if 
(1) the owner's guide "was wrong":
  This happened RE: my nfs problem -- the owner's guide showed a nfs 
  button to push, but I had none (& I "knew" I had purchased nfs)...the
  hotline <<eventually>> solved this problem (get the nfs tape).  I
  think the owner's guide could have helped e.g., by having a list of
  frequently-installed tapes (to make it clear what's not on the disk)
  or my noting dependencies (i.e., no nfs installation -> no nfs button;
  I didn't have the button & didn't know why)
(2) I wanted to do things not in the owner's guide, e.g., mail.

I have had three problems with the workspace tools: (1) no support
for group id's in the sysmgr tool [in fact the tool uses a default
group id [25?] that the manual says is reserved--I have not found
how to change the default], (2) accidental renameing of files by
thinking I'm typing to a screen that in fact is not the active screen
[I thought I had read about this in the owner's manual, but when it
happened I could not find the entry in the manual] & (3) the
pointer-becomes-hand problem named in my posting.  But the tools
generally worked well.

Mail has been a problem mostly by comparison.  People down the block
who bought Sun or DEC had mail work out-of-the-box.  I'm faced with
figuring out a very cryptic sendmail language, which I have no
interest in learning.  Repeated calls to the hotline--now lasting
going over a month time-span--have failed to produce a sendmail that
can work with an out-of-the-box Sun&DEC sendmail.  I looked over
recent info-iris posting RE sendmail & found the suggestion to just
steal a Sun sendmail since nobody could get the SGI sendmail to work. 
Why can't SGI get sendmail to work (even with hotline "help") with
what must be the most common default sendmails? 

I think the hotline has been the most frustrating part of my PI
experience.  The main problem is that it is SLOW at best and
frequently totally without response.  (I believe the first question I
asked the hotline [RE: a networking tool problem] has never been
addressed in any form: one month & waiting.) I have never received
immediate help--at best it's on a call-back (sometime) basis. If I
call back & try to determine the status of any of my ~half-dozen
problems, I find the responsible person is never available.  I am
sometimes told that that person tried to call me, but the hotline has
NEVER even tried my secondary phone number.  (As a prof I'm
well-trained to suspect missed call-backs: it's as common a student
excuse as "the check is in the mail.") If I were more cynical I would
say the purpose of the hotline is too delay until the next release. 

PS -- the call-back problem with the hotline could
be solved by giving the hotline folks e-mail access.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Kirkman                       DECnet:                       55860::TKIRKMAN
                                  INTERnet:       tkirkman%55860 at msus1.msus.edu
                                  BITnet:                       tkirkman at csbsju
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Since that attempted posting:)
Actually things have improved 100% since I tried to mail the above.
1) the hotline came up with a sendmail.cf that works.
2) the hotline started using my secondary phone number, when my primary
number no-answered.
3) I now have only one outstanding problem to the hotline [a network tool
problem that does not affect how things work: only an apparently incorrect
error message is printed].
4) I'm thinking about buying my second workstation & I'm thinking SGI