Sun-Spots Digest, v6n49
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at RICE.EDU
Sat Apr 9 02:57:21 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Thursday, 7 April 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 49
Today's Topics:
Re: Clues about "tty grp reset" message
Re: YP Problem
Re: Can backups be done with system in multi-user mode
SUN-4 problems (2)
Error messages: MC68881 not available
CDC Sabre 850 Mb SMD disk working on Sun with Xylogics controller
Memory modules for Sun 3/60's?
driver for Maxtor worm wanted
Any problems with calentool (SunOS 2.2..)?
VAX vs SUN?
vt100 emulator that supports CPR?
VT100 emulator?
Difference between thin and "thick" wire networks?
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 14:48:37 CST
From: maeder at symcom.math.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Clues about "tty grp reset" message
The problem described by darkstar!brian at uc.msc.umn.edu (Brian Utterback)
was that a new cmdtool died with a message "tty grp reset...".
We have observed the same problem on our 3/50s that are used by many
different people (they are all in a public location). I found that when
this happenend there always was a csh process from a previous user that
was still connected to a pty. When the new cmdtool was opened it got the
same pty and the two processes competed for input.
I don't know under which circumstances these csh processes stay around.
All I can do is kill them.
If it happens to you open a new cmdtool (it will get the same pty) and
before typing anything (which would trigger the error) close it and never
touch it. You can then open a new one that will behave normally.
Roman E. Maeder
Dept. of Mathematics UUCP: ...!uiucuxc!symcom!maeder
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Internet: maeder at symcom.math.uiuc.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 00:07:35 -0500
From: Henry B. J. Krempel <krempel at pacrat.npac.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: YP Problem
Reference: v6n34
A few issues back Brian Clapper reported a problem using yppasswd after
moving the password file from /etc into another location. I had the same
problem when I did this, moving my file from /etc/passwd to
/etc/yp/src/passwd. Luckily, I was still under 90-day support from Sun,
so my friendly Sun support person suggested I move the password file back
into /etc.
I now keep my yp password file in /etc/passwd.yp and link
/etc/yp/src/passwd to it (for completeness). Everything works fine.
One more thing: you have to modify the Makefile in /etc/yp so that the
right password file is checked when doing a make.
Henry B. J. Krempel <krempel at pacrat.npac.syr.edu>
Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC)
250 Machinery Hall
Syracuse University
Syracuse, N.Y. 13244
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 88 11:11:06 EST
From: montnaro at sprite.steinmetz.ge.com (Skip Montanaro)
Subject: Re: Can backups be done with system in multi-user mode
Reference: v6n38
We do our backups in multi-user mode with no problem. As I understand it,
the problem with multi-user backups is that a directory inode might get
deleted and then reallocated between dump passes.
One thing I've toyed with, but never tried, is to send long-running
processes a SIGQUIT signal, causing them to core dump. After running the
(single user) backups and rebooting, the core image should be restartable
using dbx or adb. Is this feasible?
[[ There is no way to recover information about open files without the
co-operation of the program itself. I suppose it would be possible to
write a signal handler that could write unrecoverable information (such as
open files, signals, etc.) out to a file before dumping core.... If only
I had the time... For those who are interested: the Unix-TeX
distribution includes a program called "undump" that reads a core file and
its corresponding executable and builds a new executable from them. But
you lose the open files and the new executable starts again at the
beginning (instead of the point at which it was interrupted). But it
still might be interesting to look at. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 21:58:39 CST
From: steve at ncsa.uiuc.edu (Steve Christensen)
Subject: SUN-4 problems (1)
Reference: v6n37
I think that your experience (like others I have heard) is due primarily
to problems with your local SUN people rather than a problems with SUN
itself. Here at the University of Illinois we have been blessed I think
with sales and service people to go way out of their way to be accurate
and helpful. I have seen them push up to the highest corporate levels to
get us what we need. In almost all cases, the SUN people have been
successful in getting us what we need. This has happened because many on
campus here have spent many hours developing close relationships with the
Chicago SUN office and the local SUN service rep. Further, we have had
visits by two SUN Vice Presidents and many other SUN Headquarters experts
to help with our special needs. This kind of behavior by SUN has caused
the SUN workstation to be the top selling workstation on this campus with
numbers well above any other vendor. In fact, we hold up SUN to other
vendors we deal with as an example of how to do things.
It is common for our SUN reps to admit that they do not know about a
certain set of SUN technical information. In all cases, they find someone
who can give us a reasonable answer and have spent many hours visiting the
campus holding Help Sessions to answer questions at our local SUN user
group. Not all users are always happy or satisfied, but this is not for
the lack of trying by the SUN people.
Incidentally, the Apollo 10000 you refer to at the end of your message is
still a "vaporware" product that is not on the market and is still in a
research stage according to all the information I have. If you read the
trade announcements carefully, you will see this. Further, that machine
only obtains its "speed" by a multi-processing mechanism which is not a
general purpose system like the SUN-4.
Steve Christensen
Research Scientist
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Director, UIUC/NCSA SUN User Group
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
steve at spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 88 09:56:20 EST
From: weltyc at cs.rpi.edu (Christopher A. Welty)
Subject: SUN-4 problems (2)
Reference: v6n37
[[ Sun-Spots was cc-ed on this message to "steve at ncsa.uiuc.edu". --wnl ]]
We have always been a sun customer. We started with Suns in 1982, I
believe, those old tanks called SUN-1s (we still have a few). We have
always chosen Sun over other vendors, and at this point Suns here
outnumber all other vendors combined. I have no complaints about SUN
technical support or with the local sales folk in general. In fact, with
the exception of the SUN4 fiasco, we are quite happy with the machines,
and are still ordering more.
My posting was merely telling the truth about the SUN4, since SUN won't.
The machine is NOT ready yet. It shouldn't have been announced if there
was only going to be partial support. We feel especially angry at being
lied to when we see ourselves as a good and long time customer.
We still have not received the second of the ALM2s we ordered, nor the
pascal compiler we were promised. Keep in mind that we were assured we
could have a complete system available by the start of classes in January.
This was part of the reason we chose the SUN4. When that failed we
decided to shoot for Spring break (March 28-April 1st). At the time of
delivery (February) we were assured that would not be a problem. Since we
are in the midst of that week and still do not have all our hardware and
software, we will not be able to convert to the SUN4 until the summer.
Since that is the case, and since we haven't paid for our SUN4 yet
(despite the constant yelling from the SUN accounting office), we may very
well send it back if there is a chance of getting another, better machine
before the start of classes next Fall.
[[ And in a separate note, Mr. Welty says: ]]
The saga continues....
And I forgot to stress the most important point here. One of the main
reasons we needed to switch to the SUN4 is that we are paying maintenance
on the VAX 11/780 we want to replace. This amounts to a good $2K a month.
That means we have lost $8,000 so far on the deal.
Christopher Welty --- Asst. Director, RPI CS Labs
weltyc at cs.rpi.edu ...!rutgers!nysernic!weltyc
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 10:19:24 EST
From: Chuck Musciano <chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com>
Subject: Error messages: MC68881 not available
We seem to get erroneous error messages stating:
MC68881 floating point not available -- program requires it
even though the '881 is installed, and /usr/etc/mc68881version can find
and use the device. Some programs get the error, others do not, even
though all were compiled with the environment variable FLOAT_OPTION=f68881
set. What could be causing this? Sometimes, exiting and reentering
suntools solves the problem.
Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(305) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com
[[ This suggestion may make it sound like I don't believe you know what
you are doing, but I've seen very experienced people make the same
mistake: are you absolutely sure that you are trying to run all the
programs on the same (local) machine? I've seen experienced people
get very puzzled when the tool they tried failed because they were running
it in an rlogin window. If you are, then just ignore me. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: 29 Mar 88 11:35:39 GMT
From: Hans van Staveren <mcvax!cs.vu.nl!sater at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: CDC Sabre 850 Mb SMD disk working on Sun with Xylogics controller
We recently acquired a CDC Sabre 850Mb disk and got it to work using our
old friend diag. To spare other people the trouble here is what we did to
get it working on our Sun 4/280 with Xylogics 451 controller.
First the jumpering of the drive:
The sectoring should be set to 68 data sectors, round down method.
Table 3-11 in the manual then gives the sector switches:
O C C C O C C O O C C C C C
for a sector length of 603 bytes.
The RUNT jumper should be connected to disable RUNT sector pulses.
The B/8 Sector Clock switch should be 8(off).
This makes it possible to format the disk. Start diag and answer the
questions:
Use 1379 data tracks, 2 spare tracks, sector length 603 bytes,
disk type 1, interleave 1, 15 heads, 67 data sectors per track.
The disk type 1 is not very important, the Xylogics controller can handle
four different disk types at a time. The Eagle is type 0, and Sun also has
ideas about the other types. As long as you don't mix them with other
drives you could pick any type number between 0 and 3.
Before formatting type in the bad block info that accompanies the disk. I
typed in all defects of length 11 and larger, we had 25 of those. This
can be done by the diag-command "sformat".
Format the drive, this will take some 4-5 hours including verification.
Go to it and good luck.
Hans van Staveren
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, Holland
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 14:27:47 EST
From: mstan!s2!dpk at uunet.uu.net (Douglas P. Kingston)
Subject: Memory modules for Sun 3/60's?
Sun appears unable to supply memory modules in a timely fashion. Does
anyone know of alternate sources of supply for the memory modules used in
Sun 3/60's?
-Doug-
[[ I doubt that anyone in the US can supply memory modules for 60's in a
timely fashion. They are constructed from 1Meg DRAM chips, which are
currently only supplied by Japan, who is mad at our government for
accusing them of dumping chips on our market (not to mention the weakened
dollar driving up the price of Japanese chips). --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: 30 Mar 88 04:24:27 GMT
From: ut-emx!boyter at sally.utexas.edu (Maj Brian Boyter)
Subject: driver for Maxtor worm wanted
We are looking at buying a worm optical disk from Maxtor... It comes with
software and controller for an IBM-PC...
We would also like to use the drive with our SUN workstations... The
Maxtor interface is SCSI, so the hardware interface is no problem... Has
anyone written a driver, or know of a vendor that sells the driver for a
Maxtor drive on a SCSI controller for the SUN workstation???
Thanks in advance
Brian Boyter
boyter at emx.utexas.edu
emx!boyter
(804)973-9440
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 88 21:27:13 EST
From: ted at braggvax.arpa
Subject: Any problems with calentool (SunOS 2.2..)?
Has anyone had any problems with calentool? I compiled it on our Sun2s
running 2.2 without much trouble (had to change one #include I think), but
after giving it to our secretary, she noticed that it got weird after a
while. The sympton is basically that it seems to stack up button events
in such a way that you have to click in the bottom subwindow to get it to
do the next thing. If you have buttoned ahead, you may have to click in
the bottom several times to run through all the buttons you have pushed.
We're upgrading to 3.4 soon, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on
this if 3.X will fix it. Has anybody seen this behavoir under 3.X (on 3s
or 2s)? Or anywhere else for that matter?
Thanks,
Ted Nolan
ted at braggvax.arpa
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 09:00 N
From: <PETIT at HGRRUG5.BITNET>
Subject: VAX vs SUN?
We are planning to change a VAX 750 in a VAX-cluster by a VAX 8350, our
VAX's are on ethernet. I am curious of a SUM alternative ( We have very
little experience with SUN, we have only a SUN 3/50), we plan to use it
for SIMULA courses and data base applications running INGRES. I have some
questions :
1. How many users can I support on a SUN 3/SUN 4 , how much memory ?
2. Is there any benchmark figures for this two systems ?
Thank you
Marc Petit
University of Groningen
Computing Center
The Netherlands
My address on EARN/BITNET : PETIT at HGRRUG5
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 08:39:24 PST
From: kay%sdcc7 at ucsd.edu (Don Kay)
Subject: vt100 emulator that supports CPR?
I am looking for a vt100 emulator for SunView that supports "Cursor
Position Report" CPR, in terms of Row and Column. The vt100 escape
sequence for CPR is \E[6n where \E is ESC character (0x1b). I know that
xterm under X11 supports the sequence, but when I tried Bruce Barnett's
vttool it did not support the CPR esacpe sequence on the SUN console. Does
anyone know where I might get a vt100 emulator for SunView that supports
CPR?
[[ Especially handy when you have a heart attack...... Seriously, check
the "vt100tool" that was distributed on the Sun User Group tape a few
months ago. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 88 16:29:35 EST
From: chuck at wooglin.scc.com (Charles Williams)
Subject: VT100 emulator?
HELP!!! I am in need of a VT100 terminal emulator that runs under
suntools. I know that SUN sells one which has been ordered, but been
delayed by the lack of manuals, and I need one in a pinch. I heard that
there is one floating around in the public domain. Can anyone direct me to
it??
Thanks in advance,
Chuck Williams
Contel Federal Systems
chuck at wooglin.scc.com
[[ The sun-spots source archives has a copy of "vttool". It is available
in the files "sun-source/vttool.shar.1" and " "sun-source/vttool.shar.2".
It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the host "titan.rice.edu" or
via the archive server. For more information about the archive server,
send a mail message containing the word "help" to the address
"archive-server at rice.edu". There is also "vt100tool" which is
(unfortunately) not in the archives. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 13:02:09 EST
From: edsews!cowan at uunet.uu.net (Andy Cowan)
Subject: Difference between thin and "thick" wire networks?
I need some real facts and figures comparing thinwire and thickwire Sun
networks. If this has already been done to death, then I apologize. But,
as a novice to networking I'm looking to put together a cheat sheet that
quickly explains the differences in simple language that even management
types could understand. (Yes, really. THAT simple.)
Some things to consider ( but not limited to these ):
cost
max/min length
max/min number of attached devices
signal rate
data rate
other equipment needed to connect
sheilding
best/worst environment in which to use each
ease of installation/cabling
anything else that might help
Stress the differences using real numbers. Not just 'gut feel' which my
lab guys are giving me.
Thanks......
cowan at edsews.eds.com
Andy Cowan
EDS-TSD
------------------------------
End of SUN-Spots Digest
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