Sun-Spots Digest, v6n16
William LeFebvre
Sun-Spots-Request at RICE.EDU
Wed Feb 17 07:54:46 AEST 1988
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Tuesday, 16 February 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 16
Today's Topics:
Sun-Symbolic-Math Mailing List
Re: Setting up diskless clients without using Setup
Re: Adding a node to a server-based system
Re: adding more diskless clients
Re: C++ on the Suns: which vendor to choose
Re: "iebark" errors on Sun 3
Re: EPSON Printer Problems
re: dumpregion by Richard Tobin, AIAI, Edinburgh
A small bug in rarpd(8)
Motorola MC68881/MC68882 manual published by Prentice Hall
retrofitting 68881 chips
Problems with Century C-2400 SMD drive
Using 3rd and 4th serial port on Sun CPU board?
Monochrome Pin-outs?
2 monitors off one Sun?
lpd printing to a TCP terminal server attached printer?
"Virtual" scrollbars?
Need info on PostScript Laser Printers
PostScript driver for SUN-GKS?
Send contributions to: sun-spots at rice.edu
Send subscription add/delete requests to: sun-spots-request at rice.edu
Bitnet readers can subscribe directly with the CMS command:
TELL LISTSERV AT RICE SUBSCRIBE SUNSPOTS My Full Name
Recent backissues are stored on "titan.rice.edu". For volume X, issue Y,
"get sun-spots/vXnY". They are also accessible through the archive
server: mail the word "help" to "archive-server at rice.edu".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 23:39:26 CST
From: steve at ncsa.uiuc.edu (Steve Christensen)
Subject: Sun-Symbolic-Math Mailing List
The SUN User Group has asked that a number of Special Interest Group
mailing lists be formed based on first meetings at the San Jose meeting.
Following the "Suns-at-Home" mailing list setup by Dwight McKay in a
previous Sun-Spots volume, I will be moderating a mailing list on symbolic
manipulation systems on Suns called Sun-Symbolic-Math. I encourage any
Sun Users interested in systems like Macsyma, SMP, Maple, Reduce, Sheep
and others to join and contribute to this mailing list. I urge vendors to
keep us informed of current and future developments of their products on
SUN machines.
If you wish to join the mailing list, send a message to
Sun-Symbolic-Math-Request at spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu
or
steve at spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu.
To submit an article or comment or other piece of information,
send it to
Sun-Symbolic-Math at spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu
Steve Christensen, Moderator of Sun-Symbolic-Math
steve at spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamgaign
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 10:48:40 PST
From: Steve Schlaifer x4-3171 <steve at mahendo.jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: Setting up diskless clients without using Setup
Using setup is the easiest way to set up diskless clients only if it gets
it right.
When I went to set up a diskless client (my first and so far only one), I
started off to use setup because that was what everyone said was best.
But, when I fired it up it said I had xy0, xy1, sd0, and sd1 disks.
Further, it said my xy0 and xy1 disks were Fujitsu eagles. This was
completely wrong. My only disk is on xy0 and it is a Fujitsu super eagle.
I could find no way to convince setup that it was wrong and was left with
no recourse but to do the job by hand. Creating the disk partitions was
the easy part.
The hard part was figuring out what goes in the partitions and how to go
about providing /tmp, /usr/spool/... etc. directories for the client.
Larry Wall, who administers another server here, came up with the scheme
we used for the first cut at the problem of what goes in the partitions.
We just reproduced the contents of his server's client partitions on my
machine. I poked around on another server for a while and saw how to use
symbolic links to get private versions of the spool and tmp directories.
I am up and running now but the whole process took much longer than it
should have.
It was annoying that setup didn't work and there was no way to make it
work. It was more annoying that the documentation wasn't complete enough
to tell me how to do the job by hand.
--Steve Schlaifer (steve at mahendo.jpl.nasa.gov or jplgodo!steve)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 17:17:49 EST
From: Dick St.Peters <steinmetz!stpeters at uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Re: Adding a node to a server-based system
Reluctant to give up disk space now for clients you *might* get someday?
Well, for once you can have your cake and eat it too.
WARNING: Don't even think of trying this unless you really know what
you're doing!
You can allocate soft partitions for future clients and still use the
space in the meantime, because you can NFS-export an ND partition.
Twiddle nd.local to combine the future client's root and swap partitions
into a single partition, rerun nd, make a filesystem on this ND partition,
mount it, and export it. Then fiddle the server's rc.whatevers so that it
doesn't try to mount the partition before running nd. (The NFS'd ND
partition can't go in the server's fstab).
When the planned-for client arrives, you just undo this, including making
a root filesystem for the client and filling it with the needed files. As
I recall, you can't just untwiddle nd.local and rerun nd: you have to
actually reboot the server.
Of course, you then face a squeeze: what to do with the files that were in
the exported ND partition.
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters at ge-crd.arpa
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 13:12:50 CST
From: symcom!maeder at uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: adding more diskless clients
In recent issues of sunspots there was some discussion about adding
diskless clients. It seems to me there is a better solution than rerunning
setup or repartitioning the whole disk and booting from tape.
On a (homogenous) server (named orion in this case) the disk normally
looks like this:
partition fs
a /
b (swap)
c nd root and swap
d /usr/orion
f /pub
h /usr
Partition c is the whole disk, but there is a 'hole' between b and d where
the nd partitions are put in. d is normally the big partition with all the
user files. So all you have to do is to extend the nd partitions at the
expense of the d partition.
The only change in the disk label is then to change the starting cylinder
and size of the d partition. You should then remake a filesystem on it and
edit nd.local. You can then reload the userfiles from the backup. All of
this can be done without booting off the tape, you only need to run diag,
which can be booted off the disk. (Changing the label does not destroy
any partitions that were not changed, does it?) With the Rimfire
controller which comes with a program like 'diag' which runs under Unix I
would not even have to shut down the system! This is of course a bit like
open heart surgery, so you should make a level 0 backup...
Roman E. Maeder
Dept. of Mathematics UUCP: ...!uiucuxc!symcom!maeder
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Internet: maeder at symcom.math.uiuc.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 09:32:51 CST
From: strong%bell.cad.mcc.com at mcc.com (Michael Strong)
Subject: Re: C++ on the Suns: which vendor to choose
Michael Tiemann, here at MCC, modified the GNU C compiler and GNU gdb
symbolic debugger to yield a C++ compiler and a version of gdb that can be
used to debug C++ programs. It is public domain and has been given back
to Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation, whose goods are archived
on AI.PREP.EDU at MIT. You might look into getting a copy of that from
PREP via anonymous ftp.
Michael Strong
@ MCC VLSI CAD Program [512] 338-3642
P.O. Box 200195, Austin, TX 78720
3500 West Balcones Center Drive, Austin, Tx 78759
ARPA: strong at mcc.com
UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech,pyramid}!ut-sally!strong%mcc.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 02:00:04 EST
From: Chris Torek <chris at mimsy.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: "iebark" errors on Sun 3
Iebark is one half of the Intel Ethernet watchdog timer (the other half is
called iedog; the Intel Ethernet chip has so many bugs it takes two
routines, and many pages of code, to avoid them all). The hang appears to
be the result of a bug in the driver. We saw a spate of these some time
ago; they subsequently vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared (or
did someone replace a board? I forget). I stared at the driver for
several hours while these were occurring, and twice thought I had found
the problem, but was wrong both times. It may be another hardware bug.
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain: chris at mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 07:54:43 EST
From: Mike Jipping <jipping at frodo.cs.hope.edu>
Subject: Re: EPSON Printer Problems
> I added a "fc#0300" and "xc#40" to the printcap entry to shut off all
> possible parity conflicts.
> ...
> [[ Ummm....Don't you mean "fs#0300", which would set "any parity"? And
> "xs#040", which would set LITOUT mode? (The leading 0 tells printcap that
> it's an octal value.) ... Out of curiosity,
> what would turning off both EVEN and ODD parity mean? ... --wnl ]]
Oops. You're right. It was "xs#040", which, upon looking back,
invalidates the "fc" setting by ignoring parity. BTW -- Turning off both
EVEN and ODD parity gets you space parity.
[[ But, in my experience, so does turning ON both EVEN and ODD. How would
one then get "mark" parity? --wnl ]]
-- Mike Jipping
Dept of Computer Science
Hope College
jipping at cs.hope.edu
------------------------------
From: Eric Ole Barber <mcvax!nw.stl.stc.co.uk!sizex at uunet.uu.net>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 09:41:44 GMT
Subject: re: dumpregion by Richard Tobin, AIAI, Edinburgh
Further to my recent message, Chris Uppal points out that dumpregion.c
needs to be edited to enable option (iii). The edits are -
[[ The "edits" are archived in the file "sun-source/dumpregion.diff". It
can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the host "titan.rice.edu" or via
the archive server with the request "send sun-source dumpregion.diff".
For more information about the archive server, send a mail message
containing the word "help" to the address "archive-server at rice.edu".
--wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 88 14:03:36 +0200
From: leonid at TAURUS.BITNET
Subject: A small bug in rarpd(8)
I have spent an hour trailing down this problem, and I wish to save you
the pain if you are installing a new diskless client. Rarpd uses string
comparison to macth an Ethernet address of a Client to the address in
/etc/ethers. Thus leading zeroes in /etc/ethers will lead to a failure
matching those addresses. It happened in 3.0-3.4, wheather you run YP or
not. If you add an entry like this into /etc/ethers:
8:0:20:0:0b:11 venus
the address will not be recognize. "0b" should be just "b" etc.
Leonid
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 15:12:33 PST
From: dhough at sun.com (David Hough)
Subject: Motorola MC68881/MC68882 manual published by Prentice Hall
I just received a copy of this manual, copyright by Motorola but published
by Prentice Hall, so that, like the MC68020 manual, it may actually be
obtainable in technical bookstores rather than by begging a Motorola sales
office. At last there will be an answer for Sun's customers that I've
told to read a 68881 manual without telling them how to obtain it.
The MC68881 is the best hardware implementation of IEEE arithmetic from
the standpoint of completeness and correctness, except for some minor
complaints:
transcendental functions are not monotonic in extended precision,
log2(x) and 2**x aren't exact in some places they could be,
there are no fmove-out instructions that round the source
f register to the stored value
not all the information that a user trap handler could exploit
is available in user mode
Transcendental functions are guided by the spirit rather than the
specification of the IEEE standard, anyway, and most other hardware
implementations don't come close.
CISC enthusiasts should compare the 68881/2 instruction set to anything
similar they may have been using to see the difference a clean orthogonal
instruction set can make.
RISC enthusiasts don't care about on-board transcendentals because, by
their own admission, they are smart enough to code them faster using a
smaller instruction set. They would be well advised, in general, not to
be too pleased with their results until they are reasonably close to the
68881's in accuracy.
I don't know whether or not to be surprised, but the page layout produced
by Prentice Hall is not as aesthetically pleasing as that of the 68881
manual published by Motorola.
David Hough
ARPA: dhough at sun.com
UUCP: {ucbvax,decvax,allegra,decwrl,cbosgd,ihnp4,seismo}!sun!dhough
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 22:05:37 PST
From: Jim Frew <frew at hub.ucsb.edu>
Subject: retrofitting 68881 chips
Having stupidly ordered a 3/50 without the 68881 FPU, and also having a
3/160 with an old A79J 68881, I've been carefully following the discussion
on adding the chips to your Sun-3's. Well, yesterday I ordered a couple
of 68881's from Schweber Electronics (in Sherman Oaks CA, but they seem to
be everywhere: I just called the Motorola phone number on the back of the
68020 spec sheet and asked for some distributors). Price $159 each. They
arrived TODAY! Faster than some email ...
The 3/50 was a plug-and-go operation. Pull the CPU card, plop the chip
in, shove it back together.
The 3/160 is almost as easy, except you have to move a CPU board jumper
(at N-11, from 5-6 to 7-8) if you want the FPU clock to run at 16.67
instead of 12.5 MHz (see the Hardware Manual).
Other than being careful to ground myself before touching the chips or the
boards, I didn't follow any special procedures or use any weird tools.
Unless I suffered from some incredible dumb luck, installing the chips
yourself would seem to be a painless and VERY cost-effective procedure.
-Jim Frew (frew at hub.ucsbcsl.edu)
[[ Installing chips is usually pretty easy. It's getting them out again
that almost always requires a special tool and patience. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Wed 3 Feb 88 07:08:20-PDT
From: PAWKA at nosc-tecr.arpa
Subject: Problems with Century C-2400 SMD drive
I'm having a problem with a 3/160. I've connected a Century C-2400 SMD
drive to a Xylogics 450 controller via an VME-Multibus adaptor. The system
runs o.k. most of the time, however every once in a while it will reboot
itself after printing the message: PANIC - REGS ACCESSED WHILE BUSY. Any
help would be greatly appreciated.
Mike Pawka
Naval Ocean Systems Center
PAWKA at NOSC-TECR.ARPA
Comm: 619-553-4108
Av: 8-553-4108
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 18:52:07 PST
From: roode at pisa.orc.olivetti.com (David Roode)
Subject: Using 3rd and 4th serial port on Sun CPU board?
For those file servers without a Sun console, and hence no mouse and no
keyboard, has anyone come up with a method of converting these 2 serial
ports into additional modem connections, for UUCP, etc.?
------------------------------
Date: 5 Feb 88 10:50:00 EST
From: "Dave Anderer" <dave at vax.oit.udel.edu>
Subject: Monochrome Pin-outs?
What at the pin assignments for the 9-pin connectors used for monochrome
Sun-3s? Frequencies and levels where appropriate would be appreciated
too. Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: 5 Feb 88 16:41:56 GMT
From: asp at cos.com (Andrew S. Partan)
Subject: 2 monitors off one Sun?
We are looking for a cheap way of driving 2 (or more??) monitors off of
one video signal (for instance - the signal that comes off the back of a
3/50). We thought that if we made a 'Y' cable, we could hook up 2
monitors to a Sun.
Thanks for any info that anyone may have (even if it is telling us that we
are off of our gourds).
Please respond to Paul Serice (serice at cos.com).
--asp (Andrew Partan @ Corporation for Open Systems)
-- asp at cos.com or asp%cos.com at uunet.uu.net
-- {uunet, sundc, decuac, hqda-ai, hadron}!cos!asp
ASN.1 Object Identifier: "{joint-iso-ccitt mhs(6) group(6) 157}"
------------------------------
Date: 3 Feb 88 15:13:08 GMT
From: yunexus!eriks at uunet.uu.net (Eriks Rugelis)
Subject: lpd printing to a TCP terminal server attached printer?
We have a Sun-3/280 running SunOS V3.4. We also have a Cisco TCP/IP
terminal server. The server is capable of supporting 'reverse
connections' so that a connection can be initiated from 'somewhere' on the
network to one of the serial ports on the server. Reverse-connection
serial ports are addressed in either of two ways:
1. you can connect to a particular TCP port at the IP address assigned
to the server; a block of TCP port numbers are assigned to
correspond to the serial ports on the server
2. you can 'alias' TCP ports on the server to distinct IP addresses
The TCP ports can run the Telnet protocol or can be used as raw TCP data
streams. The manual for the terminal server suggests that a raw TCP
stream is usually the most desireable way of connecting to a port serving
a printer device.
Now come the questions:
1. How do I get lpd to speak to a raw TCP datastream?
2. Do I have to make source mods to lpd to make it understand how
to 'dial' a TCP call? (or can I fake something into /dev and have
lpd use that)
3. Does anyone else out there have some tools/sources/hints that they
could throw our way to make this job a little easier?
Presently I expect that the way to do this is to take lpd and hack it to
open a socket to the desired TCP port on the server. From there on lpd
would speak to the socket instead of the printer device that it would
normally find in /dev.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Voice: Eriks Rugelis Ma Bell: 416/736-5257 x.2688 NetNorth: eriks at yulibra
Soon to be: eriks at libra.yorku.ca UUCP: seismo!mnetor!yunexus!eriks
[[ Why not just write a back-end "filter" (either input or output, not
sure which would be better), that does the connecting and the
transferring? This is what Imagen does for their lpd support of an
Ethernet-based printer. This way you don't have to modify lpd. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 11:36:01 EST
From: rsalz at pineapple.bbn.com
Subject: "Virtual" scrollbars?
I want to create a text subwindow that scrolls through data that might not
exist until you look at it. I'll know the total number of lines, but not
their individual contents. Anyone got this, or hints on how to do it?
(This is my first SunView program.)
The ideal code would create the window and hook into two routines I
specify, one to generate the line just before the one being shown, and one
to generate the line just after. (I will maintain the line numbers
internally.)
Replies to me will get summarized for the list.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 88 08:45:34 -0500
From: (Jeffrey A. Edelheit) <edelheit at community-chest.mitre.org>
Subject: Need info on PostScript Laser Printers
In the past, we have purchased Imagen printers. However, it has been
suggested that we now start using PostScript printers. Thus, I am
considering buying a PostScript laser printer to attach to a 3/280. A
local supplier has suggested the QMS810, selling for $4,000. It uses the
newer Canon engine (the same one as in the LaserJet II), and supposedly is
much faster than the Apple LaserWriter Plus. Has anyone had experience
with this printer? What other PostScript printers have people had
experience with? Has anyone had any experience with Elan Computer Group
and their Eroff package? Any suggestions for a source of device drivers
and filters? [[ Specifically, those drivers and filters that run on
SunOS. --wnl ]]
Regards,
Jeff Edelheit (edelheit at gateway.mitre.org)
The MITRE Corporation 7525 Colshire Drive
McLean, VA 22102 (703) 883-7586
------------------------------
Date: 5 Feb 88 15:04 +0100
From: Igor Metz <metz at iam.unibe.ch>
Subject: PostScript driver for SUN-GKS?
A friend of mine asked me whether there exists a PostScript driver for GKS
or a Metafile -> PostSCript translator. Has anybody of you seen such a
beast?
Thanks in advance
Igor Metz X400: metz at iam.unibe.ch or metz at iam.unibe.chunet
Institut fuer Informatik ARPA: metz%iam.unibe.ch at relay.cs.net
und angewandte Mathematik UUCP: ..!uunet!mcvax!iam.unibe.ch!metz
Universitaet Bern
Switzerland Phone: (+31) 65 49 02
------------------------------
End of SUN-Spots Digest
***********************
More information about the Comp.sys.sun
mailing list