yppasswdd bug and Sunview cursor

[David G Anderer]

We've just opened a public classroom of 12 Suns (diskless 3/50s and 3/60s)
all served by a 3/280.  We're using OS4.0.  We're also learning - I've
seen more strange things in this environment in a month than I have in a
year of running Suns (under 3.X) in offices and labs.

Two immediate questions:  I've heard numerous references to the deadly
hole in yppasswdd, but haven't yet heard a decent description of exactly
how it works or how to guard against it (except "don't run yppasswdd" -
sigh.)  Could someone in the know please email me details?  (Given our
environment - a site where all machines should look and act the same - we
NEED yppasswd.  Don't we?)

Second, we're seeing a problem on our color 3/60s under Sunview:  Most
times when the confirmation box ("Are you sure you want to Quit?") comes
up, the cursor is invisible.  (Sometimes it comes up red, sometimes
correctly.) Works fine on monochrome machines.  I've been told "Oh yea,
that means you've got your machine configured wrong."  Fine - if so, how?
I can't seem to get that question answered either.

Thanks for any information.

Dave Anderer
Academic Computing and Instructional Technology
University of Delaware

[[ This was mentioned and discussed briefly in v7n151 and v7n178.  Dale
Call suggested invoking SunView with either the -overlay_only or the
-8bit_color_only flag.  See those issues for more details.  --wnl ]]