ESIX Networks and X

[Ross Biro]

I'm running ESIX 3.2 rev c on a 386/20 with 4 meg of page memory, a WD1007-WA2
ESDI controller connected to a 340 meg drive.  Overall ESIX has performed 
well, but I have found a few problems:

With 4 meg of memory, X is all but unuseable.  I can run one copy of xterm
without serious problems but after that memory becomes full and everytime I
move the mouse I have to wait for something to be swapped.

The networking software does not support domain resolution (i.e. my machine
is connected to internet, but I can only ftp etc. to .stanford.edu machines.)

The dos support (mdir etc.) only supports 12 bit FATs so it is all but
impossible to access a dos partition on a hard drive.

The floppy driver doesn't sense the media type on 3.5" disks, it just assumes
that they are the maximum density that the drive will support, thus it is
impossible to use 720k disks in a 1.44 meg drive without changing your setup
parms, and the 1.44 meg disks are treated as 1.2 meg disks so they will not
be compatible with dos.

There may be a problem with interactions between the select function and
an Alarm handler.  This doesn't cause problems with any of the software
supplied with ESIX but it may cause problems when porting software from
bsd boxes.

----

The problem with the 12 bit FATs and the floppy driver were told to me
by ESIX technical support so they are aware of them, but I am under the
impression that they have no plans for fixes in the near future.  The 
technical support people were unaware of any problem with select, so
it could just be my imagination (but I did send them some code which I
think demonstrates the problem.)  The only other problems I have encountered
when running ESIX are do to lack of memory.  When I compiled the GNU c 
compiler the make took three days while most of the CPU time was spent
swapping pages to and from the hard disk.  I think with another 4 meg
it would have taken about 2-3 hours.

Ross Biro
bir7 at portia.stanford.edu (uunet!stanford!portia!bir7)