[mod.computers.sun] SUN-Spots Digest, v4n2

Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (Scott Alexander) (01/20/86)

SUN-SPOTS DIGEST             Sunday, 19 Jan 1986             Volume 4 : Issue 2

Today's Topics:
			 Sun-3 core and object files
			     distributed sources
			    THE PIG-OUT Manifesto.
			       Re: dumping suns
			       CLU for the Sun
			    LCF memory boards (2)
	    Can a Sun FS be file server for a Xerox work-station.
		facsimile group 3 to Sun raster file decoding
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 86 13:37:05 PST
From: hoptoad!gnu@lll-crg.ARPA (John Gilmore)
Subject: Sun-3 core and object files

For the 3.0 release, Sun changed the a.out format slightly.  The old
file type (0413 or whatever) has been split into a machine type and a
file type.  Also, 0413 files where the machine type is nonzero (i.e.
not old a.outs) no longer have a whole page of zeros taking up space on
disk; the a.out header is just treated as part of the text segment,
like it was when 0407 meant "jmp .+8".

From the comments in <a.out.h>, running old-format a.outs will be
supported until release 4.0 (to give people a chance to recompile, or
to get a new version of 3rd party software, or whatever).  But old
a.out's will not be demand paged from the file system, so if you have a
big program (like gnuemacs) you'll want to undump it in the new format.

The core file format has been "fixed" in my opinion.  Rather than
dumping the "upage" on the front of the file, a magic number has been
assigned and a struct of information is placed there, followed by
the data, bss, and stack segments.  This struct is independent of
the kernel or the upage, so a developer can change the upage without
having to rebuild all the debuggers.  Hooray, modularity wins again!
Now if somebody'd only do this for "ps"...

-----------------------------

Date: Thu, 16 Jan 86 19:00:58 cst
From: texsun!mehoge!tj@sun.UUCP (Cal Thixton   Sun Microsystems  Dallas Office)
Telephone: (214) 823-2084   Office Phone: (214) 788-1951
Purpose-In-Life: To Spread the Gospel of UN*X to the heathens
Subject: distributed sources


> Sun is nice enough to incorporate many example programs in their window
> documentation, even for object only sites...Can I post the results
> to net.sources, presuming I still give credit to Sun for the portions 
> originally theirs?

The intent of the examples in the manuals was to help the user understand
the window system and thus reduce the load on tech support at sun. Feel 
free to do with the sources what you like so long as you give credit where
due.

			Cal Thixton
			Sun Microsystems

		{ucbvax,decvax,decwrl,ihnp4}!sun!{,texsun!}tj
		{ut-sally,convex,smu}!texsun!tj

-----------------------------

Date: Mon 13 Jan 86 20:56:54-PST
From: Pierre MacKay <MACKAY@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
Subject: THE PIG-OUT Manifesto.

First manifesto of PIG-OUT:

Phillips
Installation
Gullibles
-
Old
Unobtainable
Tubes

Whereas: All our old Model-T Phillips displays are looking just a bit gray.
     and
Whereas: The comforting words in a recent issue of SUN-Spots are, alas,
		erroneous.
     and
Whereas: We would all like to continue seeing what we are doing on our SUNs.

Be it resolved--That we flood our local and national SUN sales representatives
	with questions about what we do with our aging, dim monitors.


Seriously folks, we are in trouble.  The tube in the Phillips monitor, 
which is grossly overstressed by the fact that it works in an uncooled
box and must be turned up much too bright to shine through the $450.00
video filter, is beginning to decay all across the country.  A hopeful
submission to SUN-SPOTS recently pointed out that it has a Sylvania
part number.  This is true, but Sylvania doesn't stock the part.  
A Taiwan firm suggests that we might be able to order direct from
Taiwan, but only in lots of 100 or more.

What are we to do?  We were SUN's first customers, and we are owed some
consideration.  Maybe the Phillips Monitor was a dog, but we bought that
dog in good faith.  Phillips says that they are legally prohibited from
dealing with end users by their contract with SUN.  SUN doesn't seem
to have much interest in Phillips monitor victims.  

Do you have nightmares of fading vision?  Does your world seem to
be turning gray?  Join PIG-OUT.  Demand new tubes.  NOW!

						Pierre MacKay
						Computer Science FR-35
						University of Washington
						Seattle, Washington 98195
						MACKAY@Washington.ARPA
                 	     ... {ihnp4,decvax}!uw-beaver!uw-june!mackay

-----------------------------

Date: Wed, 15 Jan 86 12:48:15 cst
From: texsun!mehoge!tj@sun.UUCP (Cal Thixton   Sun Microsystems  Dallas Office)
Telephone: (214) 823-2084   Office Phone: (214) 788-1951
Purpose-In-Life: To Spread the Gospel of UN*X to the heathens
Subject: Re: dumping suns


> What is anyone doing about dumping suns?  With 15 suns the estimate
> here is that weekly epoch dumps would keep 2 people busy full-time.
> Needless to say...  Most of our users do not have tape drives...
> All the suns have private disks.  

First off, I Never recommend that anyone order a workstation With a 
disk and No tape. This only saves in upfront costs, but you pay for it
in the long run a lot. This is a prime example. The following is a script
that I use on my net of 4 workstations. We have only about 2/3 gig of
disk space. We have a sun2/170, 2 sun2/50 w/showbox (disk and tape) and
1 sun2/50 diskless. As can be seen, the file system is set up to look 
the same on each machine. There are 3 1/4" cartridge disks on this net;
1 20meg and 2 60meg which gives me ~160meg of backup. A good percentage of 
things we have online do not change very often, so really, only the 
user accounts and critical system files are backup'ed nightly. Tapes are
left in the 1/4" drives all of the time. Each machine's cron runs this 
script nightly, though the times are staggared to help prevent 
deadlocking-like situations. Since dump does not work on a NFS file 
system, but only on a 4.2 file system, note that tar is used to backup
some sections of the file system. This script also sends a letter to the 
administrator afterwards telling of how long this took.

			Cal Thixton
			Sun Microsystems - Dallas Office

		{ucbvax,decvax,decwrl,ihnp4}!sun!{,texsun!}tj
		{ut-sally,convex,smu}!texsun!tj

p.s. I do backups to our 1/2" tape about once every 8 weeks (if I'm lucky)
of everthing.


{texsun,mehoge,suncloud}:/usr/lib/crontab:
	45 5 * * * sh /usr/local/backups		texsun
	45 4 * * * sh /usr/local/backups		suncloud
	45 3 * * * sh /usr/local/backups		mehoge

Sample Letter:
	Message 91:
	From daemon Wed Jan 15 06:03:19 1986
	Return-Path: <root>
	Date: Wed, 15 Jan 86 06:03:14 cst
	From: root (Unix Herself)
	To: Administrator
	Subject: Backups for texsun done
	
	Wed Jan 15 05:45:04 CST 1986
	Wed Jan 15 06:03:06 CST 1986


#! /bin/sh
# Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
# /dev/xy0a               7437    5227    1466    78%    /
# /dev/xy2c             123231  113994    6772    94%    /pub
# /dev/xy0d              28351   21134    4381    83%    /usr
# /dev/xy0e             122119   17496   92411    16%    /usr/src2
# /dev/xy1b              15695    5773    8352    41%    /usr/spool
# /dev/xy1f              50879   30679   15112    67%    /usr2
# /dev/xy0g             164115  151565    9267    94%    /usr/src
# /dev/xy1g              49111   47842     286    99%    /pub1
# mehoge:/mehoge         42107   28889    9007    76%    /mehoge
# suncloud:/suncloud     41899   13059   24650    35%    /suncloud
#
# Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
# /dev/sd0a               7445    4672    2028    70%    /
# /dev/ndp0             123231  113994    6772    94%    /pub
# /dev/sd0g              41899   13059   24650    35%    /suncloud
# texsun:/pub           123231  113994    6772    94%    /pub
# texsun:/pub1           49111   47842     286    99%    /pub1
# texsun:/usr            28351   21135    4380    83%    /usr
# texsun:/usr/src       164115  151565    9267    94%    /usr/src
# texsun:/usr/spool      15695    5773    8352    41%    /usr/spool
# texsun:/usr/src2      122119   17496   92411    16%    /usr/src2
# texsun:/usr2           50879   30679   15112    67%    /usr2
# mehoge:/mehoge         42107   28889    9007    76%    /mehoge
#
#  Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
#  /dev/sd0a               7445    2952    3748    44%    /
#  /dev/ndp0             123231  113994    6772    94%    /pub
#  /dev/sd0g              42107   28257    9639    75%    /mehoge
#  texsun:/pub           123231  113994    6772    94%    /pub
#  texsun:/pub1           49111   47842     286    99%    /pub1
#  texsun:/usr            28351   21134    4381    83%    /usr
#  texsun:/usr/src       164115  151565    9267    94%    /usr/src
#  texsun:/usr/src2      122119   17496   92411    16%    /usr/src2
#  texsun:/usr2           50879   30679   15112    67%    /usr2
#  texsun:/usr/spool      15695    5776    8349    41%    /usr/spool
#  suncloud:/suncloud     41899   13059   24650    35%    /suncloud
#
#	texsun		20meg tape
#		texsun:/				~5m
#		/usr/lib/uucp				~.5m
#		/usr/lib/aliases			~.1m
#		/usr/lib/lists				~.5m
#		/usr/spool/notes/.utilities		~1m
#						       -------
#					total:		~7m
#	suncloud	60meg tape
#		suncloud:/				 ~3m
#		/usr2					~20m
#		/usr/spool/notes/sun.*			 ~3m
#						       -------
#					total:		~26m
#	mehoge		60meg tape
#		mehoge:/				 ~3m
#		mehoge:/mehoge				~30m
#						       -------
#					total:		~33m
#	oz		none
#
DATE=`date`
mt -f /dev/rst0 rew
case `hostname` in
  mehoge)
	for i in /dev/sd0a /dev/sd0g
	do
		/etc/dump 0fub /dev/nrst0 126 $i
	done
	;;

  texsun)
	for i in /
	do
		/etc/dump 0fub /dev/nrst0 126 $i
	done
	tar cfb /dev/nrst0 126 $i /usr/lib/uucp /usr/lib/lists /usr/lib/aliases /usr/spool/notes/.utilities
	;;

  suncloud)
	for i in / 
	do
		/etc/dump 0fub /dev/nrst0 126 $i
	done
	tar cfb /dev/nrst0 126 $i /usr2
	;;

  oz)
	;;
esac
mt -f /dev/rst0 rew
( echo $DATE ; date ) | /usr/ucb/Mail -s "Backups for `hostname` done" Administrator
exit 0

-----------------------------

Date: Fri 17 Jan 86 16:34:48-EST
From: Paul R. Johnson <PRJohnson@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: CLU for the Sun

The CLU programming language is now available for SUN Workstations running
SUN's 4.2 Unix, Versions 1.3 and 2.0. 

The SUN implementation contains everything that the VAX and DEC-20 versions
have **except** that it is missing the "real" data type (i.e., no floating
point numbers). We do not know when (or if) reals will be implemented for
the SUN. It depends to some extent upon the CLU users and upon availability
of staff time for the implementation.

Distribution information:

Sites must sign a license agreement to obtain a copy of CLU. If you already
have a CLU license, SUN CLU can be obtained for the usual $50 distribution
fee.  CLU is distributed on standard 1600bpi, 1/2" mag-tapes in tar format.
If you require a SUN 1/4" cartridge tape, either send a blank tape or add
$25 to the distribution fee. For more information about license agreements,
or to order a tape, contact

    Anne Rubin
    Laboratory For Computer Science
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    545 Technology Square
    Cambridge, MA  02139

    (Arpanet: ALR@Mit-XX)

The "CLU Reference Manual" is available  from Springer-Verlag as a
monograph, ISBN 0-387-91253-3 or ISBN 3-540-91253-3.

-----------------------------

Date:     Thu, 16 Jan 86 20:22:44 pst
From: "David L. Markowitz"
Subject:  LCF memory boards

After hearing all about how wonderful LCF boards are, all I ask is
how can I get in touch with LCF or a distributor?  An address or
(preferably) phone number has never been posted (at least not in
my archives of sun-spots).  Please mail it to me and consider posting
it, since others might also be interested.
===============================================================================

        David L. Markowitz
        Unix Guru
        Rockwell International (Where Science Gets Down To Busyness)
        ...!ucbvax!{ucivax,trwrb}!csuf!davstoy!dav

-----------------------------

Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 86 10:47:05 CDT
From:         Stan Hanks <stan@drilltech.uucp>
Subject:      Re: LCF
In-Reply-To: Walter Mischel's message of Tue 14 Jan 86 21:04:52-EST

Sure. Ask for Steve Katamay. The address is:

		LCF International
		2530 Berryessa Rd., Suite 507
		San Jose CA 95132
		(408) 923-1376


When they came out to talk to me here in Houston, they sounded like
they have their act together pretty well. And as Xerox and Kodak are
eating their boards like candy (for use in their OEM products), they
gotta be doing something right.

				Stan Hanks

-----------------------------

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 86 14:27:38 -0100
From: mcvax!diku!daimi!pederch@seismo.CSS.GOV (Peder Chr. N|rgaard)
Subject: Can a Sun FS be file server for a Xerox work-station.


We have a several Sun machines and expect to get more, and one
Xerox 1108. We know that around the world, Vaxes serve as file
servers for Xerox'es. Has anyone tried to use a Sun file server
for that purpose? Our Xerox can speak TCP/IP, if that is impor-
tant.
			Peder Chr. Noergaard
			University of Aarhus, Denmark.
			UUCP : ..seismo!mcvax!diku!daimi!pederch

-----------------------------

Date: Tue, 14 Jan 86 16:56:09 -0200
From: mcvax!davasun.UUCP!sos@seismo.CSS.GOV (Simo O. Salanne)
Subject: facsimile group 3 to Sun raster file decoding


I am looking for a filter to decode facsimile group 3 data to Sun raster
file format.  The idea is to preview, etc... the facsimile messages on 
a workstation.

Anybody solved it already?

Simo Salanne                                 UUCP: ...mcvax!penet!davasun!sos
Dava Information Systems, Helsinki, Finland

-----------------------------

End of SUN-Spots Digest
***********************