jarmo@ae.tut.fi (Jarmo Sorvari) (05/30/91)
We are wondering whether it would be worthwhile to set up an X-terminal environment. However, I am not a great X-pert, so I would appreciate answers to a couple of questions. The serving machine would be an HP 9000/720, and the X-terminals would be the new RISC-based HP terminals (19" color). We have VUE, and kind of like it. What we would like to do is to have the Cobra drive VUE for the X-terminals. 1) If I spelled the manuals right, I understand it is possible to have VUE run on X-terminals. Anybody confirm this? 2) Is VUE intelligent enough to store the virtual workspace images in the X-terminal's memory, or would there be a lot of drawing across the net? What about other applications? xterms? hpterms? I suppose exploiting this feature is application-dependent. Or is it? 3) Which brings us to the question about sufficient memory; six virtual workspaces, each appr. 1200x1000 color pixels. Doesn't that sound like 7 Mb of memory, minimum, instead of the default 4 Mb? 4) Some people here have had ill experiences with X-terminals and Suns; they could not reconnect properly with their servers after students rebooted their X-terminals, creating headache for the system administrator. Are the HP X-terminals robust in this respect with the Cobra? 5) How far would 32 Mb of memory on the Cobra take us, i.e., how many X-terminals would be realistic? I know it depends from a lot of factors, but suppose every X-terminal would have VUE interface, and each user would run 4-5 xterms, and an emacs. The Cobra would also act as an NFS file server. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Jarmo Sorvari Control Engineering Laboratory ! ! jarmo@ae.tut.fi Tampere University of Technology ! --------------------------------------- BOX 527, 33101 Tampere, Finland -----
bcripe@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Brian E. Cripe) (06/04/91)
> 1) If I spelled the manuals right, I understand it is possible to have > VUE run on X-terminals. Anybody confirm this? VUE supports the standard XDMCP protocol so it works great on X-terminals. Page 5-23 of the VUE System Administration Manual contains a section on configuring X terminals. > 2) Is VUE intelligent enough to store the virtual workspace images in > the X-terminal's memory, or would there be a lot of drawing across > the net? What about other applications? xterms? hpterms? I > suppose exploiting this feature is application-dependent. Or is > it? [I am over my head here, so forgive any errors.] X applications (including VUE) don't really know anything special about X terminals. If the application requests backing-store and the X terminal has enough memory, then the image should be maintained on the X-terminal end of the wire. However I believe this is a moot point because I don't think VUE requests backing store. Some of the applications you run inside of VUE may use backing store. > 3) Which brings us to the question about sufficient memory; six > virtual workspaces, each appr. 1200x1000 color pixels. Doesn't > that sound like 7 Mb of memory, minimum, instead of the default 4 > Mb? As discussed above, I think the real question is how many of your applications can use backing store. > 4) Some people here have had ill experiences with X-terminals and > Suns; they could not reconnect properly with their servers after > students rebooted their X-terminals, creating headache for the > system administrator. Are the HP X-terminals robust in this > respect with the Cobra? Don't know. > 5) How far would 32 Mb of memory on the Cobra take us, i.e., how many > X-terminals would be realistic? I know it depends from a lot of > factors, but suppose every X-terminal would have VUE interface, and > each user would run 4-5 xterms, and an emacs. The Cobra would also > act as an NFS file server. 32 Mb Cobra? Sounds like a great workstation to me :-) [I will trade you for what I have.] I suspect your estimate of 4-5 xterms and 1 emacs is rather low. Every VUE user I have encountered loves populating all of those workspaces with applications. My off-the-cuff guess is that you could support 2 typical users. Brian Cripe
loren@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Loren Chapple) (06/04/91)
/ hp-vcd:comp.sys.hp / jarmo@ae.tut.fi (Jarmo Sorvari) / 5:33 am May 30, 1991 / I am not from either the division that developed the X-terminals or VUE but I have run VUE on an X-terminal (HP 700X) so can answer a couple of your questions from a "user" perspective. Hopefully someone from one or both of the supplying divisions will see and respond to your note as well. >1) If I spelled the manuals right, I understand it is possible to have > VUE run on X-terminals. Anybody confirm this? Yes, and it is very easy to do. If you have VUE on the server that the X-terminal(s) boot from I believe the X-term will get VUE by default. >4) Some people here have had ill experiences with X-terminals and > Suns; they could not reconnect properly with their servers after > students rebooted their X-terminals, creating headache for the > system administrator. Are the HP X-terminals robust in this > respect with the Cobra? We a number of X-terminals with s300 machines and have never had this problem. Loren Chapple HP Vancouver hp-vcd.hp.com
colemanm@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au (Mark Coleman) (06/04/91)
bcripe@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Brian E. Cripe) writes: >32 Mb Cobra? Sounds like a great workstation to me :-) [I will trade >you for what I have.] >I suspect your estimate of 4-5 xterms and 1 emacs is rather low. Every >VUE user I have encountered loves populating all of those workspaces with >applications. My off-the-cuff guess is that you could support 2 typical >users. > Brian Cripe I'm fairly new to all this 'X' stuff but I do all my system admin on a NCD 17" colour Xterminal with 4 Mb of installed memory and backing store off. The X Term boots via tftp from a HP9000/340 and runs the vuewm from another HP9000/340 with 16 Mb of installed memory running HPUX-7.0 and we can run two people off it both with large numbers of apps from a number of different UN*X boxes. The 340 providing the vue sessions potters along at approx .75 load with acceptable responses to vue services requests. To give you an indication of what I have as a home session I'll list them. Workspace 1: console and File manager Workspace 2: four xloads of remote HP9000 systems Workspace 3: xload and hpterm of a remote Pyramid MiServer 4/4 Workspace 4: two xloads of remote HP9000 systems out of Workspace 2 Workspace 5: A general screen for adhoc terminals to ping remote systems etc.. Workspace 6: hpterm on the Pyramid for reading news. Going from one workspace to another is instantaneous( or as near as damn it) and the only bottleneck I have encountered is executing remote shells on loaded down systems. I believe that HPUX-8.0 provides shared libraries so as to reduce memory requirements on the client machine. Recently a S.E. from HP here locally mentioned that Vue runs better under 8.0 and it was only really a memory problem. The new snakes are I believe great at FP calculations and have great Lan throughput but being only new to X and its mechanics I not sure what part Floating Point has in X perfomance. Hope I helped in some way.....MarkC..... -- Mark Coleman O O EMAIL: colemanm@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au Telecom Australia | FAX: +61 7 837 4704 TNE Computer Support Services ***** PH: +61 7 837 3143 Brisbane, Queensland. OZ \===/ "You'll find these are my opinions alone"