gordon@maxwell.waterloo.edu (Gordon R. Strachan) (05/29/91)
Hello, I was wondering if someone in the HP labs could take some time and ponder a few bizarre questions. We are attempting to purchase one of the new 700 series workstations. I say attempting because I am having a devil of a time coming up with a configuration that will work with current cluster of 300's and won't force me to throw away all my HPIB peripherals. I have been working with a number of SE's for a while now, trying to come up with different options but it always seems to come down to nothing really works. Now I know that the 700's have an EISA-HPIB interface card, but, as near as I can tell, the 9144 cartridge tape drive is the only thing that is supported on it. I can not hook up my HPIB DAT tape to it which is really causing me a problem since that is how HP is distributing software for the 700's. Also I have been told that I might, or might not be able to hook up our 795?B HPIB disks to it. I was told by one person that the entire CS80 driver was ported to the 700's so you might be able to mount a CS80 drive but it had never been tested and they wouldn't guarantee it would work. Another person said flat out that it wouldn't work since the HPIB card was not designed for it. Personnally I think he meant that it wasn't an intended operation for it. What I want to be able to do is to use the 700 as a cluster server for the 300's which will be diskless clients. However, it looks like I will have to keep at least the DAT tape on one of the 300's. Now for backups thats not a really big problem. But, I don't see how I can do software installation and use it for recovery systems with it hanging off of one of the clients. The biggest unknown are the disks. I have been told that under v8.0, "local" disks are supported on the diskless clients. However, I have not been able to ascertain exactly what the capabilities of these local disks are. When you mount a local disk on the clients who can see the disk, only the client or can the entire cluster see it? If it is exportable to other clients in the cluster, can you have CDF's on it and are they handled in the expected manner? Finally, what about a mixed cluster. Can the disks on the diskless 300's be seen from the 700? Anyway I hope someone can answer these because I am just about at my wits end this. As near as I can tell, the 700's just don't want to talk to HPIB devices, even with the HPIB card. Gordon
jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) (05/29/91)
I'm afraid you are out of luck. We also have 300s and we would like to use a 700 as a server (we currently use an 850, but it does not do its job very well, a 350 used to do it better). We've asked HP, and we've heard that they are not planning to support mixed 700/300 clusters, and we are pretty annoyed, especially since it would seem that they already have all the right support given that they support an 800 as a server for 300s.
perry@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Perry Scott) (05/30/91)
>Hello, I was wondering if someone in the HP labs could take some time >and ponder a few bizarre questions. Actually, these are good questions. You are correct in stating that the cs80 driver is in the 8.05 release, but does not support disk drives. There are two ways I see around this. Option 1 calls for running an unsupported configuration - hang all your disks off the 700 EISA HPIB. This is likely the performance winner, but I don't know if you like running bleeding edge software. We've tried it here in the Lab, and it seems to work. The only reason it is not supported is that our poor driver writer (too busy to read notes :-) hasn't had time to do anything other than the "MUST" list for cs80 peripherals. The cs80 driver is exceedingly complex, and early versions were buggy. The driver has firmed up quite nicely in the past couple of months. The official support policy for unsupported configurations is that if you run into a problem, you're on your own. The request may be forwarded to the Lab as an enhancement request, but there is no guarantee that it will be fixed. Option 2 is supported configuration, and I am currently running my 350 workstation on it. This calls for leaving the HPIB disk drives on the 300 server, making it a node for a 700 server, and using local mounts (a new 8.0x feature). There are various I/O things that are unsupported on cnodes, but they are minor problems. The only weird thing I've seen so far is that you can turn a 350 into a 310 by doing a "find" from the 700 on a disk mounted on the 350. The 350 spends most of its time trying to keep up with the Snake. No contest. The 350 slows way down. With that said, I'll address some specifics... >I have been working with a number of SE's for a while >now, trying to come up with different options but it always seems to >come down to nothing really works. It's good you're working with your SE's. If the SE can't answer it, they call the factory. That's how we find the corner cases that slipped through our "what if ?" filter. >I can not hook up >my HPIB DAT tape to it which is really causing me a problem since that >is how HP is distributing software for the 700's. Ouch. No solution here. Maybe you can rent a SCSI DAT or CDROM until we support what you have. >Also I have been told that I might, or might not be able to hook up >our 795?B HPIB disks to it. Unsupported. Supply your own bandaids and backup the disk nightly. >The biggest unknown are the disks. I have been told that under v8.0, "local" >disks are supported on the diskless clients. However, I have not been able >to ascertain exactly what the capabilities of these local disks are. You connect the disk to the workstation, and mount it on the filesystem. The semantics are the same as if the disk were connected to the root server. Everyone in the cluster sees the disks. They can be NFS mounted by other systems. There are some exceptions, like not being able to mount on another workstation's local mount (a reliability issue). The other gotcha that I mentioned is that the 300 can't begin to keep up with disk requests from the 700. I've also noticed that two 700s talking to each other can pretty much consume a 10 Mbit LAN. >Anyway I hope someone can answer these because I am just about at my wits end >this. As near as I can tell, the 700's just don't want to talk to HPIB >devices, even with the HPIB card. The supported HPIB devices (sorry, I don't have the support matrix on my desk) are the 9144 tape, some printers, and selected plotters. >Gordon As always, I don't speak to the Net in an official capacity for HP. Hope this helps your planning. Perry Scott HP Ft Collins
jason@hpcndjdz.CND.HP.COM (Jason Zions) (05/30/91)
Locally-mounted File Systems (LMFS) under HP-UX 8.0 are globally visible throughout the cluster. The degree of heterogeneity of the cluster matters not; if the configuration is supported, it works. CDFs are no problem, and work the expected way. There are limitations in how you can mount filesystems; you cannot mount a disk from one client onto a mountpoint on another client; that is, once the mount tree descends into a given client, that client must be able to handle the rest of the path (notwithstanding symlinks, of course). HP-IB disks on the 700 are not known not to work. Classic HP doublespeak, I know. In other words, we haven't yet found troubles, but we didn't exhaustively test it, and we won't support it, and we're uncomfortable saying "it should work". Be advised that performance will not be as good as for the SCSI drives even accounting for raw disk performance differences, since we didn't optimize for them. I don't know if the same can be said about the HP-IB DAT drive, though. Best of luck to you; hope you like the system! -- This is not an official statement of The Hewlett-Packard Company. No warranty is expressed or implied. The information included herein is not to be construed as a committment on HP's part. The devil made me do it. This won't save me from the lawyers' wrath, but it can't hurt. Jason Zions The Hewlett-Packard Company Colorado Networks Division 3404 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 102 Ft. Collins, CO 80525 USA jason@cnd.hp.com (303) 229-3800
rsh@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Holbrook) (05/31/91)
> We also have 300s and we would like to use a 700 as a server (we > currently use an 850, but it does not do its job very well, a 350 used > to do it better). We've asked HP, and we've heard that they are not > planning to support mixed 700/300 clusters, and we are pretty annoyed, > especially since it would seem that they already have all the right > support given that they support an 800 as a server for 300s. Whoever told you that is wrong. While the 8.01 release does not support diskless at all, the 8.05 release (soon to be available) does support mixed 700/300 clusters (the s700 must be the server, and can server any combination of s700, s300 and s400 clients). Local mounts will be supported. Scott Holbrook HP-UX 8.05 kernel project (diskless) ----- The opinions expressed here are mine and mine only, they do not represent an official or un-official statement of the Hewlett-Packard Company.
rsh@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Holbrook) (06/01/91)
Guillermo J. Rozas wrote: >> We also have 300s and we would like to use a 700 as a server (we >> currently use an 850, but it does not do its job very well, a 350 >> used to do it better). We've asked HP, and we've heard that they >> are not planning to support mixed 700/300 clusters, and we are >> pretty annoyed, especially since it would seem that they already >> have all the right support given that they support an 800 as a >> server for 300s. And I responded: > Whoever told you that is wrong. While the 8.01 release does not > support diskless at all, the 8.05 release (soon to be available) does > support mixed 700/300 clusters (the s700 must be the server, and can > server any combination of s700, s300 and s400 clients). Local mounts > will be supported. To follow up on this issue: I received a note from Chris Hanson (apparently he works with Guillermo) containing the name of the person inside HP who told Chris that we would not support mixed 700/300 cluster. After talking with this person, it is clear that there was a misunderstanding here. The HP person thought that Chris was asking if we supported mixed 800/700 clusters (i.e. 700 cnodes served by a Series 800). The current situation is that we do not support *that* configuration. Chris -- expect some e-mail from your contact explaining things in more detail. So, to summarize: Series 800 systems may serve some types of 800 clients and all Series 300, Series 400 clients. Series 700 clients are not supported with a Series 800 server. Series 300 or Series 400 systems may serve all types of Series 300 and Series 400 clients. Series 700 clients are not supported with a Series 300 or Series 400 server. Series 700 systems may serve all Series 700, Series 300 and Series 400 clients. Series 800 clients are not supported with a Series 700 server. Scott The opinions expressed here are mine and mine only, they do not represent an official or un-official statement of the Hewlett-Packard Company.
jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) (06/01/91)
In article <JINX.91May29102349@chamarti.ai.mit.edu> jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) writes:
Path: ai-lab!zurich.ai.mit.edu!jinx
From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Date: 29 May 91 14:23:49 GMT
References: <1991May28.190640.5789@sunee.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@ai.mit.edu
Reply-To: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Lines: 8
I'm afraid you are out of luck.
We also have 300s and we would like to use a 700 as a server (we
currently use an 850, but it does not do its job very well, a 350 used
to do it better). We've asked HP, and we've heard that they are not
planning to support mixed 700/300 clusters, and we are pretty annoyed,
especially since it would seem that they already have all the right
support given that they support an 800 as a server for 300s.
The above statement is not correct. We misinterpreted some
information provided by HP into believing that 300s would not be able
to boot off 700s. The unsupported configuration is 700s booting off
800s.
Sorry for the confusionjwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) (06/01/91)
jason@hpcndjdz.CND.HP.COM (Jason Zions) writes: >HP-IB disks on the 700 are not known not to work. Classic HP doublespeak, I >know. >I don't know if the same can be said about the HP-IB DAT drive, though. Will HP supply the same programming support for HP-IB on the 700 that is available on the 300, 400 and 800? We absolutely require HP-IB for our instrument control and data acquisition. Will HP-IB disks ever be supported? Will HP-IB 9-track tape ever be supported? Will HP-IB DAT ever be supported? Will HP-IB CD-ROM ever be supported? It seems the answer is that only printers and plotters will be supported. Great. The only HP-IB devices we DON'T have. The local sales and "technical" office is no help. -- Jim Wright jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.
ccrth@lut.ac.uk (Rob Thirlby) (06/01/91)
Keywords: I am very confused about the versions of HP-UX 8 with which are to be deluged sometime(?). We are a big HP800 and a small HP300 customer and have HP750's nearly on order. Am I right in thinking that 8.01 a kludge to get the 7xx series out of the door, otherwise to be avoided. 8.05 a full HP-UX 8 as previously advertised with disc quotas, shared libs etc.8.0 ?? Some refs to something on these lines in the uk???? does it exist??? Yrs confused of Loughborough. PS for gods sake lets have a full HP-UX 8 SOON!!! rob Thirlby.
alex@opal.idbsu.edu (Alex Feldman) (06/01/91)
In article <5570653@hpfcdc.HP.COM> rsh@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Holbrook) writes: [much deleted] > >So, to summarize: > > Series 800 systems may serve some types of 800 clients and all > Series 300, Series 400 clients. Series 700 clients are not > supported with a Series 800 server. > > Series 300 or Series 400 systems may serve all types of Series 300 > and Series 400 clients. Series 700 clients are not supported with > a Series 300 or Series 400 server. > > Series 700 systems may serve all Series 700, Series 300 and Series > 400 clients. Series 800 clients are not supported with a Series > 700 server. > >Scott > >The opinions expressed here are mine and mine only, they do not >represent an official or un-official statement of the Hewlett-Packard >Company. Uhhh, well, what about the new 800's, due to be announced in a month? Will they be able to be configured as a server with 700 clients? We would like to get one of those to use as a multiuser machine now and a server later. Should we go for a 750 instead? -- --alex alex@opal.idbsu.edu
rjn@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Niland) (06/01/91)
re: Series 700 I/O support... > Will HP supply the same programming support for HP-IB on the 700 that is > available on the 300, 400 and 800? We absolutely require HP-IB for our > instrument control and data acquisition. By this do you refer to "dil", the Device I/O Library? > Will HP-IB disks ever be supported? Probably not officially, but the CS/80 driver ported for use with the 9144A and 9145A cartridge tape drives reportedly works with "many" CS/80 disk drives. SS/80 disks I don't yet know about. I'm also not sure about the status of CS/80 'mediainit' on s700. > Will HP-IB 9-track tape ever be supported? > Will HP-IB DAT ever be supported? Probably not. These two share the "tape1" serial HP-IB (not CS/80) driver, which as far as I know has not been ported to the 700. There are plans to support SCSI 9-track drives (7979S/80S/80SX), and upgrade kits exist to convert HP-IB 7979A/80A/80XC drives to SCSI. > Will HP-IB CD-ROM ever be supported? The C1707A HP-IB CD-ROM drive is a very well behaved CS/80 device, closely emulating the 7935H. It probably works with the existing 700 CS/80 driver. > The local sales and "technical" office is no help. To date, the Series 700 program has lacked the kind of detailed support matrix that I maintain for the Series 300 and 400. Management has just (91/05/31) asked me to create a 700 matrix, so I will soon be finding and driving answers to the questions above, and as many others as I can think of. I plan to create the matrix using HP-TAG (our internal SGML), and make the matrix a standard part of the monthly LaserROM documentation CD. PCL download versions will also be made available via ftp to our field people. Regards, Hewlett-Packard Bob Niland Internet: rjn@FC.HP.COM 3404 East Harmony Road UUCP: [hplabs|hpfcse]!hpfcrjn!rjn Ft Collins CO 80525-9599
kemp@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu (John Kemp) (06/02/91)
In article <7370405@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> rjn@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Niland) writes: >re: Series 700 I/O support... >> Will HP-IB disks ever be supported? > >Probably not officially, but the CS/80 driver ported for use with the 9144A >and 9145A cartridge tape drives reportedly works with "many" CS/80 disk >drives. SS/80 disks I don't yet know about. I'm also not sure about the >status of CS/80 'mediainit' on s700. > >> Will HP-IB 9-track tape ever be supported? >> Will HP-IB DAT ever be supported? > >Probably not. These two share the "tape1" serial HP-IB (not CS/80) driver, >which as far as I know has not been ported to the 700. There are plans to >support SCSI 9-track drives (7979S/80S/80SX), and upgrade kits exist to >convert HP-IB 7979A/80A/80XC drives to SCSI. Well what is the point of even selling an "HP-IB" card on the 700's? I think someone at HP should tell us exactly what this "HP-IB" card for the 700's is supposed to be used for? Better yet, why don't they make the card work as it was advertised: with HP-IB tapes and disk drives? It wouldn't be so bad if all the announcements leading up to this point hadn't been saying that "sure you can just move your HP-IB peripherals to the 700 HP-IB card." We're just lucky someone else brought up the question. HP, this is a real shocker to some of your past customers. It borders on false advertising, IMHO. -------- john kemp ( ( )_ internet - kemp@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu ----- ( ( __) decnet - uiatmb::kemp --- univ of illinois (_ ( __) bitnet - {uunet,convex} -- dept of atmos sci .(____). !uiucuxc!uiatma!kemp - 105 s gregory ave ... phone - (217) 333-6881 - urbana, il 61801 ... fax - (217) 244-4393
jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) (06/02/91)
rjn@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Niland) writes: >re: Series 700 I/O support... >> Will HP supply the same programming support for HP-IB on the 700 that is >> available on the 300, 400 and 800? We absolutely require HP-IB for our >> instrument control and data acquisition. > >By this do you refer to "dil", the Device I/O Library? I thought it was "dvio", but anyway... hpib(7) - Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus driver hpib_abort(3I) - stop activity on specified HP-IB bus hpib_address_ctl(3I) - set the HP-IB bus address for poll response hpib_ren_ctl(3I) - control the Remote Enable line on HP-IB hpib_rqst_srvce(3I) - allow interface to enable SRQ line on HP-IB hpib_send_cmnd(3I) - send command bytes over HP-IB hpib_spoll(3I) - conduct a serial poll on HP-IB bus hpib_status_wait(3I) - wait until the requested status condition becomes true hpib_wait_on_ppoll(3I) - wait until a particular parallel poll value occurs We can live without the HPIB disks, tapes, etc. They've always been slow to the point of tears (but very reliable). Our specific and pointed questions about HP-IB when the HP sales staff made their presentation here were brushed off with assurances that there was "nothing now, but you can just put in an EISA card and everything will work". Lack of a functioning HP-IB system on a 700 will either mean a LOT of work for us, or we may not be able to use 700s. (And we desperately want to get rid of our 800s.) -- Jim Wright jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.
rjn@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Niland) (06/02/91)
re: >>> Will HP-IB disks ever be supported? >>Probably not officially, >>> Will HP-IB 9-track tape ever be supported? >>> Will HP-IB DAT ever be supported? >>Probably not. > Well what is the point of even selling an "HP-IB" card on the > 700's? I think someone at HP should tell us exactly what this "HP-IB" > card for the 700's is supposed to be used for? Although it was over a year ago, and I have not been involved with the 700 program since then, I am the person who wrote the marketing specs for what a Series 700 HP-IB card needed to be (basically an EISA version of the 98625B plus the bus status registers from the 98624A). The card is quite capable, and full support for additional peripherals could be added. The card was originally intended for support of the C16xx series of electrostatic plotters, which require a high-speed duplex interface. It also supports the 9144/45A cartridge tapes, available only in HP-IB. > It wouldn't be so bad if all the announcements leading up to this point > hadn't been saying that "sure you can just move your HP-IB peripherals to > the 700 HP-IB card." Can you provide a reference for this? To my knowledge, no such claims have been advanced in our sales literature. Regards, Hewlett-Packard Bob Niland Internet: rjn@FC.HP.COM 3404 East Harmony Road UUCP: [hplabs|hpfcse]!hpfcrjn!rjn Ft Collins CO 80525-9599
munir@hpfcmgw.HP.COM (Munir Mallal) (06/03/91)
> I am very confused about the versions of HP-UX 8 with which are to be > deluged sometime(?). We are a big HP800 and a small HP300 customer and have > HP750's nearly on order. > Am I right in thinking that > 8.01 a kludge to get the 7xx series out of the door, otherwise to be avoided. No, 8.01 is 8.0 with a couple of limitations in order to bring out the S700. This primarily includes no diskless, limited peripheral support and no kernel reconfiguration. It does include disk quotas and shared libs. > 8.05 a full HP-UX 8 as previously advertised with disc quotas, shared libs > etc.8.0 ?? Some refs to something on these lines in the uk???? does it exist??? 8.05 is the release that adds diskless and kernel reconfiguration to the S700. > > Yrs confused of Loughborough. > PS for gods sake lets have a full HP-UX 8 SOON!!! It should be out real soon now. :-) ---------- Munir Mallal Working for HP but not able to make promises on anyones behalf.
campbelr@hpcuhe.cup.hp.com (Bob Campbell) (06/04/91)
> Uhhh, well, what about the new 800's, due to be announced in a month? > Will they be able to be configured as a server with 700 clients? Sorry, marketing gets to announce all new systems. We cannot comment on future products. > We would like to get one of those to use as a multiuser machine now > and a server later. Should we go for a 750 instead? Tell us more about your needs. What would you be serving? What kind of I/O would the multi-user configuration need? How soon do you need it? How much expandability do you need? Computer room or office? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Campbell Some times I wish that I could stop you from campbelr@hpda.cup.hp.com talking, when I hear the silly things you say. Hewlett Packard - Elvis Costello
rsh@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Holbrook) (06/04/91)
>> Series 800 systems may serve some types of 800 clients and all >> Series 300, Series 400 clients. Series 700 clients are not >> supported with a Series 800 server. > Uhhh, well, what about the new 800's, due to be announced in a month? > Will they be able to be configured as a server with 700 clients? No. There are no concrete plans (that I know of) to support an 800 server with s700 clients. Even if we were to support it, don't look for it any time soon. It is a very difficult problem to solve, and would require a "major" release (9-months to a year minimum). > We would like to get one of those to use as a multiuser machine now > and a server later. Should we go for a 750 instead? Without knowing more about your requirements, I can't really answer this question. As far as diskless goes, if you want to use a very fast machine as a server of s300/s400/s700 clients, then your only choice (today anyway) is the Series 700. Scott The opinions expressed here are mine and mine only, they do not represent an official or un-official statement of the Hewlett-Packard Company.