rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott M. Rose) (03/08/91)
Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 17 Thu Mar 7 13:57:57 CST 1991
Today's Topics:
Any news on the MGR windowing system?
varargs.h missing from RCS port
ramblings
Frequently-Asked [Coherent] Questions file available
ramblings
Glad everbody is getting dups
Coherent Installation
terminal, dialing in
remote terminals
kermit
kermit
Administrivia:
The Coherent Digest is a forum for discussion of the MWC Coherent 3.x
operating system. Send submissions to "coherent@cs.wisc.edu" and
administrivia to "coherent-reqeust@cs.wisc.edu". Previous issues are
archived for anonymous FTP access on piggy.ucsb.edu in the directory
"pub/coherent/mail-list".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 13:44:33 CST
From: rosevax.rosemount.com!grante%rutgers.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (Grant B. Edwards)
To: coherent@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Subject: Any news on the MGR windowing system?
A while back somebody on the mailing list suggested that the MGR
windowing system written at Bellcore might be capable of being ported
to Coherent.
Has anybody contacted the author of MGR or done any investigation of
what it would take to port MGR?
Would anybody be interested in working on porting MGR or writing a pty
driver to be used by MGR?
I grabbed the newest version of MGR and built it on a Sun 3. Here's
what I have discovered so far:
The entire source distribution, including demo programs, man pages,
and a programmer's manual weighs in at 1.2Meg as a 16 bit compressed
tar file.
Most of the MGR utilities and demos that I have seen are well below the
64K text and 64K data limit imposed by Coherent.
The MGR executable itself is about 160K text and 32K data. Stuff
tends to be a little larger on SunOS than it does on Coherent, but
probably not a factor of 3. Still it might be possible to split mgr
up into a couple different tasks that use message passing or shared
memory to communicate with each other.
MGR would need a pty (pseudo terminal) device driver, as would any
windowing or virtual-terminal system. I would guess that the mouse
and graphics display drivers in the Coherent device driver kit could
be modified for use with MGR.
Communication between applications and MGR is via the pty byte stream
using escape sequences to send commands to the windowing system. Most
of this is hidden from the programmer.
There is an extensive C interface library that allows applications
programs to draw lines/ellipses/text/etc, change colors/fonts, create and
move windows, create pop-up menus, etc.
An MGR window includes built in CRT terminal emulation (unlike X which
requires an applications program, xterm, to provide that function).
The CRT has the usual cursor movement and character & line
insert/delete capabilities, and a termcap entry for an MGR window is
provided.
In addition to emulating a terminal, the window can do the usual
line/curve drawing and bit-blt operations.
MGR automatically restores window contents as they are uncovered. (X
requires the application to handle this.)
MGR provides pop-up menus and rubber-banding facilities.
MGR sends events to the application program, similar to X and
Macintosh systems.
I'll probably make some inquiries at Bellcore to find out if those who
know MGR think the port is doable, and if there is any such thing as a
guide for porting MGR. I'll post a summary of what I find out.
Grant Edwards
Rosemount Inc, CB7 He who dies with
12001 Technology Drive grante@hydro.rosemount.com the most manuals
Eden Prairie, MN 55344 uunet!rosevax!hydro!grante wins.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 13:11:51 CST
From: rosevax.rosemount.com!grante%rutgers.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (Grant B. Edwards)
To: coherent@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Subject: varargs.h missing from RCS port
I am informed that varargs.h is required by, but not included in, the
RCS port I posted on cs.umn.edu. I created a varargs.h and put it in
/usr/include some time ago, and didn't realize that RCS had used it (I
should have checked).
My version of varargs.h should be posted on cs.umn.edu by tonight
sometime.
I have also installed the ndir library and include file, so it is
possible that the packages I post use that without my knowing. I'll
try to verify that things I port aren't using non-standard features of
my system. Of course the optimal solution is for everbody to configure
their system just like mine :-)
Grant
[The varargs.h on piggy works just fine for RCS. -Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Mon Mar 4 19:36:52 1991
From: Bill Henning <bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca>
To: coherent
Subject: ramblings
G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu writes:
> Would it be possible for SOMEONE to send libcurses.a to me? I have
Regarding the new libcurses, if mwc were to mail it to Jim Lick at piggy
then people could get it from there... even though the original libcurses
was pd mwc may not want their port of it posted.
> Where is the manual entry for swap? What is swap, and what does it do?
You need the device driver development kit to get the swapper going. I would
not reccomend it as it is almost certain to kill performance.
> I got on piggy and looked at the size of dmake -- over 900,000 bytes.
Agreed, its huge, however I hear its worth it. Maybe it should be broken
up into a couple of smaller files. It would take me about three hours to
get that over to my machine, not to mention about 15min to FTP it.
root%trystro.uucp@Think.COM (Richard Nickle) writes:
> I don't know if it's been brought up before, but can we
> exclude the .ZIP format from piggy? I personally don't
...
> This would not be such a big problem, but so far, about 1 out
> of every 2 of these .zips trashes my filesystem and
> forces a reboot, then I gotta spend 5 minutes or so clearing
> i-nodes. (Like month.zip just did about five minutes ago).
I used zip because I've never had a problem with it. Maybe I've been
inordinately lucky. Sorry to hear of the trouble you are having -
maybe your unzip is buggy? Or did you use tar (not ustar)? I heard
that there may be some problems with tar.
I pulled quite a few zip's off piggy without experiencing any difficulties.
I would personally prefer LHARC, but apparently the Coherent port creates
huge files.
I am reasonably certain that when I initially posted sdb.zip to piggy
it was actually the kermit transfer between my Amiga and wimsey.bc.ca
that corrupted it, however the .uu's of zip's I posted were ok, and
this time I used rx to get the new zips to wimsey, and I verified that
chess.zip got through ok by downloading it and unzipping, and untarring
it.
lark@greylock.tivoli.com (Lar Kaufman) writes:
> I only trust the ZOO format, myself.
I agree that Zoo would be a fairly good choice for Coherent. I still use it
on my Amiga.
Now that the CFV for comp.os.coherent has gone out, maybe someone who
is familiar with the process could issue a CFD on alt.config for
alt.sources.coherent and possibly alt.binaries.coherent ? Or should we
wait for the results of the comp.os.coherent vote, and use that newsgroup?
I personally would not be bothered by source/binary postings mixed in
with the articles in a newsgroup, but a mailing list is inappropriate
for source or binary postings.
- --
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Amiga// | UUCP: bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca /* preferred address */ |
| 1000// | |
| \\ // | -or- uunet!van-bc!bhami!bhenning \___ last resort |
| \X/bhami | -or- uunet!wimsey.bc.ca!bhami!bhenning / may not work! |
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 13:21:26 CST
From: Rich Zellich <zellich@STL-07SIMA.ARMY.mil>
To: Multiple recipients of list COHERENT <COHERENT@INDYCMS.BitNet>
Subject: Frequently-Asked [Coherent] Questions file available
Here's something I saved from a recent Info-IBMPC Digest...
> [There is a fairly extensive set of comments on Coherent in the
> Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file available from the mail server at
> math.princeton.edu. Send a message to rjc@math.princeton.edu WITH NO
> SUBJECT and the line SEND FAQ.CSIP as the body of the message.
> Substituting the word HELP gets a fairly extensive help file that
> explains other capabilities of the server.
>
> Your file will be forwarded by return mail. gph]
I tried it, and the server didn't have a file called "FAQ.CSIP", but it
said it thought I might have meant "faq.csip", so it would send that instead!
I haven't yet received the file - the reply message said "within 16 hours",
and that was just an hour or two ago.
Cheers,
Rich
------------------------------
Date: Mon Mar 4 19:36:52 1991
From: Bill Henning <bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca>
To: coherent
Subject: ramblings
G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu writes:
> Would it be possible for SOMEONE to send libcurses.a to me? I have
Regarding the new libcurses, if mwc were to mail it to Jim Lick at piggy
then people could get it from there... even though the original libcurses
was pd mwc may not want their port of it posted.
> Where is the manual entry for swap? What is swap, and what does it do?
You need the device driver development kit to get the swapper going. I would
not reccomend it as it is almost certain to kill performance.
> I got on piggy and looked at the size of dmake -- over 900,000 bytes.
Agreed, its huge, however I hear its worth it. Maybe it should be broken
up into a couple of smaller files. It would take me about three hours to
get that over to my machine, not to mention about 15min to FTP it.
root%trystro.uucp@Think.COM (Richard Nickle) writes:
> I don't know if it's been brought up before, but can we
> exclude the .ZIP format from piggy? I personally don't
...
> This would not be such a big problem, but so far, about 1 out
> of every 2 of these .zips trashes my filesystem and
> forces a reboot, then I gotta spend 5 minutes or so clearing
> i-nodes. (Like month.zip just did about five minutes ago).
I used zip because I've never had a problem with it. Maybe I've been
inordinately lucky. Sorry to hear of the trouble you are having -
maybe your unzip is buggy? Or did you use tar (not ustar)? I heard
that there may be some problems with tar.
I pulled quite a few zip's off piggy without experiencing any difficulties.
I would personally prefer LHARC, but apparently the Coherent port creates
huge files.
I am reasonably certain that when I initially posted sdb.zip to piggy
it was actually the kermit transfer between my Amiga and wimsey.bc.ca
that corrupted it, however the .uu's of zip's I posted were ok, and
this time I used rx to get the new zips to wimsey, and I verified that
chess.zip got through ok by downloading it and unzipping, and untarring
it.
lark@greylock.tivoli.com (Lar Kaufman) writes:
> I only trust the ZOO format, myself.
I agree that Zoo would be a fairly good choice for Coherent. I still use it
on my Amiga.
Now that the CFV for comp.os.coherent has gone out, maybe someone who
is familiar with the process could issue a CFD on alt.config for
alt.sources.coherent and possibly alt.binaries.coherent ? Or should we
wait for the results of the comp.os.coherent vote, and use that newsgroup?
I personally would not be bothered by source/binary postings mixed in
with the articles in a newsgroup, but a mailing list is inappropriate
for source or binary postings.
- --
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Amiga// | UUCP: bhenning@bhami.wimsey.bc.ca /* preferred address */ |
| 1000// | |
| \\ // | -or- uunet!van-bc!bhami!bhenning \___ last resort |
| \X/bhami | -or- uunet!wimsey.bc.ca!bhami!bhenning / may not work! |
+-----------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 21:31:14 CST
From: rosevax.rosemount.com!grante%rutgers.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (Grant B. Edwards)
To: coherent@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Subject: Glad everbody is getting dups
I'm glad everybody is getting duplicates, I started using xmh as my
mail interface a few days ago, and I was convinced that I had broken it
somehow.
Yet another serial port question:
I have a modem connected to com1, and to enable it for auto answer I
do the following as root:
root: (stty 4800; echo ATE0Q1S0=5) > /dev/com1
root: enable com1r
This seems to work OK.
Then when I want to dial out, I disable com1r, making sure that com1,
com1r, and com1l are set to mode 777.
I then run kermit and dial out, so far so good. If I exit kermit and
then try to run kermit again, the serial port seems to not receive
anything. When I type commands the Rx light on the modem flashes, and
the Tx light flashes with it's response, and the modem responds to the
commands, but I don't see any of the echoed commands or any of the
responses.
I verify the protections on /dev/com1* and they look OK. They only
thing that seems to fix it is rebooting -- that seems to fix the
problem every time.
Any suggestions?
Grant Edwards
Rosemount Inc, CB7 He who dies with
12001 Technology Drive grante@hydro.rosemount.com the most manuals
Eden Prairie, MN 55344 uunet!rosevax!hydro!grante wins.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 91 15:03:38 PST
From: overlord@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca (Bill Kloubek)
To: coherent
Subject: Coherent Installation
Ok; so I've bought a copy of Coherent. Arrives in the mail the other
day, and I'm all excited about installing it.
Crack out an old hard drive to run it under; (ST4038), and discard said
drive after multiple failures.
Install a spare ST251 drive, verify that it's working properly under DOS,
do an entire disk scan for defects, etc.
Attempt to install Coherent; create a coherent partition spanning the
entire drive, and ask to save said partition to disk. After which point,
the install craps out, and tells me that there does not exist a Coherent
partition. Sure enough, after rebooting, I find that the new partition
table has not been saved.
My question: What is the Coherent partition identifier byte; (I plan on
manually creating a 'Coherent' partition via alternate routes).
Has anybody else had this problem?
I am running a 286 with MFM controller card; 2M ram, 3.5" installation
disks.
sigh.
------------------------------
Date: 07 Mar 91 12:31:56 EST
From: Stephane Doucet <73207.1247@CompuServe.COM>
To: <coherent>
Subject: terminal, dialing in
Howdy from meeeee...
For all those wondering about dialing in remotely to Coherent...it's
simple (once you get it working..then you're an expert). :) Anyhow...
I didn't use MODEMINIT or anything like that. I first booted up
Coherent and used KERMIT to access the modem--> KERMIT CLB /DEV/COMx 2400
and then using AT commands reconfigured my modem so that the default
setting was auto-answer (set rings to 1), no echo, digit result codes,
Then saved those settings in the modem's memory. It takes some playing
to finally get the modem to answer. I have the full settings for a
HAYES-compatible modem if anyone needs them. I used it this way because
I couldn't get modeminit to work and now the modem defaults to this on
power-up and doesn't impede dialing out.
Thomas: with regards to the cable configuration for a terminal hookup...
what would happen if the com ports in question were 9-pin
ports? Both the serial card in the Coherent box and the one on
the laptops use 9-pin connectors. I tried with a series of
adapters and a nulll-modem cable but get no response at all...
I'm presently in the process of install 3.1 on another machine at home
instead of work and am having PANIC trap problems. MWC told me to check
the memory and I did have a bad chip....I replaced that and will re-
install tonight. Wish me luck. :)
- -Stephane
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 91 12:55:10 CST
From: G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu
To: coherent
Subject: remote terminals
Subject: remote terminals
YES!
You're all right. Setting up a remote terminal WAS easy. It didn't take me
any messing around at all, and it worked perfectly the first time. I DID
use modeminit. I changed it a little - /dev/modem became /dev/com1l and
I only did AT S0=1 Q1. No real purpose, if your modem is already quiet,
to specify any other silence. I came to work, dialed in; it answered, I
used zmodem to send a binary file up (Chess), uncompressed it and ran it.
Then I used zmodem to get a binary file - there were more errors in one
direction ( i don't remember which ) but zmodem is SO robust that it
doesn't really make much difference.
It all happens correctly in the startup too because I turned it on and
didn't do anything else. It dials out correctly too, but you have to
remember that your modem is set to Q1 and do something about that. Now
if someone could just give me the magic words to get uucp working.
Thanks for all the info,
Gerry
Gerald Skerbitz University of Minnesota
612/626-5379 g-sker@vm1.spcs.umn.edu g-sker.uminn1.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: 7 Mar 91 13:43:04
From: samy%phenix.UUCP@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Samy Touati)
To: cs.wisc.edu!mcgill-!coherent
Subject: kermit
Hi,
I use kermit to connect to other systems, and sometimes i have to edit
some files on these remote systems, so i use vi or emacs, but the proble
is the terminal type: on unix systems there is no ansipc terminal so i choose
vt100 for the remote system, and i set my TERM variable locally to vt100
but the editor doesn't work very well, lines disappears, doesn't respond
to commands, etc...
Does anyone of you had these problems and if yes what's the solution. Is
there a terminal program other than kermit someone could get from piggy?
Thanks.
Samy Touati
Administrator of Phenix.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 91 13:55:41 CST
From: G-SKER@vm1.spcs.umn.edu
To: coherent
Subject: kermit
Subject: kermit
Samy,
I would think that you should set your TERM variable on the remote
(the machine you are logging in to.....) not on your local coherent machine.
I haven't played with it much except I did dial into a machine with
the new version of kermit (the one that compiles to wermit) and told
it I was a vt100. It worked fine - keys and screen and all.
Gerry
Gerald Skerbitz University of Minnesota
612/626-5379 g-sker@vm1.spcs.umn.edu g-sker.uminn1.bitnet
------------------------------
End of Coherent Digest Vol. 91.1, No. 17
****************************************
--
Scott Rose
rose@cs.wisc.edu
(608) 238-3801