rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Fiona Rose Condon) (12/20/90)
Coherent Digest Vol. 90.4, No. 3 Wed Dec 19 09:58:08 CST 1990 Today's Topics: FOO MGR/mail problems/mailing list Re: Moving to an Alt group... SCSI driver (none) smail Help on i-number Re: Moving to an Alt group modem & UUCP re:modem & UUCP uux PD Software for Coherent Technical Support via Mail Re: modem & UUCP Looking for do's and don't's Re: Looking for do's and don't's (none) Coherent review and small utilities in Dutch magazine (none) 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: 14 Dec 90 17:01:01 From: mwc!norm@uunet.UU.NET (Norman Bartek) To: cohmail@uunet.UU.NET Subject: FOO > Date: 12 Dec 90 11:14:28 > From: uunet!jandel!ganymede (Jeff Bennington) > To: coherent_group > Subject: Re: Device Drivers, etc. > Does anyone have just one modem on their Coherent box used for both > dialin AND dialout? I've tried putting in crontab an enable statement > for after-hours dialing in, but the permissions on the com port > are screwed. (chmod seems to fail in crontab). Do I need to > run cron with suid root? Yes, we have a Trailblazer+ on "mwc" that dials out to UUNET as well as accepting calls from remote sites. The L-devices entry lists both the remote as well as local versions of the com port name so that the remote line will be disabled before attempting to dial out (and re-enabled afterwards). The stock uucico we ship with release 3.x should enable/disable the port for you without any trouble assuming that you haven't changed the permissions on /etc/enable and /etc/disable from being set-UID and set-GID. Contact our Tech Support department if you continue to have problems. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Dec 90 01:05:55 From: md386!mark@uunet.UU.NET (Mark E. Davidson) To: coherent Subject: MGR/mail problems/mailing list Greetings, fellow Coherent users! First of all, several people have asked if anyone is porting MGR to Coherent. Well, I'm giving it a shot. I almost have all the source code on my system, so as soon as I get the final few missing pieces, I will get started on the port. I've also been looking at a few other packages to port, so if anyone has something they want ported to Coherent, let me know. I love a challenge! :) Secondly, many of you may remember that I complained several weeks ago about having horrible mail problems with Coherent; specifically, that the mail system would corrupt mail headers after the mail had arrived at my system. Furthermore, the messages would disappear! Well, I am happy to announce that Coherent 3.1.0 with the 3.1.0b mail package seems to take care of the problem. Please note that I still had a few problems with the mail package that was shipped with the 3.1.0 update disk. The mwcbbs system has an updated version of uux and uuxqt. That reminds me. If anyone on this list sent me mail in the last week or so and does not receive a reply, please mail me again. I only got the new versions of uux and uuxqt installed today. As far as the option of an alt or comp group, I personally don't mind the way it is now. As of right now, I don't have a news feed (and no new software for Coherent), so I couldn't read the alt/comp group even if it did get created. I guess that means I don't have any preference right now. Oh, I want to thank the tech support people at MWC. They were kind enough to help me over the net with my mail problems. Thank you Mark Epstein! Mark Davidson ...!uunet!md386!mark ...!quad1!md386!mark ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Dec 90 17:34:47 GMT From: Kevin Purcell <KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.uk> To: Scott Rose <rose>, Coherent distribution list <coherent> Subject: Re: Moving to an Alt group... On Fri, 14 Dec 90 16:09:02 CST Scott Rose (rose@edu.wisc.cs) said: [...] > >In any event, if and when a newsgroup is created, I will do my best to >gateway traffic to and from it- I *think* I have the technology to do >that in hand. If a comp group follows an alt group, I would propose to >drop gatewaying the alt traffic. This would give two distinct sites for Coherent info -- so to get the whole readership you would have to post to both (if you can) and then you have to read both. I think splitting the community is a bad idea and USENET is notorious for its noise and "flaming behaviour". I prefer the mailing list (which would be almost as good if its advertise periodically on USENET): lower noise and everybody can get to it. Kevin _ . Kevin Purcell | kpurcell@liverpool.ac.uk _/ \ / \ kgp@cxa.dl.ac.uk Surface Science, | /----/^^^\ Liverpool University | There is now a damm fine /TWIN PEAKS\ email discussion Liverpool L69 3BX, UK | list for TPers. Mail me / / \ for details. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 15:47:44 EST From: msdc!esa@uunet.UU.NET (Esa T. Ahola) To: coherent Subject: SCSI driver Somebody asked about the Adaptec 154x driver. I've been running with a 1542B and the Coherent driver for a couple of months, without a glitch. Throughput is slower than my RLL drives on a WD1006VSR2, but this is probably due to track buffering on the WD1006 (my SCSI drive has no cache). I have no experience with multiple SCSI drives or SCSI boot partitions (although I may soon). With SCSI come large file systems. Coherent's fabulous virtualized fsck can check the big ones (slowly), but poor old mkfs barfs mallocing its data structures. The limits are about 90MB for partition size and 27000 inodes. I 'm *SURE* MWC is working on this... :-) -- Esa Ahola esa@msdc.com uunet!msdc!esa CIS:70012,2753 Medical Systems Development Corporation (MsdC), Atlanta GA (404) 589-3368 ------------------------------ No subject field? Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 18:48:43 -0500 From: "Chris Webster" <cwebster@rodan.acs.syr.edu> To: coherent Personally, I don't think that this mailing list should move to a .alt group. Comp.os.coherent would be fine, but an .alt group doesn't seem legitimate for a operating system the quality of Coherent. Also, does anyone have a list of 386 coherent-compatible motherboards? (Or a list of incompatibilites/BIOS problems?) Santa's going to be bringing me one :-) and I'd like to make sure that I can run Coherent on it. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Dec 90 00:58:46 From: wah@zach.fit.edu (Bill Huttig) To: coherent Subject: smail I have a problem with smail or something... I call uflorida (bikini.cis.ufl.edu) for mail from the internet. Since uu* only understands 7 char names I have a alias in the database uflorida uflorid!%s which spools the files to the right place. The only problem is the rmail line in the control file. It reads rmail (username ) Where did the ('s come from and how can i get rid of them? Bill wah@zach.fit.edu ------------------------------ Date: 17 Dec 90 20:04:02 From: mhm!root (Mohd H. Misnan) To: coherent@uop.edu Subject: Help on i-number Hi, Can someone figure out on how to solve this annoying message Phase 1: Check Blocks and Sizes Possible File Size Error i-number = 1447 <------- Do I need to use dcheck,ncheck or icheck? If I do, do I need to make Coherent in single user or multi-user? Thanks for any help. Hamid +---------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Mohd H. Misnan | UUCP: mhm!{root|hamid}@uop.uop.edu | | 810, West Stadium Dr #6 | INET: hmisnan@madvax.uop.edu | | Stockton, CA 95204. | acs17111@uop.uop.edu | +---------------------------+-------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Dec 90 14:28:24 PST From: curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt Sampson) To: coherent Subject: Re: Moving to an Alt group Kevin Purcell <KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.uk> writes: > On Fri, 14 Dec 90 16:09:02 CST Scott Rose (rose@edu.wisc.cs) said: > [...] > > > >In any event, if and when a newsgroup is created, I will do my best to > >gateway traffic to and from it- I *think* I have the technology to do > >that in hand. If a comp group follows an alt group, I would propose to > >drop gatewaying the alt traffic. > > This would give two distinct sites for Coherent info -- so to get the > whole readership you would have to post to both (if you can) and then > you have to read both. I think you misunderstood. As tradition has it, if comp.whatever replaces alt.whatever, then alt.whatever is removed. > I think splitting the community is a bad idea and USENET is notorious > for its noise and "flaming behaviour". I prefer the mailing list (which > would be almost as good if its advertise periodically on USENET): lower > noise and everybody can get to it. The mailing list results in much higher noise in my mailbox. I've had about 20 bounce messages in the last week (and this post will generate at least two or three more). As well, a mailing list uses up many times the bandwidth of a newsgroup. At any rate, I'm suspending the whole proposal until I get some more information that I've been waiting on. I'll be posting the new proposal later this week. cjs | "The unconscious self is the real genius. curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | Your breathing goes wrong the minute your {uunet|ubc-cs}!van-bc!cynic!curt | conscious self meddles with it." --GBS ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 10:56:32 PST From: fwarner@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Frank Warner) To: coherent Cc: m#adfghijk Subject: modem & UUCP Keywords: coherent hello help 1) Can anyone running a Cardinal 2450 internal modem as Com2 please advise on configuring for UUCP. Have tried Hal Snyder's 'howto.start'. Uulog says 'Dial Failed, Line Problem'. 2) Can someone please (Hal Snyder,Scott Rose ?) post the weekly /usr/spool/uucppublic/mcwnews/news and the current /usr/spool/uucppublic/downloads/Contents from the MWCBBS. --------- Please don't flame on me for the following observations I like the product. Questions 3 & 4 were answered yesterday when I recieved from MWC my notice for the Device Driver Kit and the upgrade to Coherent 3.1.0. The deadline for recieving it at the special price of $24.95 has been moved back to Jan. 31/91. I see that the ad for the special introductory price of $99 is still running. I don't know how long this is going to go on but I may not send off for the upgrade if I can buy 3.9.0 in a few months for $99. The $99 price was supposed to be in effect only until July 31, 1990! -I don't know why but I expected MWC to provide a bug fix with an addenda to 3.0.0 users before going to the 3.1.0 release. -I wish MWC had spent a little more time on this project (as if 8 years wasn't long enough). Two more months would have made a world of difference. -12bit should have been an option within a 16bit compress/uncompress/zcat. It almost seems that because MWC does all their development on a system running Coherent they are a little behind the times when it comes to the real world. -I hope MWC hired a proofreader for their new manual. -Coherent has been touted as a good inexpensive way to learn UNIX but MWC did not include the 'LEARN' scripts. I guess thats how they got the system onto four disks instead of five. ----------- 5) Has anyone ever recieved 'Technical Support' by mail? ------------------------------ Date: 18 Dec 90 12:44:52 From: mhm!hamid (Mohd H. Misnan) To: uop!coherent Subject: re:modem & UUCP [stuff deleted] 5) Has anyone ever recieved 'Technical Support' by mail? Never! I have sent an e-mail to Technical Support regarding my installation problems but never received any reply. I also supplied all the requested information, my phone number and my registration number in my e-mail. No more comments! Hamid +---------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Mohd H. Misnan | UUCP: mhm!{root|hamid}@uop.uop.edu | | 810, West Stadium Dr #6 | INET: hmisnan@madvax.uop.edu | | Stockton, CA 95204. | acs17111@uop.uop.edu | +---------------------------+-------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 15:47:40 EST From: msdc!esa@uunet.UU.NET (Esa T. Ahola) To: coherent Subject: uux Coherent's uux, when creating the command file and data file to be copied to the remote system, creates a C.* file that looks similar to: S D.cycloneX0195 X.cycloneX0195 root - D.cycloneX0195 0666 S D.cyclonea0196 D.cyclonea0196 root - D.cyclonea0196 0666 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ note these two If this was a transfer of mail, the X.* file would contain the "rmail" command for the remote site's uuxqt, and the D.* file would contain the message text. I firmly believe that the X.* file should be sent AFTER the D.* file(s). All other UUCPs I know about send the uuxqt command file (X.*) last, for good reasons. When all goes well, the order doesn't matter. But... Examples of how Coherent's X-before-D causes problems: - Transfer of the X.* file succeeds but the transfer of the D.* file fails (lost connection, whatever). Result: uuxqt (Coherent's or anybody elses) attempts to execute the orphan X.* which references a D.* that is not there. Once executed, the X.* is deleted and thus cannot be recovered even if the D.* file is resent (which it typically will be). Result in the mail example: lost mail. Not a good thing. - It is not safe to execute uuxqt while an incoming UUCP transfer is running, for the same reason -- it might find and X.* file without the corresponding D.* file (files are transferred to a temp file, and at the end of the transfer, moved into whatever name was requested). And you don't necessarily have control over this: If you are running two incoming UUCP transfers, each from a Coherent system, whichever completes first is going to run uuxqt and attempt to execute the X.* files already created by the other UUCP -- and the last one may not have its D.* file there yet. Besides, it's convenient to be able to run uuxqt in the middle of a long transfer to, say, receive mail or news that have already been transferred. Important point: The creation of the X.* file on the remote system *after* all associated data files have been transferred makes the transfer of the group of files nice and atomic -- when you see the X.*, you know they're all there. Sending the X.* file last never causes probles, while sending it first might. I have seen it cause problems like the two examples above, so my interest in getting it fixed is purely selfish. :-) And best of all, the fix to uux is trivial and breaks no existing semantics. Comments, anyone (MWC and UUCP gurus in particular)? -- Esa Ahola esa@msdc.com uunet!msdc!esa CIS:70012,2753 Medical Systems Development Corporation (MsdC), Atlanta GA (404) 589-3368 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 14:47:19 SET From: Roger Thijs <RTHIJS@BANUFS11.BitNet> To: Scott <rose>, ghicks@WSMR-Simtel20.Army.mil, red-ug@hearn.BitNet, coherent Subject: PD Software for Coherent Actually, or don't I see it well, PD software for Coherent is dispersed over several sites: - main site for real PD software (I think): piggy.ucsb.edu - site for upgrades by mwc, as far as I know: only the MWC bulletin board cfr.: Message-Id: <9012150105.AA100.V2.20.md386@md386> Date: 15 Dec 90 01:05:55 From: md386!mark@uunet.UU.NET (Mark E. Davidson) To: coherent@cs.wisc.edu Please note that I still had a few problems with the mail package that was shipped with the 3.1 update disk.The mwcbbs system has an updated version of uux and uuxqt. Questions: 1. Can the updates by mwc also be made available somewhere on internet? 2. Is coherent still not popular enough to get its PD software also be archived at Simtel. (I mean after the actual housing problems are solved). Simtel is outstandingly assisted by trickle servers for file distribution over bitnet in Europe. Thanks for the consideration, Roger Thijs Antwerp UFSIA University ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 17:22:34 PST From: curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt Sampson) To: coherent Subject: Technical Support via Mail hamid%mhm.UUCP@cs.wisc.edu (Mohd H. Misnan) writes: > 5) Has anyone ever recieved 'Technical Support' by mail? > > Never! I have sent an e-mail to Technical Support regarding my > installation problems but never received any reply. I also > supplied all the requested information, my phone number and my > registration number in my e-mail. No more comments! I've phoned telephone support only once, but the person on the other end was very helpful. I've sent mail to mwc!support@uunet.uu.net twice now. The first time I got a reply back fairly quickly giving me the information I needed. I haven't recieved any reply to my second note, but it may be too soon to tell (I sent it Sunday evening). I've also received notes from them regarding a couple of my postings here. They seem to be a fairly responsive lot, generally. cjs | "And if you fight and if you fail, don't curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | fall back into yourself. You can fall {uunet|ubc-cs}!van-bc!cynic!curt | back on me." --Camper Van Beethoven ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 17:18:47 PST From: curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt Sampson) To: coherent Subject: Re: modem & UUCP fwarner@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Frank Warner) writes: > 2) Can someone please (Hal Snyder,Scott Rose ?) post the weekly > /usr/spool/uucppublic/mcwnews/news and the current > /usr/spool/uucppublic/downloads/Contents from the MWCBBS. I would really appreciate it if someone would do this as well. > -12bit should have been an option within a 16bit > compress/uncompress/zcat. It almost seems that because MWC does all > their development on a system running Coherent they are a little > behind the times when it comes to the real world. I would rather have 12 bit as the default, at least for the moment. There are a few good reasons for this. It certainly doesn't break anything, as anybody with the standard UNIX 16 bit uncompress can uncompress 12 bit stuff with no problem whatsoever (as a matter of fact, they won't even notice that it's 12 bit). Under Coherent the 12 bit compress is significantly faster than the 16 bit compress, especially when one uses a workfile rather than /dev/ram1. Using /dev/ram1 can be very dangerous, as there doesn't seem to be any locking on it. If you uncompress two 16 bit files simultaneously, they both try to use /dev/ram1 and corrupt the output, but generate not error notices. This is quite serious in the light of the fact that "uncompress file.Z" will delete the compressed version when it is done! We obviously need some sort of locking scheme for the /dev/ram* devices. Does the ioctl that denys a second open of a file work on those? > -I hope MWC hired a proofreader for their new manual. There were a few mistakes in it, but it didn't seem too bad to me. Of more concern was the large amount of information that seems to be missing. For example, nowhere can I find a mention of the special characters used in the script section of L.sys. Does anybody know how to make it send a break signal? > -Coherent has been touted as a good inexpensive way to learn UNIX but > MWC did not include the 'LEARN' scripts. I guess thats how they got > the system onto four disks instead of five. There is a lot of stuff that's not included with Coherent. I'd really like to see tbl, myself. Hopefully they will appear eventually. cjs | "And if you fight and if you fail, don't curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca | fall back into yourself. You can fall {uunet|ubc-cs}!van-bc!cynic!curt | back on me." --Camper Van Beethoven ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 14:11:51 SET From: Roger Thijs <RTHIJS@BANUFS11.BitNet> To: coherent Subject: Looking for do's and don't's I'm preparing myself for giving a very brief intro about coherent here at this university in the second week of januari. Point is: I have to install on a Toshiba with 720 k drive and HD (giving it's output to a barco projector) and can only do the intallation the day before. My coherent came on 1.2 Mb discettes. I have (on my 386sx clone) a 1.2 Mb for a: drive and a 1.4 Mb for b: drive. So I plan to make 720K discettes on my b: drive that will allow me to install the system on the Toshiba HD. (It's a one hour demo, so I don't think mwc will object for a 60 min second intallment; it even could be good publicity - when it works) I need to make at least one 720K discette bootable, and I'm wondering if I can -without problems- transfer and use the "begin etc." install program, on the 72O K discette as it comes from the 1.2 Mb original discettes. I appreciate all good advice and I'm looking forward for suggestios, do's and don't's. Thanks and regards, Roger Thijs, Antwerp UFSIA University ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 10:00:32 EST From: john@ctc.contel.com (John Schettino x4156) To: coherent Subject: Re: Looking for do's and don't's >From RTHIJS@BANUFS11.BitNet Wed Dec 19 09:31:20 1990 >From: Roger Thijs <RTHIJS@BANUFS11.BitNet> >Subject: Looking for do's and don't's >To: coherent@cs.wisc.edu > >I'm preparing myself for giving a very brief intro about coherent >here at this university in the second week of januari. >Point is: I have to install on a Toshiba with 720 k drive and HD >(giving it's output to a barco projector) >and can only do the intallation the day before. > I assume you have a toshiba which supports external floppies... if so, then you might want to consider tracking down an external 1.2mb 5 1/4" floppy drive and using that to do the install. The ESIX unix system also only comes on 1.2mb disks, and when we installed it on our 5200 toshiba it required the use of an external drive. no problem, really, just hook up the drive (and set it as drive A "just in case" coherent is dependent on that) and then install as usual. This is a safe "fall back" position if none of the gurus on the list have any better ideas. - john schettino (john@ctc.contel.com) ------------------------------ No subject field? Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 09:05:15 -0600 From: "Predrag S. Bundalo" <pred@iitmax.iit.edu> To: coherent Is anyone porting a news reader to Coherent (Esa?)? If not, I'd be willing to write a simplified version of "rn". -Pred ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 14:40:17 SET From: Roger Thijs <RTHIJS@BANUFS11.BitNet> To: coherent Subject: Coherent review and small utilities in Dutch magazine In UNIX Info, vol. 4, nr. 7, nov. 1990 I found two articles (in Dutch) about coherent: 1. A Review: " COHERENT: alles wat UNIX ooit was" ( COHERENT all that Unix has been once) by Andre Banen ( on pages 57, 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63) first of a series (to be continued) 2. Sources for some utilities: "Roots Workbench" by Gerard Bakker and Andre Banen (on pages 40, 41, 42 and 44) Unix Info is published by: Sala Communications Postbus 43048 1009 ZA Amsterdam For whom it may concern I will summarize briefly 1. The review: The first four pages (57, 59, 60, 61) just describe the installation problems: - could not make diskopies of the 1.2 Mb d. with pctools nor copy IIpc (apparently did not try ordinary DOS diskcopy) made his copies with Unix S V/386 rel. 3.2 - had to correct his HD partition in CMOS - looking for, did not find "cpio" - forgot to declare password for root, ... missed "vi", missed " /etc/issue", "etc/gettydefs", "more", "less", "pg", "haltsys", "powerdown" - got "fsck" hanging a couple of times when rebooting (I'm unfair since I'm not repeating what he found, but there's no news in that) (when I compare with my own installation troubles: - made my discettes copy protected - thought values in disk partition program questions were default values, confirmed with "enter" and made everything "0" - included highest cylinder in partition and got endless scan - did not define users when installing and found out that the /newuser command did not work in its abbreviated form as one finds it in the manual - had to find querty locations on my azerty keyboard - didn't not get my printer active (was lpt2 iso lpt1) So when MWC markets for novice unix users they might consider some more installation assistance I think) Back to the review: There is a little bit more described than just installation: - the author was used to "vi", appreciates "me" however - misses shell functions - misses "echo" command (to clear screen with esc code) - has problems with quotes when issuing shell commands My highlights are very unfair since the author is overall very positive, likes the manual, the commands that are in, the games and clearly started working with it (cfr what follows). The review will be continued in the next issue. 2. Sources The same author plus a collegue have written some programs for things they miss in coherent. dirname.sh (p. 40, a script of 22 lines to complement "basename") id.c (p. 41-42 a (+-) 175 liner in c) unlink.c (p. 42 a 13 liner in C) for cleaning linked directories link.c (p. 42 a 35 liner in C) print.sh (p. 42 a sript 10 liner using awk) for completing "echo" The article (p. 44) ends with a call to the readers to submit contributions. Guess what you can win if yours is the best: guess ??? no guess &&& no guess $$$ no guess @@@ no guess kkk no guess mmm no guess xxx no guess lll no guess ttt no guess yes indeed a MKS Toolkit Regards, Roger Thijs ------------------------------ No subject field? Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 09:13:54 -0600 From: "Predrag S. Bundalo" <pred@iitmax.iit.edu> To: coherent To anyone who might know something about the clam shell internals: I am running clam for a user on my system which works fine except when the user logs in on an ADM5 terminal. I have the termcap definition set up for the terminal and it seems to work fine when I use MicroEMACS on it. Yes, the user does set the term variable. The problem is that for each key pressed, clam echos the character typed and then an apostrophe followed by a number (beginning with 1 and incremented everytime a key is pressed). For instance, if the user types "who" the following is printed: $ w'1h'2o'3 (and then the actual "who" output) Any tips on how I should go about fixing this problem? -Pred ______________________________________________________________________________ Predrag S. Bundalo Internet: pred@iitmax.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Internet: SysPredrag@Karl.iit.edu Academic Computing Center BITNET : SysPredrag@iitVax VAX/VMS and Unix Systems Staff Internet: pred@elof.iit.edu Chicago, Illinois ------------------------------ End of Coherent Digest Vol. 90.4, No. 3 *************************************** -- Scott Rose rose@cs.wisc.edu