[comp.unix.questions] Any 3b2 gurus out there?

Brian.Chan@samba.acs.unc.edu (Brian Chan) (03/26/91)

After working with Sun workstations for 18 months, I have the sudden
fortune to port software to the 3b2s. Can anyone share their expierences
on why the 3b2 is such a difficult beast to port software to? Or I'm just
the only buggy one? 

To make my point, I'm having a wonderful time to try to bring gcc up.
(The big mistake was we didn't buy the LPI-C so that we could at least  
use CodeWatch instead of sdb.)  With the help from John Lees (he's 
making much more progress than I have though) and Brinton Cooper, I 
was able to make the pass 1 compiler to work with small files but it bombed
on cc1. 

I run Esix  3.2 Rev D at home on my Gateway. I was able to port my
stuff from the Suns and  made it to run on the 386 without too much trouble.
(Same thing with gcc.)  I was also able to make it to run under MSDOS
if I stripped out the Unix stuff. 

Granted: I may have bugs in my software (tons of linked  lists, 
pointers and dynamic arrays.) My $20 question: Esix licenced the
3.2.2 code from ATT and I'm using the stock portable C compiler.
Why does generic code work on Esix and not on 3b2?  Why most GNU stuff
don't have header files for 3b2? (I know I should ask RMS instead.)
We managed to get Emacs to work but it core dumps on the 3b2 so often
that I write most of my stuff on the Sun and move it afterward. 
(Anyone ported a clean Emacs to the 3b2?) Okay the problem may be
WIN3 since I use the Sun to telnet the 3b2. 

We also got bash to work , well, kinda. Sometimes our uids will change
to some random number and we will lost our write permssions. We had
to do su. How weird?

This is not meant to be an attack on ATT so no flame please. The fact
is my $6500 clone is faster than this $250,000 machine and the 33-386 is
much more productive. Although I must add the ATT socket libaray is much better
than the Esix,  I was able to port the Sun socket stuff to run on it
without much trouble. 

So if anyone of you have successfully ported gcc, gdb and g++, _please_
let me know. You can save lots of people's grieves. (I'll post a summary
if there's any.)  Actually are there anyone using the 3b2s besides
the Government/Military/Academic institutions? 

Thank you very much of your time,

Brian Chan
Stuttgart, FRG


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brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (03/26/91)

In <3099@beguine.UUCP>, Brian.Chan@samba.acs.unc.edu writes:
>Granted: I may have bugs in my software (tons of linked  lists, 
>pointers and dynamic arrays.) My $20 question: Esix licenced the
>3.2.2 code from ATT and I'm using the stock portable C compiler.
>Why does generic code work on Esix and not on 3b2?  Why most GNU stuff
>don't have header files for 3b2? (I know I should ask RMS instead.)

   Most of it (if not all, but I can't make a blanket statement), has
  some ability to compile it for a System V environment. I've gotten
  emacs 18.57, all of the bin utils, and all of the file utils to
  compile perfectly on 'em, just by following the directions. (I think
  the only thing with emacs was to relax & not panic when it starts
  spitting out a lot of crap during the build. And I used the
  s-usg5-3.h header, I think...I played using usg5-?.h headers til one
  worked well [5-4 doesn't]).

>We managed to get Emacs to work but it core dumps on the 3b2 so often
>that I write most of my stuff on the Sun and move it afterward. 
>(Anyone ported a clean Emacs to the 3b2?) Okay the problem may be
>WIN3 since I use the Sun to telnet the 3b2. 

  I've yet to have it core dump .. did you build it with or without
  all of the networking stuff? (If I remember right, I wasn't able to
  get it to work, but it's been a while.)

>We also got bash to work , well, kinda. Sometimes our uids will change
>to some random number and we will lost our write permssions. We had
>to do su. How weird?

  Haven't tried this yet .. I tried building bash under SysV 3.1, and
 nearly gave BIRTH, it was so painful. Luckily SysV 3.2.2, with its
 speed & whorde of features, have renewed my respect for AT&T's os.

>  Actually are there anyone using the 3b2s besides the
>Government/Military/Academic institutions?

  The above was on a 3b2/600G (I've been told it's a 3b2/1000 with a
 different name to save money) for the gov't.

  Best of luck.

Brendan
-- 
     Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
  Widener University in Chester, PA                A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
 Now that we know he has ID, we could give him an account. finger bush@cs....