Sun-Spots-Request@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (11/16/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Monday, 14 November 1988 Volume 7 : Issue 14 Today's Topics: Can't trap BUS signal under SunOS 4.0 kernel reconfig and max processes problems Problems with Fujitsu-M2382K on Xylogic 735 on a 3/280 ALM-II lockups Ungraceful shutdowns diskless suns booted from non-sun server? Events during other events? Sunview - X server? SCSI vs E-net thruput? Documentation for Sun VME-Multibus adapter cards? Online bug list? optomizing C compilers? document writing systems? tn3270 for SunOS? TIFF-to-Sunraster revisited? GatePost (Sun/Appletalk) questions PC-NFS application questions Send contributions to: sun-spots@rice.edu Send subscription add/delete requests to: sun-spots-request@rice.edu Bitnet readers can subscribe directly with the CMS command: TELL LISTSERV AT RICE SUBSCRIBE SUNSPOTS My Full Name Recent backissues are available via anonymous FTP from "titan.rice.edu". For volume X, issue Y, "get sun-spots/vXnY". They are also accessible through the archive server: mail the request "send sun-spots vXnY" to "archive-server@rice.edu" or mail the word "help" to the same address for more information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 12:49:30 EST From: @aplvax.jhuapl.edu:trn@warper.jhuapl.edu Subject: Can't trap BUS signal under SunOS 4.0 Has anyone out there been able to successfully trap a BUS signal on SunOS 4.0? I am using a Sun 4/110, and am mapping to a card on the VMEbus. Intermittently I get a bus error [signal BUS (bus error) when using dbxtool]. I've tried to screen the bus error, but to no avail. Even the code signal( SIGBUS, TrapError ); /* TrapError halts process */ i = ( *reg & msk ); /* "reg" is mapped variable */ signal( SIGBUS, SIG_DFL ); or signal( SIGBUS, SIG_IGN ); i = ( *reg & msk ); /* "reg" is mapped variable */ signal( SIGBUS, SIG_DFL ); fails to divert the bus error from trashing my process. Incidentally, my code runs on a Sun 3/110 under SunOS 3.2. On that machine the signal I have to trap is SIGSEGV. (Yes, I've tried trapping both SIGBUS and SIGSEGV on the Sun 4. No luck.) Any suggestions? Tony Nardo Johns Hopkins University/APL INET: trn%warper@aplvax.jhuapl.edu UUCP: {backbone!}umd5!aplcen!aplcomm!warper!trn ------------------------------ Date: 8 Nov 88 18:53:35 GMT From: eric@eddie.mit.edu (Eric Van Tassell) Subject: kernel reconfig and max processes problems What am I doing wrong?? I did the following to allow more processes on my sun-3. cd /sys/conf sed 's/maxusers 6/maxusers 8/' <PSCNH >PSCNH.new mv PSCNH PSCNH.old mv PSCNH.new PSCNH /etc/config PSCNH cd ../PSCNH make mv vmunix /vmunix my question is why does size have the same output for the new and the old kernel? Shouldn't something have gotten bigger? The checksums however were different. Also the value of param.o:_nproc was 0x14 in both cases. Please e-mail me if you can alleviate my confusion. Thanks. eric@eddie.mit.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 15:15:07 EST From: cxf@cs.rit.edu Subject: Problems with Fujitsu-M2382K on Xylogic 735 on a 3/280 We recently received a Fujitsu-M2382K on Xylogic 735 and I was trying to set it flying on a 3/280 when I ran into problems with insufficient inodes in the client root partition. I tried to use to "-i" option in "newfs" to increase the inodes allocation but nothing happened no matter how I changed the "bpi" value. Then I tried to drop the # of cyl per group down to 10 (default 16, according to the manual) but the "mkfs" responded that cyl/grp has to be multiple of 16. Finally, I decided to use 4K logical block size (default is 8K, according to the manual) and then I was able to lower the cyl/grp to 8 (more groups, more inodes). The "mkfs" didn't complain, and neither did "fsck", but when I tried to mount the new fs and "cd" into it, the system crashed (didn't remember the exact error message). Whatever I tried, fs with 4K block size simply doesn't work. When I remake the fs with 8K blocks, it works fine but I am back with the inodes problem again. I know of at least one other site that was faced with the same inodes deficiency problem on a M2372K. I wonder if any kind soul out there can help us with this problem. Questions that I have are: (1) how come the "-i" option in "newfs" didn't do what the manual says it should do (I know, I know, manauls lie all the time :-< )? (2) is there something peculiar with the geometry of the M2382K that restricts the choice of # of cyl/grp as mentioned above? (3) does anyone has a possible work around for this problem? Thanks for any help that you can give us. Charles Fung UUCP: {allegra,decvax}!rochester!rit!cxf Systems Analyst MILNET: cxf@cs.rit.edu Rochester Institute of Technology CSNET: cxf@cs.rit.edu Undergraduate Computer Science Dept BITNET: CXFICS@RITVAX ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 17:27:19 MST From: sitongia@hao.ucar.edu (Leonard Sitongia) Subject: ALM-II lockups System: Sun-4/280S OS: 4.0 Category: software/Operating System Problem: a user logs off a terminal and the terminal immediately locks up. This terminal is directly connected to an ALM-II serial port. Two different terminals have been tried and show the same problem. No other ports (we have 3 ALM-II's on this system) show this problem. Looking at the process status gives: F UID PID PPID CP PRI NI SZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND 408401 135 250 1 0 3 0 64 0 lbolt S j8 0:01 <exiting> Logout turned the csh into a zombie and it looks like it was inherited by init (as it should be), but init didnt finish up. init is (right now): F UID PID PPID CP PRI NI SZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND 3 0 0 0 0 -25 0 0 0 runout D ? 0:00 swapper 8001 0 1 0 0 5 0 72 88 child I ? 0:07 /sbin/init - What do you think is causing this? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7-Nov-88 17:03:10 PST From: portal!cup.portal.com!donp@sun.com Subject: Ungraceful shutdowns Our site has a Sun 3/160M with two hard disks which is connected to a recently installed 1500 watt backup power supply system. If a power outage is of sufficient duration, there will usually (but not always) be personnel available that can "gracefully" shut down the system before the backup power system runs out of battery power. If a sysop person is NOT available, which of the following procedures would do the least potential "damage": A. Spin down the disks, then turn off the CPU. B. Turn off the CPU, then spin down the disks. C. Turn off the disks and CPU simultaneously. A (possibly) pertinent fact: We have a 16 channel multiplexer so processes may be running other than those active on the console. Thanks, in advance, for any feedback or opinions... Don Parmentier email: donp@cup.portal.com.UUCP or don@msunix.UUCP [[ If you have enough time, run the command "sync" (it can be run by any user) before turning the system off. It will at least try to write the disk caches out. Of course, if there is heavy activity at the time, you're still out of luck. Back in the days of VAXes and DEC maintenance, I got tired of having to rendezvous with the DEC guy once a month just to shut the machine down for him. So I wrote a program to be used in place of a login shell. It could only be run from the console and only as a login process (child of init). It would basically start a shutdown with an explanatory message. That way the DEC guy could shut the machine down himself without having to know the root password. Perhaps something similar could be adopted here. Security is maintained because the program will exit immediately if it is not being run on the console and the console is behind a locked door next to the machine. --wnl ]] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 15:19:15 EST From: marc@aplpy.jhuapl.edu (Marcus Gates) Subject: diskless suns booted from non-sun server? Can diskless suns (3/50, 3/60) be booted from something other than a sun server. If yes, what are the requirements for the server? (NFS?) In particular, can a hp835S support diskless suns sitting on an ethernet? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 19:37:43 EST From: rbw@williams.edu Subject: Events during other events? Does anyone know of a way to detect events during other events? My problem is that I have a sunwindow type tool to draw functions on a canvas, and I would like some way of interrupting a draw (started by clicking a panel button) if, for example, it is not progressing cor- rectly. Any info would be greatly appreciated. -Richard Ward rbw@cs.williams.edu Williams College, Williamstown, MA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Nov 88 14:14:26 PST From: ssc-vax!shuksan!scott@beaver.cs.washington.edu Subject: Sunview - X server? We were informed that Sun has a product (maybe in beta test) that provided a Sunview tookit for X. One could use this toolkit, which all our code is written in, but be running in the X environment. There is still some rewrite work for conforming to the new X control flow but it is supposed to be rather easy. Anyone have more information on this phantom product? Will the toolkit source be available for rehosting on other platforms using X? Are we barking up the wrong tree such that we should be rewriting in an X toolkit? Thanks in advance, Scott Moody @ Boeing Mountain Network ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 12:11:03 CST From: apctrc!drd!mark@uunet.uu.net (Mark Lawrence) Subject: SCSI vs E-net thruput? I'm thinking about putting a Wren IV on my 3/50 (which happens to host the modem which provides our gateway to the Greater E-world) and I'm wondering what the relative observed real-world thruput figures are. In other words, the 3/50 is currently being served off of a 3/260. When netnews comes in, the network and the 3/260 get rather sluggish. I assume that this is due to all the nd and nfs I/O that is taking place due to storing data coming in from the modem, serving paging for the programs that are running on the 3/50 to do comm, uncompressing and unbatching and all the virtual disk I/O that those entail. If I had a Wren IV local to the 3/50 via SCSI, would it the I/O thruput be better? Enough to warrent placing the 3/50's swap/page partition on it? (Of course, saving some CPU cycles on the 3/260 by not having to serve up all that I/O and page traffic would be nice too, but I ignore that for the sake of this discussion). Mark Lawrence tulsun!drd!mark@Sun.COM DRD Corporation mlawrence@jarsun1.ZONE1.COM (918)743-3013 drd!mark@apctrc.UU.NET okstate!romed!drd!mark@rutgers.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 88 23:50:01 EST From: eap@bu-it.bu.edu (Eric A. Pearce) Subject: Documentation for Sun VME-Multibus adapter cards? I'm looking for a complete description of all the dip-switch settings on these cards. Has anybody ever obtained one from Sun or some other source? Eric Pearce Boston University Info-Tech 111 Cummington Street Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2780 eap@bu-it.bu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Nov 88 10:34:59 EST From: ted@braggvax.arpa Subject: Online bug list? In v7n2 Preston Mullen <mullen@itd.nrl.navy.mil> writes: >There is a known bug whereby portmap crashes. The following description >was taken from Sun's on-line bug list a few months ago: Where is this buglist? How does one access it? Thanks, Ted Nolan ted@braggvax.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 8 Nov 88 08:12:00 CST From: "OACIS::NAVOCEANO" <navoceano%oacis.decnet@norda.arpa> Subject: optomizing C compilers? Has anyone else been underwhelmed by the optomization in the Sun-3 C compiler? Does anyone have experience with or information about C compilers that do a realy good job of optomizing for the 68020? Or perhaps there are other optomizing methods that I don't know about (short of manual) that will improve register usage, looping, concurrency and instruction alignment. Please respond directly to my address. I will provide a synopsis of responses to Spots. Donald R. Newcomb U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office Stennis Space Center, MS 39522 (601) 688-5998 navoceano%oacis.decnet@norda.arpa (SPAN) OACIS::NAVOCEANO ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 11:39:56 EST From: panda!jpn@talcott.harvard.edu (John P. Nelson) Subject: document writing systems? I am looking for information on software engineering-oriented documentation systems. We are currently using "troff" for all of our documents, occasionally using "pic" to imbed pictures and diagrams (we have an internally written tool that generates "pic" output). While this fills our needs for the short term, I'm sure that there must be better solutions. We have over 50 diskless SUN workstations, and we would like to take advantage of the CPU power at our disposal. Most of the WYSIWYG documentation programs seem heavily oriented towards producing end-user documentation. As engineers, we like to use the information in our documents in various ways: not just as a end-product hard-copy. Ideally, we would like to use some kind of CASE system, but most of these seem like vaporware at the moment. Barring that, we would like to use a document system with an open interface: that lets us get information in and out of the system easily, (perhaps storing the documents in some kind of database?) We would like to be able to imbed pictures into our documents, but our needs are simple: we mostly generate block diagrams, flow-charts, that sort of thing. Does anyone even make such a thing for SUN systems? Also, because of our 1 user per cpu configuration, we would prefer to find software that is not licensed on a per-cpu basis (or is discounted for network configurations or large numbers of CPUs). Thanks in advance. I'll summarize any responses I receive. john nelson UUCP: {decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!teddy!jpn smail: jpn@teddy.genrad.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Nov 88 11:41:20 PDT From: "M. Delparastaran" <MEHRAN@suwatson.stanford.edu> Subject: tn3270 for SunOS? I don't know if I am posting in the right place or not. I am interested in tn3270 on SunOs. I know of tn3270 that is part of BSD. How would it port to SunOs? any mod required? Mehran ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Nov 88 13:25:16 EST From: Scott Thomas <13501SGT@MSU.BITNET> Subject: TIFF-to-Sunraster revisited? I am trying to find out if there was ever a re-release of the TIFF-to-SunRaster filter that was mentioned during the summer. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 11:44:46 EST From: albert@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu (Jay Albert) Subject: GatePost (Sun/Appletalk) questions We have a copy of GatePost lying around, which is a program to run on a Macintosh that allows one to connect a Sun to an Appletalk network, e.g. to share a LaserWriter. The instructions are vague on how to make the connection between the Sun and the Mac. How should the RS232 port on the Sun be configured, and what about pin assignments? Is anyone out there using this program? Thanks, Jay Albert (albert@mssun7.msi.cornell.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Nov 88 22:40:43 EST From: edsews!mancer!dharvey@uunet.uu.net (Doug Harvey) Subject: PC-NFS application questions I have a situation where I would like to transfer files to a PC from a Sun workstation. I know that Sun has a product called PC-NFS that allows you to do this. However, it doesn't suit my needs exactly, and besides, it is rather expensive. I was thinking of trying to write an MS-DOS program that would do the same thing, except over a serial connection. I know that PC-NFS can be installed to run over a serial line. In addition, in my case the application does not need to be a device driver or a TSR. All NFS activity could be handled within the application itself, eg. execute the pgm and perform all file transfers from within the pgm. A couple of questions: o Does anything need to be written on the Sun side? We have pc-nfs installed and have a daemon on the sun called 'pcnfsd'. Is this (or something similar) required in order to communicate with a PC? o Is it possible to write a PC application that uses the NFS protocol to communicate with the Sun in the same manner? o How involved would something like this be? Feel free to tell me if this idea just won't work. I don't want to waste a lot of time for nothing. Any pointers to documentation and/or example source code would be appreciated. as well as any words of wisdom. Thanks in advance, Doug Harvey Douglas Harvey UUCP: {uunet.uu.net}!edsews!mancer!dharvey Electronic Data Systems ARPA: edsews!mancer!dharvey@uunet.uu.net (313) 556-0791 ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************