Sun-Spots-Request@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (11/09/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Monday, 7 November 1988 Volume 7 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: Re: DELNI collisions (was: SLOW Boot on diskless Suns) Re: Problems with dump on 4.0 Re: Algebraic Calctool with Trig Functions Re: TTY windows in Sunview Re: C/A/T troff to ditroff Re: Looking for troff previewer for Sun's Re: LaTeX and TeX environment on Suns Get together at SUG? 753 vs 7053 Something clobbers subnet mask - YP clients die Strange 'rshd' behavior on SunOS 4.0 Suntools crashes servers Problem loging-in a SUN 4.0 server process killed due to text modification Fujitsu 2249? Used Suns? Sun OS 4.0 and Trace 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: Mon, 31 Oct 88 9:39 GMT From: Piete Brooks <pb%computer-lab.cambridge.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk> Subject: Re: DELNI collisions (was: SLOW Boot on diskless Suns) Reference: v6n277 Two quickies and a real message. 1) ukc sent me a message saying that they had noticed & fixed the problem. 2) "Cure for the Summertime Blues?" this has been thrashed out in the UK list 3) Main one follows .... [ % = original, > = reply, * = my comment, $ = my guru ] % Appearently there is enough shared logic in the DELNI that trying to % rapidly pump large amounts of data between two ports results in a large % number of 'collisions' being reported. (Can anyone confirm/deny this?) % When we put the two machines on seperate DELNIs that where connected by % coax the file transfer rates were much closer to the rates we saw when the % machines themselves were directly on the coax. > I'm no expert, but this doesn't sound right. We had a similar problem and > found the _real_ cause of these "pseudo-collisions" was Ethernet version > mismatches. We thought we could just insert a DELNI between an old > Interlan board and its transceiver. No way since that hardware was > version 1 and the DELNI is (sort-of) version 2. We saw a _lot_ of > collisions when sending thru the Interlan, e.g. average of 1.5 collisions > per packet sent! Attaching the DELNI to the backbone with its own > transceiver and re-connecting the old hardware fixed that. Now I can send > gobs of packets from one port of the DELNI to the other without seeing a > _single_ collision when our net is lightly loaded. * Nor am I an expert, but our local guru muttered something about heartbeat. * It turns out that the above fix is suitable .... $ There is a grain of truth in this, but there is some confusion. $ There are two potential problems with the DELNI that I know of: $ $ - it insists on sending the "heartbeat" signal (feature) $ - the heartbeat is signalled on all 8 ports, not just the one which $ transmitted (bug) $ $ Because of the bug, you will see many more collisions when you are on $ a DELNI port - there will be one for every successful transmission by $ somebody else on the same DELNI. But they aren't "real" collisions. $ $ I presume that what is happening is that these "pseudo-collisions" are $ in some way upsetting the Sun's Ethernet access logic. Maybe it goes dead $ for some fixed period after seeing a collision, or something like that. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Nov 88 09:26:41 EST From: ted@braggvax.arpa Subject: Re: Problems with dump on 4.0 In v6n278 Ian Domville <mcvax!stl.stc.co.uk!id@uunet.uu.net> writes: >The second problem is like this. I wrote two small dumps onto one tape. >I tried to read the second one with: > > /usr/etc/restore ibfs 1750 /dev/rst0 2 > >Restore then demands the second volume. The first dump is perfectly >readable, as far as I can tell. So how can I safely put multiple dumps on >a tape?... I have seen this under 3.X also, usually (if memory serves) when I have multiple dumps on a tape, and want to restore them without using mt to position the tape. I rewind and restore the first dump using the nrst device, then cd to the correct place and give the restore command again. This will fail, asking for tape two. Then do it one more time, and it will work. I think it has to do with reading past a tape mark or some such between dumps. Ted Nolan ted@braggvax.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 14:41:06 -0500 From: mesard@bbn.com Subject: Re: Algebraic Calctool with Trig Functions Phone: 617-873-1878 Office: 13/216 > Does anyone know of a calctool with operator precedence (i.e., 2+3*4+5 = > 19, NOT 25) and trig functions, logarithms, and other assorted goodies? I wrote a command line calculator (i.e., it doesn't run in its own window) which does all that and more fun stuff (bitwise operations, base conversion, etc.). It's available via anonymous ftp to titan.rice.edu as "wsm_calc.shar" in the "public" directory (since it's not Sun specific). void *Wayne_Mesard(); MESARD@BBN.COM BBN, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Nov 88 09:46 EST From: Holland@dockmaster.arpa Subject: Re: TTY windows in Sunview A question was asked as to whether there was a hard limit to the number of TTY windows in an application. The file descriptors which were mentioned are one factor, but a probably more important factor is a NOTE which appears on P. 180 in the SunView Programmer's Guide and says "You can only have one tty subwindow per process". I'm using Sun OS 3.x and it may change going to 4.x but I have tried to use more that one and it didn't work. Also what we really need is a simple text display window! Not an editor and not a tty. That would be a useful package if someone were to build the required functions on top of a CANVAS. There are so many times when this would be useful and PANEL TEXT ITEMS are just not the right way. Of course, anything which scrolls off the top could be thrown away just like TTY windows. Multiple fonts? Any volunteers with time enough to write this?? Brian P.S. One way around the 1 TTY window limit is for forked processes to create their own. But, keeping the windows together could be a problem. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 17:02:14 +0100 From: Jaap Bril <mcvax!kunivv1!jaap@uunet.uu.net> Subject: Re: C/A/T troff to ditroff Reference: v6n268 Don't know if anyone is interested but: An educational licence costs $1500,- for the complete documentals workbench (including pic etc.) For just ditroff, $400 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Nov 88 09:30:38 EST From: ted@braggvax.arpa Subject: Re: Looking for troff previewer for Sun's In v6n278 Glenn C. Shute gshute@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU writes: >Can anyone give me any pointers to troff previewers on Sun3's. Something >like texx for Latex. There was a program called tseetool on the first SUG tape which previews CAT troff in a window. Not bad either. Ted Nolan ted@braggvax.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Nov 88 14:03:21 EST From: Jean-Francois Lamy <lamy@ai.utoronto.ca> Subject: Re: LaTeX and TeX environment on Suns I sent Pierre McKay a version of undump for SunOS 4.0. Turns out the only thing to change was to ignore the glorified parsing routine that did not use varargs. We don't use undump anymore either, not worth it even on a Sun3. Jean-Francois Lamy lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 00:02:34 CST From: Your Moderator <phil@Rice.edu> Subject: Get together at SUG? All Sun-Spots readers who are interested in some sort of gathering at Miami SUG raise your right hand. Oh wait, we still don't have multi-media mail.... I'm still thinking about what we can do at SUG. They have these things called "SIG meetings" which I guess are like BOF (Birds Of a Feather) gatherings at Usenix. Would that be appropriate? "SIG-Spot"? I would invite you all to my room, but I'm not sure you would all fit. Plus I won't have enough glasses. The SF-Lovers people have a tradition of placing a "@" symbol on their name cards at certain science fiction conventions. Kind of like a secret handshake. So how 'bout it? Anyone interested in gathering in Miami? What would be the best way to go about it? SIG? Or more informal? We don't have much time left, so better send comments on this directly to me. William LeFebvre ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 18:23:19 PST From: Richard Smith <smiddy@spam.istc.sri.com> Subject: 753 vs 7053 I have also been told, by some sun-spots reader, thank you, that the 7053 is Sun Eurocard format, while the 753 is a "real" VME board, and thus requires a VME to VME adapter when used with a Sun. Thanks Smiddy@spam.istc.sri.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 17:20:26 EST From: gfr%wolfgang@gateway.mitre.org (Glenn Roberts) Subject: Something clobbers subnet mask - YP clients die Periodically we receive some kind of packet that clobbers the netmask on our Sun 386i's. When this happens the portmapper process hangs and all the YP clients on my network essentially hang. The only solution seems to be to reboot client and server (usually via L1-A ... arghh!!!). Both clients and server are 386i's. We also periodically get the message: "Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000" on some of our Sun 3 systems, but we've never noticed a problem with them since the mask is always reset to a class B mask, which is our normal mask (problem on 386i's is when mask is set to 0xffffff00 or 0x0). Sun tech. support says they've heard of this and that they "think the problem originates on a VAX". The following lines were 'grepped' on the phrase 'subnet' from the /usr/adm/messages file on the YP server 'cobra'. (NOTE: Mask resets usually seem to come in pairs): Oct 6 08:00:20 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 6 08:00:20 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0x0 Oct 14 13:03:26 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 14 13:03:26 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 17 16:04:45 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 19 07:52:16 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 19 07:52:16 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0x0 Oct 21 16:31:54 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 21 16:31:54 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 21 17:08:23 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 21 17:08:23 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 25 08:11:23 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 25 08:11:23 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0x0 Oct 26 13:21:05 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0x0 Oct 28 11:29:25 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 28 11:31:26 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 28 12:40:19 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 28 12:40:19 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffff0000 Oct 31 07:37:55 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 Oct 31 07:38:46 cobra Setting subnet mask to 0xffffff00 MITRE has many machines on the ethernet including all flavors of Sun, PC/PS2, VAX, Macintosh, etc. Has anyone seen this behavior before? Any ideas on what may be causing this? Thanks ... - Glenn Roberts, The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA (703) 883-6820 gfr%wolfgang@gateway.mitre.org ------------------------------ Date: 1 Nov 88 16:24:58 GMT From: ehrlich@shire.cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich) Subject: Strange 'rshd' behavior on SunOS 4.0 We just started observing some strange behavior on the bahalf of rshd under SunOS 4.0 on a Sun 4/260S named shire. Here is what happens: If I try to 'rsh shire ls -FC' from another machine (in this case an IBM RT 6152 running AOS 4.3 release 2 or a VAX 11/780 running 4.3 BSD) the error message returned is: shire.cs.psu.edu: Address already in use On the other hand if I try the same thing while logged on to shire itself the error message is: Protocol error, shire.cs.psu.edu connection closed The Sun is using resolver based gethostby* routines as are the RT and the Vax. Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know what is causing it and how to fix it? Thanks in advance. Dan Ehrlich <ehrlich@shire.cs.psu.edu> The Pennsylvania State University Department of Computer Science University Park, PA 16802 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 16:51:30 PST From: Jim Rudolf <rudolf@oce.orst.edu> Subject: Suntools crashes servers We have two 3/280 servers; one is running 3.5 and the other is running 3.4. When I try to bring up suntools or NeWS on the console of either, about 1 try in 40 will result in a crash and these messages: Memory Error Register d8<INTR,INTENA,CE_ENA,TIMEOUT> DVMA = 0, context = 6, virtual address = f2552c2 pme = f30003f0, physical address = 7e12c2 panic: memory timeout error syncing disks... At first, it only happened on the 3.4 machine. Our Sun FE replaced the CPU & memory boards, to no avail. And recently it started to happen on the 3.5 machine. Again, this is not easily reproduceable; it only happens about once a month when invoking NeWS or suntools. Has anyone seen this behavior before? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, Jim Rudolf College of Oceanography rudolf@oce.orst.edu Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 18:18:11 PST From: versatc!tran@sun.com Subject: Problem loging-in a SUN 4.0 server We sometimes seem to have problem loging-in a remote SUN OS 4.0 server. from a SUN 3.4 system. Does anybody run into this same problem ? Thanks in advance. Tony Tran Versatec, Inc. Attached is a transcript of the login session: {versatc is a SUN 3.4 system. Marin is the SUN OS 4.0 server}. ____________ Transcript of the login session starts ____________ Script started on Fri Oct 28 15:44:41 1988 versatc(output) 1 % rlogin marin Last login: Fri Oct 28 15:51:39 from versatc SunOS Release 4.0 (MARIN_IPC) #1: Mon Aug 29 11:53:25 PDT 1988 crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure Marin(tamura) 1 % exit Marin(tamura) 2 % logout crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure crt0: /usr/lib/ld.so mapping failure @Marin Connection closed. versatc(output) 2 % exit versatc(output) 3 % script done on Fri Oct 28 15:45:00 1988 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Nov 88 09:52:42 EST From: straw@bridge.cam.nbs.gov (Mike Strawbridge) Subject: process killed due to text modification We occasionally have the following problem when running Suntools under SunOS 3.5: Everything seems to be running fine. I have a small number of shelltool windows open (4 to 6). I select to start a new shelltool and BANG!!! Not only do I not get a new window, but all my existing windows disappear! Dmesg tells me that each of those processes was 'killed due to text modification'. I can restart Suntools and everything is fine again. Does anyone else have this problem? NAME: Michael Strawbridge TELE: (301) 975-3852 USMAIL: National Institute of Standards ARPA: straw@cam.nbs.gov and Technology UUCP: uunet!cme-durer!straw Rm. A-151, Bldg. 225 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 13:09:42 +0100 From: mcvax!prosys!merkurius!pp@uunet.uu.net (Peter Printzen) Subject: Fujitsu 2249? Does anyone out there have any experience of the Fujitsu 224[789] SCSI drives and would like to share these with us? We plan to connect the 2249 to a Sun 3/50 and would appreciate any comments, especially regarding controllers and parameters to diag(8). AdvThanksance /Peter Printzen uucp: {uunet,mcvax,...}!enea!prosys!pp Internet: pp@prosys.se ------------------------------ Date: 31 Oct 88 21:24:07 GMT From: uplherc!wicat!meph!gsarff@cs.utah.edu (Gary Sarff) Subject: Used Suns? Does anyone have any information on obtaining used Suns (1's,2's or 3's)? The system is not intended for heavy use so speed is not a real consideration. Thanks. P.S., what is the going price for Sun 386i/xx 's these days? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Nov 88 10:08:24 EST From: levisonm@QUCIS.BITNET Subject: Sun OS 4.0 and Trace We have just recieved the 4.0 documentation, but are not due to receive our upgrade until Dec, and so I need some help in determining if the trace command does everything that I want. I would like to know how much information the trace command gives about system call. My application is a file oriented database program and we are trying to determine the number and the arguements of the reads, writes, lseeks etc. If anybody has any trace output (preferably from a file oriented program) and could send me a copy along with any revelant thoughts that would much appreciated. Thanks in advance Mark Levison (levisonm@qucis.bitnet) Research Assistant or Computing Science Dept. (levisonm@queensu.ca) Queen's University Kingston, Ont. ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************