Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (08/31/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Tuesday, 30 August 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 207 Today's Topics: Re: SunOS 4.0 problem with .rhosts Re: SunOS 4.r0 and SCSI disks on a 3/60 Re: group access to directories? Bug in touchup 2.4 Rolo tool 2.0 Answers: Cmdtool dying and serial printer problems under SunOS4.0 Getting ignored by YP Problems with rsh and rlogin in SunOS 4.0! Looking for a SCSI/memory or ESDI/memory card colormap segments? Upgrading choices: 3.5 or 4.0? Ampex 9300 on a Sun 3 running SunOS 4.0? 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: Sat, 27 Aug 88 00:16:01 -0700 From: bien@aerospace.aero.org Subject: Re: SunOS 4.0 problem with .rhosts > The effect is that when you try to 'rlogin' or 'rsh' to a SunOS 4.0 > computer you may get an immediate 'connection closed' (because > login/in.rshd got the seg violation and exited). We had a similar problem here and fixed it by changing our hosts.equiv files: - if a host alias is first in the 4.0 system's hosts.equiv file, the rlogin from that machine fails. Example: if tobler's (the 4.0 system) hosts.equiv file has entries like: aerospace aero aerospace.aero.org where aerospace.aero.org is the official hostname you cannot rlogin to tobler from aerospace (at all). Fix: change the order of the entries so the official host name is first. - you cannot rlogin into a 4.0 system with a command of the form: rlogin tob -l user where user is any valid user except yourself if an alias which contains the first part of the name exists for the machine in the hosts.equiv file on the 4.0 system. Example: tobler's hosts.equiv file had the entries: aerospace.aero.org aerospace aerospace.arpa aero aero.arpa aero.aero.org aero1 To log in using the form: rlogin tob -l user, I had to remove the "aerospace" entry. In both cases, the failure consists of getting a "connection closed" message right after typing the rlogin command and getting a core dump of rlogin on the 4.0 system. Thanks goes to Joline Chew and Ken Marks at Sun who figured out the second half of the problem. A bug report has been filed at Sun. --Cheryl Bien The Aerospace Corporation bien@aerospace.aero.org ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Aug 88 15:41:32 GMT From: "Timothy H Panton." <mcvax!westhawk!thp@uunet.uu.net> Subject: Re: SunOS 4.r0 and SCSI disks on a 3/60 I had the same problem with my 3/50 + Maxtor 3170 , occasionally the system would just freeze, processes would run untill they needed io, then lock. I traced the problem back to a combination of things: a) my drive was overheating, and so writes sometimes failed. (I got a fan) b) SunOs 3.4 can't cope with a write failure on the SCSI. I managed to extract a fix from Sun, it came on a tape called 3.4.1 . The fix actually works, it does a reset on the drive, which is audible on Maxtors. I gather it's also fixed in 3.5. Hope this helps. Tim. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Aug 88 13:39:34 EDT From: sgoell@sbcs.sunysb.edu Subject: Re: group access to directories? In addition to what wnl has mentioned, you also need to chgrp anything thats accessible via group permission to the name of the group. Use ls -lg to find out what the group of a file is. Stefan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Aug 88 17:26:22 CDT From: William LeFebvre <phil@Rice.edu> Subject: Bug in touchup 2.4 Very shortly after I announcd the availability of touchup 2.4, the author sent me an entirely new copy: version 2.5. This version fixes a bug that crops up when asking for "help" on a color Sun. He also sent me a diff file to upgrade 2.4 to 2.5. Now I hope I didn't do anything seriously wrong, but I replaced the version in the archives almost immediately. That means that some of you got 2.5 and others got 2.4 and still others probably got a mixture of the two. Now don't panic yet! The archive server was stopped between about 8 a.m. and noon today. Copies sent before 8 are version 2.4 and copies sent after noon are 2.5. You can tell which one you have by looking at the shar file. The last comment line just before the PATH line contains the phrase "Wrapped by". If the string that follows is "rayk@sboslab3" then you have a version 2.5 shar file. The date is also Aug 30. If the date is before Aug 30 or if the string contains a different hostname, then that file is from version 2.4. It gets even simpler. The only files that changes are contained in shar files 5 and 6. So these are the only shar files that really matter. Furthermore, you can make sure that you have the newer version by retrieving the diff file and applying it with the public domain utility "patch". But make *sure* that you use the "-N" option to patch. Just "cd" to the source directory and type "patch -N <diff-file". The "-N" will prevent patch from reverse-applying the patch if you already have the new version. If you don't have patch, the diff is small enough (5728 bytes) that you can probably check and apply it by hand. The diff file is stored in the archives under "sun-source" as "touchup.2.4.diff". Sorry about all this! William LeFebvre ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Aug 88 05:35:29 CDT From: vixen!ronbo@cs.utexas.edu (Ron Hitchens) Subject: Rolo tool 2.0 Here's Rolo 2.0. Rolo is a tool for the Sun which implements a list of notes like a rolodex. The tool presents a small window which is meant to simulate a 3x5 card. It is a standard textedit window may be used to jot down anything you like. Rolo is very handy as an address book, when you get mail from someone that you want to keep track of, you can simply create a new card and then copy the person's email address directly from mailtool into Rolo. It's also useful for all sorts of random note jotting, I use it for recording software patches, equipment serial numbers, the phone number of Domino's Pizza, etc. Along the top of the Rolo window is a panel with several controls for manipulating the cards. You can browse through them, reorganize them, search for patterns, etc. A man page is included with full details, as well as online within Rolo. Rolo has been around (V1.0) for about two years. A little over a year ago I sent it to S. Page at Sun, and many folks there are using it. It has since leaked around the country to various other locations. The first version of Rolo was basically a quick hack that I threw together one weekend, and which I never really considered finished. In the last couple of weeks I found the time to polish it up, reorganize it, and some new features, robustify it significantly, and add tons of comments. The result is 2.0 which is being posted here. SunView hackers may find this code interesting, there is some fairly advanced stuff going on here. Rolo attaches menus to buttons, does popup notifications, generates dynamic menus on the fly, interposes on resize and destroy operations, dynamically sizes panel items, etc. If you've been looking for some code that really exercizes SunView, Rolo may prove instructive. Rolo is posted as two shar files of about 50K each. Be sure you get the Manifest file in the second shar and check that you got everything. Rolo is public domain. Feel free, and please do, pass it along to others. I only ask that you keep it all together as I posted it. Ron Hitchens ronbo@vixen.uucp hitchens@cs.utexas.edu PS: Watch for BitTool, the Amazing Bitmap Toaster Oven, to be posted very soon. [[ The shar files have been placed in the archives under "sun-source" as "rolo.shar.1" (50553 bytes) and "rolo.shar.2" (53242 bytes). They can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from the host "titan.rice.edu" or via the archive server. For more information about the archive server, send a mail message containing the word "help" to the address "archive-server@rice.edu". --wnl ]] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Aug 88 11:27:22 HST From: Bob Cunningham <bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu> Subject: Answers: Cmdtool dying and serial printer problems under SunOS4.0 Cc: sun-people@hokulea.hig.hawaii.edu Thanks to several helpful people at Sun, I now have the answer to both of those problems related to OS4.0. Cmdtool (quite often, the console) dying and dumping core is most commonly a symptom of a hardware bug involving the paging hardware on older 3/50s. How old is old no one seems quite sure, but may affect 3/50s not much more than one year old, for sure the hardware bug is only in 3/50s. The fix is ECO 3051, which basically involves replacing the cpu board with a later revision. Free for the asking from Sun if you're under hardware maintenance, possibly bad news if you're not (remember if you do swap a cpu board, to use the personality PROM from the old one). Cmdtools occasionally die on other cpus under 4.0, most commonly because /tmp is full, and just (though there are conceivably some other reasons that Sun doesn't yet know of). Ignoring XOFF signals from a serial printer towards the end of a file seems to be a general OS4.0 problem that has been noted on at least Sun4/260s, 3/110s, and (by me) on 3/50s. It is related to what happens during the "close" operation on a streams driver. The streams close routine notes that there is nothing on the outgoing queue for the "ldterm" module, so it calls "ldtermclose" and removes that module from the stream...doing away with XON/XOFF flow control. The fix is to ask Sun for the "serial driver patch tape", which fixes one or two other minor serial driver bugs as well. Free for the asking... at least if you're under software support. There may or may not be an quickie upgrade to 4.0 coming out (4.0.1???) even before the 4.1 release; if so the serial driver patch should also be in there as well as the eventual OS4.1 upgrade. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Aug 88 16:51:23 EDT From: cochran@ge-dab.ge.com Subject: Getting ignored by YP Several times now, I have made changes to files which are served via YP, only to have YP ignore the changes. This is what I mean: 1) change an IP address in /etc/hosts 2) cd /etc/yp 3) make responds with: updated hosts pushed hosts Fine (so I think), until I type "ypmatch <host in question> hosts" only to see the old host entry pop up. This seems to happen with all YP data bases (I have seen in happen to hosts, aliases, netgroup, and networks). Touching the file and ypmaking again repeats the above. The only recourse I know of is to "ypinit -m" the master server. I've had to do this several times. Has anyone else seen this behavior, and if so, do you know what's going on? -Craig Craig S. Cochran <cochran@ge-dab.GE.COM> General Electric Company UUCP: ...!mcnc!ge-rtp!ge-dab!cochran 1800 Volusia Ave, Rm 4112 Phone: (904) 239-3124 Daytona Beach, FL 32015 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Aug 88 11:35:47 EDT From: John T. Nelson <jtn@potomac.ads.com> Subject: Problems with rsh and rlogin in SunOS 4.0! I am having problems with rsh and rlogin in SUNOS 4.0. Rsh and rlogin seem to work to and from 3.X machines but both rsh and rlogin fail to connect to my 4.0 system FROM 3.4 or 3.5. Odd thing is that I CAN rsh and rlogin to the 3.5 system FROM the 4.0 machine. The hardware is reasonably similar (III/160 and a III/180) so that's not a factor. I've checked the servers and services files and they look okay. Sun thought it might be the use of netmasking in ifconfig when the network interface is set up on the 4.0 machine but playing with that hasn't fixed the problem. Anyone have any ideas? So what is it with SunOS (4.0 in particular)? Why couldn't Sun have left the Berkeley code alone? John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 ------------------------------ Date: 26 Aug 88 19:41:53 GMT From: fortknox@tc.fluke.com (Steve Knox) Subject: Looking for a SCSI/memory or ESDI/memory card I recall seeing an advertisement somewhere, sometime for a combination disk controller (SCSI or ESDI) and memory card for Sun 3/xxx boxes. If anyone out there knows of a vendor that markets such a beastie or better yet has one I would really appreciate hearing from you. Please E-mail and I'll summarize to the net or mail to others who are interested. Thanks, Steve Knox fortknox@tc.fluke.COM John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc (206) 356-6277 ------------------------------ Date: 27 Aug 88 05:50:32 GMT From: Franco Carlacci <@relay.cs.net:franco@alberta.uucp> Subject: colormap segments? This problem concerns colormap segments on a sun. I wrote a tool that would allow me to manipulate images ( do enhancements filtering etc.) in a window. The program behaves real nice when handling monochrome images such as screendumps and dithered images. However once I start throwing in the colormap thing go awry. For example I have an image with colormap as folows red[i]=green[i]=blue[i] =i, i=0,255. If I set the colormap segment for my canvas to this colormap, the picture comes out with all greylevels but the rest of the screen goes white. If I set red[0]=red[255] blue[0]=blue[255] and green[0]=green[255] then my screen looks normal but my image has its black ( red[0],green[0],blue[0]) come out completely white. The reason for the above assignment was to test an hypothesis I have. I have a feeling that by filling all 256 locations I my be playing with suntool's colormap segment which occupies locations 0,1 in the colormap. The above assigment will cause sunview to place the original foreground color of suntools in location 0 and the original background color in location 255. This way the foreground and background color of my canvas will be the same as suntools. Is it possible for me to have a full 256 grey levels in a canvas and not have it affect the rest of the display or am I doomed to seeing black as white? Please be gentle with your responses this is my first sunview program :-) Franco ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 88 14:54:25 GMT From: phri!roy@philabs.philips.com (Roy Smith) Subject: Upgrading choices: 3.5 or 4.0? We're still running SunOS-3.2 and finally have decided to upgrade. Actually we've sort of been pushed into the decision since we now have a need to support subnets. The big question is whether we should install 3.5 or 4.0? I've heard a lot of bad things about 4.0 and I had pretty much made up my mind that I would wait for 4.1 (according to the "only install odd-numbered releases" rule) but with our subnet need looming I just can't wait any more. In fact, even our Sun salesman suggests that 3.5 might be better for us than 4.0. We've got 2 3/180's, 2 3/160's, and 15 3/50's, if that makes any difference. Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Aug 88 00:31:18 -0700 From: bien@aerospace.aero.org Subject: Ampex 9300 on a Sun 3 running SunOS 4.0? We have a Sun 3/140 that's running as a diskless 4.0 system. Recently, we wanted to use it to format an Ampex 9300 disk and can't get it to work. We can use the disk without problems on our 3.5 systems but when we hook it up to the 4.0 system we can't do anything with it. When the system boots it sees the disk and can read the label -- the configuration info it prints shows: xy1 at xyc0 slave 0 xy1: <Ampex 9300 cyl 821 alt 2 hd 19 sec 32> Also, I can type "dkinfo xy0" and it prints all the right info but if I try anything else: newfs /dev/rxy0c fsck /dev/rxy0c dd if=/dev/rxy0c of=/dev/null format it hangs forever. It seems to have trouble "selecting" the disk (i.e., the disk select light never goes on after the first time that it goes on while the system is booting). I've reported the problem to Sun and they are looking into it but so far haven't been able to figure it out. Things we've tried so far included adding the Ampex disk to the format.dat file (to see if that would help the format) and going back to a completely generic system. Any thought on things to try? --Cheryl Bien The Aerospace Corporation bien@aerospace.aero.org ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************