Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (08/08/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Friday, 5 August 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 171
Today's Topics:
Re: sharing an Imagen between VAX/VMS and Suns
Re: Another security hole in "lockscreen"
Re: Problem Connecting a Printer (LC-890)
Re: 892MB disks shudder during fsck
Re: 386i dvitool problems
Inaccuracy of Sun clocks
4/110 Memory
Panic: mfree & Panic: mclput
SUN support; hardware, software, service?
CDC and Fuji 1GB 8 inch disks?
Keyboard Filter for use with Lucid Lisp Debugger?
Emacs Editor for Sun?
XON/XOFF for printers?
Tape Drive Allocator program?
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Date: 20 Jul 88 14:19:40 GMT
From: <montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com> (Skip Montanaro)
Subject: Re: sharing an Imagen between VAX/VMS and Suns
I have enclosed a shell script (lprv) that I wrote a couple of years ago
to allow our Suns to print on VMS VAXes. The requirements are:
1. TCP on the VAX
2. Writable printer logical name on the VAX (i.e., SYS$PRINT).
3. /usr/5bin stuff installed (for banner).
You will have to change the default VAX to be printed on. If you find bugs
or make enhancements, please let me know.
Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com, montanaro@ge-crd.arpa)
[[ Warning: it is a korn shell script! It is 6392 bytes long and has been
stored under "sun-source" as "lprv.ksh". It 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, 29 Jul 88 08:39:06 EDT
From: <montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com> (Skip Montanaro)
Subject: Re: Another security hole in "lockscreen"
Reference: v6n151
In v6n151, Carlton Ray Brittain write about a bug in "lockscreen -e". I
tried running it over my NeWS environment. When I selected "exit", it
terminated the NeWS session but left me back at my ksh prompt.
Bad bug! Naughty bug! Go away!
There, that should fix it.
Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.steinmetz.ge.com, montanaro@ge-crd.arpa)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 08:13:15 PDT
From: John Bossert <bossert@thalatta.com>
Subject: Re: Problem Connecting a Printer (LC-890)
Mark Lawrence (drd!mark@uunet.uu.net) writes about difficulties with a NEC
LC-890 Silentwriter...
YES!!!! The problem is with the serial port on the LC-890 motherboard.
Call NEC and have it replaced. Our orignal printer also would not operate
reliably above 1200-2400 baud due to unreliable flow control. The problem
was solved when NEC replaced the motherboard.
John Bossert
bossert@Thalatta.COM
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 88 17:08:26 GMT
From: vsi1!lmb@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Larry Blair)
Subject: Re: 892MB disks shudder during fsck
>We have a new 4/280 with 2 Hitachi DK815-10 892 MB disks running SunOS
>4.0...During the fsck phase of the boot process, I noticed that one of the
>drives was visibly vibrating (up+down motions of about 1/4" or so).
The most likely reason for the thrashing is that /etc/fstab contains 2 or
more entries on that one drive with the same pass number:
|
V
/dev/xy0a / 4.2 rw,noquota 1 1
/dev/xy0b /usr 4.2 rw,noquota 1 1
Both of these partitions will be fsck'd simultaneously. The pass number
should be used so that only partitions on different drives have the same
number. Note that fsck must complete each pass before starting the next,
so it is best to try to arrange each pass to process partitions of
roughly the same size.
Note that the FSTAB(5) man pages for SunOS 4.0 show the example I included
above! No wonder Sun set your fstab up wrong. [[ Oh my! Right you are.
Talk about misleading the masses! --wnl ]]
Larry Blair altnet----\
VICOM Systems Inc. pyramid!---\
2520 Junction Ave. uunet!ubvax!vsi1!lmb
San Jose, CA 95134 ames!------/
+1-408-432-8660 sun!------/
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 15:49:45 -0400
From: Ken Yap <ken@cs.rochester.edu>
Subject: Re: 386i dvitool problems
> We are planning to purchase Sun 386i/250 and have had one on loan from Sun
> for evaluation purposes...The compatability problems arise with dvitool.
> The pk fonts in the distribution I have...are garbled horribly on the
> 386i. At certain magnifications they come out backwards!...
I'm pretty sure too that pk format is not byte order dependent, it's just
a byte stream. We don't have 386i's here so I'm guessing and don't have a
fix. The "at certain magnifications" is a clue. It seems to indicate that
in the guts of dvitool it is assuming a certain byte order for the bitmaps
it unpacks from pk format. Presumably things go wrong when the bitmap
width exceeds 8 or 16 or some byte boundary. In fact, since dvitool takes
pxl format, I'll bet it uses 32 bit wide bitmaps internally. Naughty.
Will we see a "all the world's a 68k" disease now?
Ken
[[ Just like the old "all the world has a readable 0 byte at location 0"
disease, huh? --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 08:00:12 EDT
From: steve@umiacs.umd.edu (Steven D. Miller)
Subject: Inaccuracy of Sun clocks
The sad fact is that the Sun-3 (and Sun-4) clock chips aren't too
accurate. The absolute best you can do is 10 millisecond resolution; the
kernel is set up right now to use 20 millisecond resolution. I'm not sure
what hacking would be needed to work with the better resolution, but I'm
not sure that it's worth finding out, either. The clock chip used in
Sun-3s and Sun-4s seems to be the Intersil 7170. (I freely admit that I
know nothing about the chip, and about all I know about the clock stuff
was what I gleaned from sun3/clock.{c,h} while installing the leap year
fix.)
It is amusing to note that from a very quick perusal of the sources, the
Sun-2 clock seems to have better resolution.
If someone comes up with a way to do better (i.e., if the chip supports
better resolution, and the Sun structure declaration for its registers
just doesn't mention it), I'd love to hear about it. Even pointers to
some VME clock card that was something better would be appreciated.
-Steve
Spoken: Steve Miller Domain: steve@mimsy.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!mimsy!steve
Phone: +1-301-454-1808 USPS: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 08:09:04 -0400
From: John F. Fowler <jffowler@icarus.cns.syr.edu>
Subject: 4/110 Memory
Speaking of memory, I spent a little time trying to sort out the memory
upgrade situation for my 4/110.
The 4/110 comes with 32 slots in 2 rows of 16 for DRAM. SUN is presently
shipping the systems with 32 256K chips for a total of 8MB and all slots
are full. This is why you cannot even specify a larger system from SUN.
ClearPoint advertises upgrades for the 4/110 based upon the 1MB
static-column DRAM technology. However, they cannot ship these so they
substitute 1MB 80-nanosecond DIP DRAMs instead. My understanding is that
you cannot mix DRAM sizes within a 16 slot bank. The normal way to
upgrade a 4/110 right now would be to order a DRAM set from ClearPoint
(only available in 16SIM sets) and replace the 16 256K chips in the second
bank, giving a total of 20MB of memory. I do not know if you can leave
part of the second bank empty, say by putting in 8MB of 1MB chips for a
total of 12MB. Financially this wouldn't be too practical.
Is the 4/110 SCRAM cache coming out of the 256K chips that the systems are
presently being shipped with, and are those static column chips? If not,
is my system slower, or is there some static column memory somewhere else
on the board? Hmmm ....
John Fowler
Syracuse University
Computing and Network Services Internet: jffowler@icarus.cns.syr.edu
Machinery Hall Bitnet: oprjff@suvm
Syracuse, NY 13244-1260 USA AT&T: (315) 423-2861
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 09:53:27 -0400
From: John F. Fowler <jffowler@icarus.cns.syr.edu>
Subject: Panic: mfree & Panic: mclput
I have a problem that is stumping SUN that perhaps someone else has seen
and can help me.
I have a 3/280 server that crashes every once in a while with either a
mfree panic or (less often), a mclput panic. SUN has been in a number of
times and has basically replaced almost all of the box: CPU, disk
controller, ethernet adapter (but not VME-Multibus adapter) with no real
progress. I believe an mfree panic occurs with the system acquires a
buffer that it thinks is supposed to be on the free list but, upon
reflection, is not. SUN's current theory is that it is either a hardware
or software timing problem (narrows things down, eh?).
My system configuration is as follows:
Slot 1- CPU, 2-8MB Mem, 3-2nd Enet, 6-8MB Mem, 7-XY472, 8-XY451.
It is configured such that the CPU ethernet is for the diskless clients
and the 2nd E-enet goes to the world. SUNoS 3.5, two Fujitsu 575MB disks
(kinda full). Everything box-stock SUN, no mods, no third party hardware.
Anyone else seen this?
John Fowler
Syracuse University
Computing and Network Services Internet: jffowler@icarus.cns.syr.edu
Machinery Hall Bitnet: oprjff@suvm
Syracuse, NY 13244-1260 USA AT&T: (315) 423-2861
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 88 14:28:51 GMT
From: salt!gerber@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Gerber)
Subject: SUN support; hardware, software, service?
We're about to decide on what kind of supoprt to get for our Sun cluster
here. I'm interested in reactions from people about what kind of suppport
is needed.
Is buying a service contract worth it? Or are the Sun's trouble free
enough that a per-call basis is cheaper? (We have 3/50s and 4/110s).
Is the Answer Line worth the bucks? Is the Personal Answer Line that much
better?
I'd appreciate any info available!
Andrew S. Gerber | McDonnell Douglas Communication Industry Systems
uunet!salt!gerber | 5299 DTC Blvd, Englewood, CO 80111
salt!gerber@uunet.uu.net | (303) 220 6231
[[ One of the advantages to a service contract is guaranteed response
time. If you don't have a contract with them, they'll come out when they
have some spare time. If you do have a contract, they are required (by
the contract) to respond within a certain amount of time. To some sites,
this guarantee is more important than money. At least, this is how it
worked with DEC. I assume that it is similar with Sun. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 15:57:31 EDT
From: lsr-vax!art@uunet.uu.net (Art Hays (PSTAFF))
Subject: CDC and Fuji 1GB 8 inch disks?
I would appreciate feedback from anyone using CDC's Sabre 1230 or Fuji's
2382 8 inch 1 Gbyte disk drives on Suns. I will summarize later if I get
sufficient response.
Art Hays, Nat. Inst. of Health.
...!uunet!lsr-vax!art
art%lsr-vax.UUCP@uunet.uu.net
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 11:29 EDT
From: "Eric H. Nielsen" <AIDEN@UMAECS.BITNET>
Subject: Keyboard Filter for use with Lucid Lisp Debugger?
I am looking to find/create a keyboard filter to apply to windows from
which I run Lucid Common Lisp which will "simply" add a ":" and a newline
character to the input stream. I have already run out of other definable
keys.
Does any one have this written or have an example of a keyboard filter
that will help me write one myself.
Thanks, Eric Nielsen <aiden@ecs.umass.edu>
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 88 15:35:35 GMT
From: ssc-vax!dmg@beaver.cs.washington.edu (David Geary)
Subject: Emacs Editor for Sun?
Does anyone know where I can get emacs for a Sun 3/60. I'd prefer a
public domain version, but...
I'm getting sick of VI, and textedit leaves alot to be desired in my book.
BTW, I wish all computers came with a keyboard with NO CAPS LOCK LIGHT.
That way, when I'm using vi on other computers I could trash my files,
because I didn't realize caps lock was on, and issued a few "upper-case"
commands in VI, just like I do on my Sun 8-(
[[ I wish all computers (ANY computer) were shipped with NO CAPS LOCK key
at all! Something like that should be simulated in the software (and in
fact is simulated in shelltool). I suppose I could change the keyboard
map to make the key a no-op....sigh. Just another radical idea from
"--wnl". ]]
David Geary, Boeing Aerospace,
Seattle - "THE DRIZZLE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD"
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 00:19:14 EDT
From: info@scarecrow.csee.lehigh.edu (Info Directory-x4508)
Subject: XON/XOFF for printers?
We recently bought a NEC LC890 Postscript Printer and had limited luck
in attaching it to our Sun 3/160C. The problem is that the PostScript
printer requires time to digest its program as it is sent to the
printer form the workstation. The problem is that the Sun continues
to send data to the printer even after the printer sends an XOFF to
stop the data flow. The result, one half of the document gets
printed.
My question is: Are sun serial ports set up to hndle XON/XOFF
normally? Can anyone give me a hint how to do this. I tried using
the flag sets in /etc/printcap. My ps entry in printcap looks like
this:
# Current setting., 1200 baud, 7 bits, even parity, xon/xoff
#
ps:\
:lp=/dev/ttyb:sd=/usr/spool/lpd:\
:fs#06221:\
:br#1200:mx=0:sh:lf=/usr/adm/lpd-errs:
The fs field should mean (I think) expand tabs (06000), even parity
(00200), map CR to CR/LF (00020), and flow of control on (00001). Are
my assumptions correct? Our current patch is to lower the baud rate
to 1200 so that the printer has time to digest its program. This
makes for very slow output. Can anyone suggest what to do? Must the
kernel be recompiled with special switches set?
Thanks.
[[ If it is at all possible to configure the printer to use RTS/CTS flow
control instead of XON/XOFF, do it! This requires extra modem wires to be
run between host and printer, but it is an "out-of-band" method of flow
control and it works much better than the in-band XON/XOFF stuff. And I
know that Suns can handle it, because that's how our Printronix printer is
set up. The line runs at 9600 baud, but the printer only prints 300 lines
per minute. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 88 13:26:18 MDT
From: bovet@hao.ucar.edu (Ray Bovet)
Subject: Tape Drive Allocator program?
I am looking for code to allocate and deallocate tape drives. The idea is
that you would have to allocate a drive before you could use it, thereby
avoiding the problems we now encounter where someone accidentally writes
allover someone else's tape. It seems clear that this can be accomplished
by writing a setuid program which modifies the mode of the /dev entries
for tape devices. Some of the niceties get a bit more complicated though,
like providing a way to find out who currently owns the drive,
implementing some sort of scheme to remind users periodically that they
have a tape drive allocated and to please hurry up and use it, making sure
that the drive gets deallocated when the person logs out, and resetting
things when the system reboots. In the frills category, we could even
consider the ability to queue requests for tape use.
I would be greatful for pointers on existant software to accomplish these
ends and will post responses if that seems worthwhile.
Ray
[[ I have thought of this problem many times, but never actually written
any code for it. "Requests for tape use" would require some sort of
operator (in most cases). The best way, I think, to regulate access to
the drive is by changing the owner of the /dev file and keeping the
permission bits 700. All the allocator/deallocator software would have to
run setuid to root, unfortunately. But the big problem is: how can the
system tell automatically when the user is done? --wnl ]]
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End of SUN-Spots Digest
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