Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (08/05/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Thursday, 5 August 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 167
Today's Topics:
Re: Multiple Swapping: three partitions?
Re: eyestrain
using domain name resolver
Whither 68030?
What (Sun) OS are you running?
Linked or LCD Display of Sun 3/150's?
make has a problem with "make makefile"
mail question: Sun mail aliases?
sendmail & PMDF problems
Problem with fcntl
4GL on Sun?
help with PostScript
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Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 11:21:10 CDT
From: "Matt Crawford" <matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: Multiple Swapping: three partitions?
Reference: v6n148
Phone: +1 312 702 8207
This host, oddjob, has 96MB of swap space on three drives. The lines from
fstab are:
/dev/xy0b /xxx swap xx 0 0
/dev/xy1b /yyy swap xx 0 0
/dev/xy2b /zzz swap xx 0 0
And the configuration file includes:
config vmunix root on xy0a swap on xy0b and xy1b and xy2b
config vmunixtwo root on xy2a swap on xy2b and xy1b and xy0b
(I use xy2a as a backup root partition updated nightly with rdist.
Write for details.)
Matt Crawford
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 88 09:54:42 BST
From: Steve Platt <steve%mrc-applied-psychology.cambridge.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: eyestrain
I have been passing the various comments in recent sun-spots concerning
eyestrain and workstations onto our group who work in the area; and the
result is the following note(s), which I am passing on for one of them.
Any errors are mine, the wisdom is his!
Steve Platt, digital "minder"
MRC A.P.U., Cambridge England.
[[ I have only included excerpts in this digest. Anyone interested in the
entire text of the original message can retrieve it from the archives. It
has been stored under "sun-spots" as "eyestrain" and it is 8617 bytes in
length. --wnl ]]
Eye-strain
Given the increasing collection of messages concerning eye-strain, I
thought the readership might be interested in the following
publications from our laboratory.
[[ List deleted, although I highly recommend it to those who are
interested. --wnl ]]
Two of the above studies implicate the role of intermittent light in
the causation of eye-strain, headaches and disturbances of ocular motor
control, the third implicates the spatial characteristics of text.
What can be done ?
I would suggest the following:
1. Avoid working under fluorescent lighting. Easier said than done.
One possibility is to ... use tungsten-halogen...
2. Use displays with a high refresh rate (the higher the better) and
long persistence phosphor (eg P39), where possible.
3. Minimize the area of the retina exposed to intermittent light.
This would indicate that it might be preferable, other things being
equal, to use a black background with white letters...
4. Increase text size, as suggested by Tony Movshon...
5. Cover the screen with a sheet of dark plastic or fine nylon mesh...
6. Try tinted glasses. Many people find tinted glasses helpful,
particularly those that absorb the blue end of the spectrum. One
possible reason might be that most fluorescent lighting has a greater
modulation at this end of the spectrum. Some people prefer other
tints, and we do not know why. One common preference is for those
tints that absorb green. You can obtain glasses that absorb the blue
end of the spectrum from Bolle, 3890 Elm St, Denver, Colorado 80207:
they are marketed as COMPUT-IREX. Or you can obtain tints cheaply
from theatre lighting stores, and I suggest you look through a sampler,
trying Lee filter number 109 to start with....
Perhaps it might be worth correcting the following statements from
previous correspondence.
The relaxed focussing distance is not 20 feet.
The frequency at which epileptic seizures are most readily provoked by
intermittent light is 16-20Hz, although patients may be sensitive to
isolated flashes and to frequencies higher than 60Hz. The sensitive range
is not related to the alpha rhythm, and varies from one individual to
another slightly.
Arnold Wilkins
Research Psychologist
Applied Psychology Unit
15 Chaucer Road
Cambridge
England CB2 2EF
Tel 0 223 355294
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 11:30:16 PDT
From: jqj@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu
Subject: using domain name resolver
In v6n149, the editor notes:
> [[ There is a way to configure the yellow pages hostname server so that it
> will ask the name resolver if it cannot find the name in its own database.
> But I do not know offhand how to do that. -- wnl ]]
How to do it depends on whether you are running 3.x or 4.0. In either
case, you should ONLY do it if you are connected to the Internet. You
will need the ddn patch tape (available for anonymous ftp from various
places, e.g. hogg.cc.uoregon.edu [128.223.20.5] pub/SunOS4.0_ddn.tar.Z).
Then the procedure for running the resolver (assuming you already have a
domain name server) is:
0/ get the patch tape, and read the README file on it.
1/ make sure you have the yellow pages working.
2/ on your YP server(s) create /etc/resolv.conf pointing to the domain
name server you want to use. Note that if you want to use a Sun as
the domain name server that's step 1a. Test resolv.conf by running
nslookup (from the patch tape) to make sure that you can look up
names not in your yp hosts.byname map.
3/ For 3.x: run ypserv from the patch tape, but with the flag "-i".
For 4.0: build the hosts.* YP maps on the master server using the
"-b" flag to the makedbm executions that build hosts.byname and
hosts.byaddr (I changed my /var/yp/Makefile). This adds an entry,
YP_INTERDOMAIN, in the map (visible only using makedbm -u, not using
ypcat). Run ypserv.shared from the patch tape instead of ypserv.
Note that Charles Hedrick at Rutgers has published a rather messy
technique for building a version of SunOS 4.0 libc.so that includes
resolver routines. Using his instructions, tcp/ip applications such as
rlogin directly access the resolver even though they haven't been linked
with -lresolv. This is clearly the right way to go -- Sun should NOT use
the YP for host name translations in an Internet environment!
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 23:15:56 PDT
From: mangler@csvax.caltech.edu (Don Speck)
Subject: Whither 68030?
Both HP and Apollo have recently announced 7-MIP 33 MHz 68030
workstations. I've heard not a single rumor about any possible 68030 Sun
workstation.
Has Sun decided to skip the 68030 to protect their current Sun-4 line? Or
postponing it until they have faster Sun-4's, e.g. based on the
just-announced Cypress 33 MHz SPARC chipset? Or saving it up for
SigGraph, a popular time to announce new workstations?
Don Speck speck@vlsi.caltech.edu
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jul 88 20:28:15 GMT
From: randy@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Randy Orrison)
Subject: What (Sun) OS are you running?
Just a simple little question for you Sun users (I'm mainly interested in
sites): What version of SunOS are you using? 3.x, 4.0, or what? Thanks!
-randy
[[ I imagine that quite a few are currently in the process of switching
over to 4.0, making it hard to answer your question. --wnl ]]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 15:40:59 PDT
From: howardg@sun.com (Howard Greenfield)
Subject: Linked or LCD Display of Sun 3/150's?
Does anyone know where to purchase or acquire either:
1) a plasma display that will show bit-mapped screen displays (Interleaf)
through an over-head projector for Sun 3/150's
or
2) technology that will send the display from one screen (eg instructor's
monitor) to 5 or 10 other screens (eg students' monitors). I know that
choice 2 can be done because I've seen in kludged together at another
training facility. Also, there is an LCD for overhead projectors out for
the Mac and ASCII from PC's.
Any leads on Sun-3 display products or solutions would be appreciated
Sincerely,
--Howard G.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 12:18:33 BST
From: Dr R M Damerell (RHBNC) <damerell@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: make has a problem with "make makefile"
make does something I do not understand:
This is on a SUN 3/60, SUN-OS 3.5, with sunpro installed. In an empty
directory, create a file called Makefile containing this text:
Makefile: Imakefile\
echo "HELLO hairyface"
Then do as follows:
mathsun1: touch Imakefile
mathsun1: ls -l
-r--r--r-- 1 sysdiag 1071 Jul 14 11:28 Imakefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 sysdiag 5745 Jul 14 10:52 Makefile
mathsun1: make Makefile
`Makefile' is up to date.
mathsun1: ls -l *file
-r--r--r-- 1 sysdiag 1071 Jul 14 11:28 Imakefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 sysdiag 5745 Jul 14 10:52 Makefile
Please can anybody explain this?
Let me anticipate the natural question " why do you want to make Makefile?"
I have been trying for some weeks to get X windows running on our SUNs --
and not winning. This is an extremely complicated bit of software, and I
assume that the authors found that their Makefiles were becoming
unbearably long. For whatever reason, they provided a supplementary
program called imake which generates Makefiles . On the version of X
that I got from a colleague, I found that several of these files refer to
Vax macros; so I did make Makefiles in the top level directory. The
newly-made Makefiles still refer to Vax macros; so eventually I found the
behaviour described above.
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 18:52:10 PDT
From: acad!robert@uunet.uu.net (Robert Wenig ext 609)
Subject: mail question: Sun mail aliases?
I notice that when I get a mail reply from somebody inside of sun, very
often the return path is sun!personame, and all of the internal machine
name business is stripped out. I would like to know how to set this up on
my own machine.
Robert Wenig
Autodesk
{sun,decwrl,uunet}!acad!robert
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 17:01 EDT
From: DAVIS@blue.sdr.slb.com
Subject: sendmail & PMDF problems
This is entirely the wrong forum for this, but I'm not gatewayed to
comp.mail.misc - maybe someone could forward it.
Anyway - I'm trying to get sendmail on our Suns to communicate with a PMDF
SMTP server on our VAX Cluster, in particular, to allow "reply" to
function properly on messages that originated in a VAX network using
PSImail.
The heart of thr problem seems to be this -
somewhere between sendmail's address rewrite and the actual
connection to the PMDF server, some *crucial* double-quotes
are dropped.
The addresses have the following form:
"PSI%SDRRTR::SCRVX1::DAVIS"@scr-gateway
and without those quotes, PMDF chokes and spits it back. I know this from
long and extensive chat sessions with it using mconnect (8). Now, I
checked sendmail using the flags -bt (to check on the rewrite), and -d13.1
(to look at the user name used by deliver.c, and both look OK in that the
double quotes remain.
SO where are they being dropped, and how do I stop it ? We're using
SunOS3.2 (4.0 anyday now...) and the TCP/IP connection is via Excelan.
Any help you can give would be much appreciated, but please reply direct -
I've had a lot of problems getting Sun-Spots over the last few months.
Paul Davis
Schlumberger Cambridge Research
Cambridge, UK
davis%blue@sdr.slb.com
+44 223 325282
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 11:31:57 +0200
From: mcvax!cgch!wbwa@uunet.uu.net (Bernhard Wagner)
Subject: Problem with fcntl
Here is a problem I run into when using "fcntl" in order to lock a file
via NFS. Given a program (you find the complete program in the appendix),
which looks like:
fopen(fn, "r+")
loop_forever
Lock_file()
Write_file()
Unlock_file()
Short_delay()
end_loop
The Lock_file procedure is implemented as follows:
static void Lock_file()
{
struct flock fl;
fl.l_type = F_WRLCK; /* exclusive lock */
fl.l_whence = 0;
fl.l_start = 0; /* lock the whole file */
fl.l_len = 0; /* to EOF */
if (fcntl(fileno(fp), F_SETLKW, (int)&fl) == -1) {
perror("locking");
(void)fflush(stderr);
}
if (fseek(fp, 0L, 2) == -1) { /* seek to end of the file */
perror("fseek");
(void)fflush(stderr);
}
} /* end Lock_file */
If I have only one process executing this program, everything works well.
If there are several processes however, (I tried up to seven) running
concurrently and if I try to kill them by
kill -9 <pid1> <pid2> ...
after a some time, usually some of the processes stay alive. They can be
removed from the system by booting only.
On the other hand, when such zombies hang around, every process which
tries to lock any file hangs in the fcntl system call and and cannot be
killed too. Does anybody has comments on this problem? My opinion is that
the protocol which is used for networkwide file-locking is implemented too
simple.
Bernhard Wagner
Ciba-Geigy AG
Scientific Computing Center
Postfach
CH-4002 Basel
Switzerland
Appendix:
/*******/
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
extern void perror();
#define fn "mist4"
#define content "blabla"
FILE *fp;
static void Lock_file()
{
struct flock fl;
fl.l_type = F_WRLCK; /* exclusive lock */
fl.l_whence = 0;
fl.l_start = 0; /* lock the whole file */
fl.l_len = 0; /* to EOF */
if (fcntl(fileno(fp), F_SETLKW, (int)&fl) == -1) {
perror("locking");
(void)fflush(stderr);
}
if (fseek(fp, 0L, 2) == -1) { /* seek to the end */
perror("fseek");
(void)fflush(stderr);
}
} /* end Lock_file */
static void Unlock_file()
{
struct flock fl;
fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
fl.l_whence = 0;
fl.l_start = 0; /* unlock the whole file */
fl.l_len = 0; /* to EOF */
(void)fcntl(fileno(fp), F_SETLKW, (int)&fl);
} /* end Unlock_file */
static void Write_file()
{
rewind(fp);
(void)fwrite(content, sizeof(content), 1, fp);
(void)fflush(fp);
} /* end Write_file */
main()
{
int i = 0;
int j, k;
(void)fprintf(stdout, "pid: %d\n", getpid());
fp = fopen(fn, "r+");
if (fp != (FILE *)NULL)
for (;;) {
Lock_file();
Write_file();
Unlock_file();
(void)fprintf(stdout, "%d", i);
++i;
k = 0;
for (j=0; j < 10000; ++j)
k = k + j;
} /* for */
else /* file does not exist */
(void)fprintf(stdout, "file %s did not exist\n", fn);
return 0;
} /* end main */
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 88 11:12:41 BST
From: mcvax!ritd.co.uk!mr@uunet.uu.net
Subject: 4GL on Sun?
I have a potential need to understand and run 4GL packages on Sun
hardware. Could *any* of you who have information, suggestions, experience
or war stories please post me. Even a good working definition of what a
4GL is/should be would be a start. I will re-post answers if there is
interest.
TIA,
Martin Reed, Racal Imaging Systems Ltd
uucp: mr@ritd.co.uk,{mcvax!ukc!ritd,sun!sunuk!brains}!mr
Global String: +44 252 622144
Paper: 309 Fleet Road, Fleet, Hants, England, GU13 8BU
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 12:50:03 +0000
From: jock%CCL.UMIST.AC.UK@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Subject: help with PostScript
The Chinese Information Centre Cooperative in Manchester, UK, is currently
developing a set of PostScript Chinese character fonts. They are
interested to hear from other concerns involved in that area, with a view
to exchanging information.
Unfortunately they do not have access to e-mail, so please reply to:
Simon Jones
Chinese Information Centre
1st Floor
16 Nicholas Street
Manchester
UK
M1 4EJ
------------------------------
End of SUN-Spots Digest
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