archive-server@rice.edu (RICE archive service) (06/21/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 8 June 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 105 Today's Topics: Re: Is NFS "secure" in SunOS 4.0? Re: Xylogics 753 Re: 4.0 unbundled software 3.5 Upgrade bug TIOCCONS Summary of investigation into Backup Applications CDC Sabre series drives Installing C++ on a Sun 4/260 Questions about 8mm backups for entire networks New TCP/IP release and Sun 3? tape drive sharing via switch? Direct Sun <--> PSN connection? Sun 3/50 eyestrain? Binders for the manuals? 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, 31 May 88 15:55:34 PDT From: sxn@sun.com (Stephen X. Nahm) Subject: Re: Is NFS "secure" in SunOS 4.0? Reference: v6n94 > As far as I understand, secure RPC uses encryption so it will no longer be > possible to breach security by using etherfind(1) or a network tap > analyzer to watch data packets fly by on the ethernet. Not ture. The only thing that's encrypted is a timestamp that's used to verify the identity of the client or server. The data is still in the clear. > ... anybody with a workstation can assume any uid on that workstation and > if you export any file systems to that workstation, that user can > read/write any files (except those owned by uid 0). Wrong. This was true for "AUTH_UNIX" NFS authentication, the type used in pre-4.0 releases of SunOS (and is the default for 4.0 SunOS). With "AUTH_DES", the user (client) must enter a password that is used to construct the verifier passed to the server. See Brad Taylor's paper in the Summer 1977 Usenix Proceedings. >Also, is the *server* allowed to specify "read-only" when it exports a >file system in SunOS 4.0 ? Yes. Steve Nahm Portable ONC/NFS ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 09:28:37 PDT From: texsun!sun!bpowell@sun.com (Brad Powell/Corporate Sales Tech Support) Subject: Re: Xylogics 753 Reference: v6n99 Steve Grandi asks, >Various vendors assure us that SunOS version 4.0 contains a driver for the >Xylogic 7053 (Sun's new VME disk controller). It does. >Does 4.0 for Sun-4s include a driver for the Xylogics 7053/753? Does any >one have experience with Xylogics 753s on any Sun? Yes the Xylogics 7053 driver is part of the standard release. We use the controllers in house now. Since I work for Sun I guess I shouldn't be refered to as a "reference site" (sounds too much like a sales pitch). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 09:28:37 PDT From: bpowell@sun.com (Brad Powell/Corporate Sales Tech Support) Subject: Re: 4.0 unbundled software Reference: v6n99 Steve Simmons writes, >>1) Unbundled s/w means you'd better get the stuff ordered now(i.e. NeWS, lisp >> f77vms, etc) >This is a *big* issue for us. We *need* f77 and pascal for our products. If you are under a 'Software Maintenence Contract' you will receive the unbundled Languages (FORTRAN&Pascal) free of charge. This is a One Time Only free upgrade. A small incentive to help in the transition. Note that these are NEW versions of FORTRAN and Pascal, many new features and extensions. >Down point: my 8mm tape drive doesn't read tapes written under 3.X/4.0 >beta. I've not tried writing new ones yet. This is especially >distressing since it worked under the beta. Sorry for this, actually the SCSI drivers changed in 3.5 and then again in 4.0FCS. the 4.0Beta was using the 3.4 driver code. Beta code after all IS beta code, not a finished product. You should have no problems with writing and reading new tapes. >The install procedures are much better.... glad to hear customers like this. A lot of effort went into suninstall. Any time you (we) change something there is a learning curve involved. Once this curve is achieved I think everyone will see the benefits of suninstall. >The re-organisation of the file system is actually much less pain than I >expected.... Amen to the loong overdue statement. Look for more improvements to the 5bin, 5libs and /usr/ucb story in further releases. Good Luck and looking forward to a better software enviornment. Brad Powell Sun Microsystems Technical Support ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 May 88 17:08:40 MDT From: dbd%benden@lanl.gov (Dan Davison) Subject: 3.5 Upgrade bug We have two servers, one with four Fujitsu 2333's and one with a 2344 (as xy0) and a 2333 (as xy1). This weekend we did the upgrade from 3.4.2 to 3.5 and discovered that the upgrade script would not run on the machine with the 2344 xy0 disk. The other server, with a 2333 xy0 disk, upgraded with no problem. The error message was ./UPGRADE: opt_software: not found and it came from the upgrade script: # Determine and Select optional software lists # rm -f /tmp/EXTRACTLIST10 /tmp/EXTRACTLIST20 if [ "$SERVERTYPE" = "homo" -o "$MACHINE" = "standalone" ]; then opt_software ${ARCHTYPE} elif [ "$SERVERTYPE" = "heter" ]; then opt_software ${ARCHTYPE} ${OTHERARCH} fi We worked around this by UPGRADing on the "legal" machine, and using rdist to copy the newly upgraded files to the "illegal" machine. I assume the problem is somehow related to the fact that the 3/280 does not have the disk geometry for the 2344 wired in, as it does the 2333. Or, the xy controller in Miniunix doesn't know how to talk to the 2344. Whichever, beware that "unsupported" configurations (even something as trivial as a 2333 vs 2344) can get you in trouble! I didn't try to start from scratch, i.e. "install", so I don't know if the same applies. We "installed" 3.2 with no difficulty on the 2333. dan davison theoretical biology los alamos national lab (dd@lanl.gov) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 May 88 23:36:23 PDT From: gandalf@csli.stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner) Subject: TIOCCONS In fact, the following program will redirect console output without requiring you to be superuser (which worries me a bit). Redirection can be done to any pty or /dev/console. I didn't know it doesn't work with real tty ports, but in these cases just run a filter which runs this program as a slave under a pty. Juergen "Gandalf" Wagner, gandalf@csli.stanford.edu Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA # include <sys/file.h> # include <stdio.h> # include <sys/ioctl.h> main(argc,argv) int argc; char **argv; { int fd = 1; if (argc == 2) { fd = open(argv[1], O_RDWR, 0); if (fd < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "can't open tty device %s", argv[1]); exit(1); } } ioctl(fd, TIOCCONS, 0); } ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 11:12:28 EDT From: czei@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu (Michael S. Czeiszperger) Subject: Summary of investigation into Backup Applications I recently posted an inquiry on sun spots asking for any information about commercial backup systems. I found one product that claims to provide a comprehensive backup system for suns, but the company was unable to backup any of their claims. The company is Spectre, and the product is called REELbackup. Although the salesman claimed the product worked fine on suns, he admitted that they had not actually sold the program to any sun users. According to the pitch, Spectre has just recently ported the program to suns, so there was no references or performance data he could provide. When I talked to a member of the technical staff, it became clear that the product worked on suns- to a point. The big problem is that it is unable to backup remote disks that aren't mounted. If you only have one server, that would be fine, but we have three, and only one has a tape drive. There is no way to backup one server remotely to the tape drive over the network, making this system unusable in our situation. The program looked fairly interesting otherwise, so I asked to talk to ANY satisfied customer that had purchased their product for any UNIX system. The salesman provided a name and phone number of someone at the University of Wisconsin; the phone number turned out to be disconnected. The sales office then provided me with a second number, but when I called the individual he claimed he had never heard of the company or their product. The salesman never called me back. If you'd like to contact these people yourself, the address is: Sceptre P.O. Box 8031 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107 (313) 665-8778 Michael S. Czeiszperger Systems Analyst | Snail: 2015 Neil Avenue (614) The Ohio State University | Columbus, OH 43210 292- UUCP:att!accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu!czei PAN:CZEI 0161 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 11:16:07 cdt From: grunwald@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Dirk Grunwald) Subject: CDC Sabre series drives Office: 72 DCL (217) 333-1925 Does anyone have experience with the CDC 9720 series of disk drives? These are very competatively prices with the Fuji & NEC drives. We're getting 4 of the 9720-850 (850 Mb unformatted) drives to replace our double eagles. They were $5183/each in that quantity, plus extra for mounting hardware (these are 1/2 width drives -- two fit in the space of a single Eagle) from Arrow Electronics. We've been told by various vendors that there is no problem with using these on a Sun (except you need to enter the data by hand). These drives have a 3yr HDA warrenty, 1 year other. It's made in the USA, and service can be local if there are qualified service people. I didn't get the complete spectrum of prices from Arrow, but I did from Camex Corp. Theirs were: Model Mb (unformatted) Avg Seek(milli) Transfer(MB/s) $$ ----------- --------------- -------- --------- ---- 9720-368 368 18 1.8 3912 9720-500 491 18 2.4 4573 9720-736 736 16 1.8 5368 9720-850 850 ?? ?? 5566 9270-12000 1.2Gb ?? ?? 8614 These come with either an SMD, EMD or SCSI interface. Horror stories anyone? Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunwald@m.cs.uiuc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 15:39:39 MDT From: brownj@boulder.colorado.edu (James Brown) Subject: Installing C++ on a Sun 4/260 We are having problems trying to install AT&T C++ Version 2.00, Release 2, on a Sun 4/260 running Sys4-OS version 3.2. Has anyone done this before, we would greatly appreciate any help you could offer. Please reply by mail, I'll post a summary of what happened when we're successful. Thanks, James D. Brown brownj@anchor.colorado.edu Univ. of Colorado at Boulder Dept. of Computer Science ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 17:44 From: G.D.Pratt (on Keele GEC machine) <CC14%GEC.KL.AC.UK@cunyvm.cuny.edu> Subject: Questions about 8mm backups for entire networks With the 8mm video-tape drives used for backup, e.g. Exabyte, can I ask a few questions. If this is used as the major backup medium on a network of Sun 3s can it also be used to backup a mainframe, Sequent Symmetry, also on the Ethernet networkAnd does it have to be connected to a) the Sun file-server, b) the Sequent or c) both. Doug Kingston mentioned support for the Exabyte drive in the 'Sun supplied driver' - is this the SCSI driverIf this is the case is anything other than the Exabyte Hardware necessary to do backups from any UNIX machine on the network via rsh. Thanks Gerry Pratt, Computer Centre, University of Keele, NEWCASTLE, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, ENGLAND ( 0782 621111 x 3290 ) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Jun 88 17:19:15 -0500 From: Gurudatta Parulkar <guru@flora.wustl.edu> Subject: New TCP/IP release and Sun 3? Has anybody tried to install the new TCP/IP from UCB (Van Jacobson's modified one) on a Sun 3/50 (binary only) ? I'll like to hear about it and maybe take some help. Thanks in advance. -guru Dr. Guru Parulkar Asst Professor guru@flora.wustl.edu Dept of Computer Science parulkar@udel.edu Washington University wucs1!guru@uunet.uu.net St. Louis MO 63130 (314) 889-4621 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 May 88 18:05:36 mdt From: era@scdpyr.ucar.edu (Ed Arnold) Subject: tape drive sharing via switch? We have a 3/280 and a 4/280 we'd like to share a Fuji m244x 1/2" tape drive between, without the nuisance of manually switching the drive cables between the tape controllers, or the nuisance of using the tape drive via ethernet and w-a-i-t-i-n-g ... Has anyone out there found a source for a switch that connects tape drive cables to one of two or more controllers? Ed Arnold * NCAR (Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research) * Mesa Lab PO Box 3000 * Boulder, CO 80307-3000 * 303-497-1253 era@ncar.ucar.edu (128.117.64.4) * {ames,gatech,noao,...}!ncar!era ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 1988 13:27:34 PDT From: "Michael A. Cooper" <mcooper@oberon.usc.edu> Subject: Direct Sun <--> PSN connection? We are trying to connect a Sun-3/280 directly to a PSN. Nobody seems to have done this. Our Sun sales person knows only about the SunLink X.25 package. We are not even looking for a "drop in" package. Just a VMEbus 1822 interface would be great. Rumor has it that ACC has such a beast, but none of the sales people we talked to know anything about it. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Michael A. Cooper, University Computing Services, U of Southern California UUCP: {sdcrdcf, cit-vax}!oberon!mcooper BITNET: mcooper@kylara ARPA: mcooper@oberon.USC.EDU PHONE: (213) 743-2957 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 20:42:21 PDT From: Rich Wales <wales@cs.ucla.edu> Subject: Sun 3/50 eyestrain? I just got a Sun 3/50 (monochrome display) for my office. While I love the thing in general, I've been experiencing marked eyestrain problems. I'd be interested in knowing whether other Sun workstation users have had similar problems, and what (if anything) you've been able to do to resolve it. I have my windows set up to use black characters on a white background. (I've tried it the other way around, but I find white-on-black hard to read, and the reflections off the screen are intolerable.) I've turned the brightness down to a "medium" level -- about as dim as I could make it without the screen reflections becoming objectionable. My office has fluorescent lighting (and there is no hope of my getting said lights changed to incandescent). Since my office has no windows, it's not feasible for me to work with the lights off. I am 36, with excellent vision (20/15 in each eye, uncorrected). -- Rich Wales // UCLA CS Dept // wales@CS.UCLA.EDU // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA ...!(ucbvax,rutgers)!ucla-cs!wales ...!uunet!cs.ucla.edu!wales [[ There is a distinct possibility that your eyestrain is caused by a poor interactoin between the screen's refresh and the fluorescent light's flicker. This seems to effect some people more than others. Not much you can do about it except to push for better lighting in your office. --wnl ]] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 11:34 EST From: "Yates, John H." <YATES@a.chem.upenn.edu> Subject: Binders for the manuals? Does anybody know how to map the new sun documentation set to orange DEC manual binders, i.e. how many of what ring sizes to order to have a comfortably accessible set? The set I got last year still lives in the cardboard box it was delivered in. John H. Yates , Ph.D. Director of the Chemistry Computer Facility Department of Chemistry University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 yates%a.chem.upenn.edu@relay.upenn.edu (INTERNET) ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************