Sun-Spots-Request@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) (05/19/88)
SUN-SPOTS DIGEST Wednesday, 18 May 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 93 Today's Topics: SUNOS 4.0 IS HERE!! Re: Raster ==> TeX (or LaTeX) for figures? Re: SUNLINK Users Re: make bug Re: MAXUSERS > 12 in SunOS 3.2 and 3.4 find(1) bug in 3.4; sun has a fix Visual Performance Of VT-100 Emulator TrailBlazer+/ALM-2 interaction with Ethernet on Sun 3/280 Running 4.0 clients from a 3.5 server? ld and a.out in SunOS 4.0? silo overflow??? Plea for information on Sun to 68K Modula-2 cross-compilation. 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: Wed, 18 May 88 15:14:51 PDT From: Steve Blair <ascway.UUCP!scb@spar-20.spar.slb.com> Subject: SUNOS 4.0 IS HERE!! I just got a MONSTER loaded into my dolly: SUNOS 4.0 Will be loading the FCS version onto my machine(3/110-12 141mb/60mb) and will send info as to how's it going. Others should do the same, because from the look of the manuals, we're going to be SWAMPING ~wnl~ with questions for postings. [[ Spiffy. Just spiffy... --wnl ]] A disturbing side note is as follows: 1) Unbundled s/w means you'd better get the stuff ordered now(i.e. NeWS, lisp f77vms, etc) 2) You should have gotten a letter from SUN stating the "schedule" for shipement of unbundled s/w. Some of it like lisp is "TBA" meaning you better really read the info from them SEVERAL TIMES before considering SUNOS4.0. 3) If you've not taken the time to read the following, you'd BETTER: Sun p/n: 800-1753-06 System Services Overview this manual is for understanding what the re-write means to YOU!! Sun p/n: 800-1732-15 Installing the SunOS this manual is to try to help you install this major release!! These are available from your Sun salesman by special request. That's how I got mine. Spend a lot of time reviewing these manuals. I have and am still reading them. If you don't, there's no right to complain to Sun about problems. If You've had the chance to read them and the "Read This First" that's shipped with the tapes you may be o.k. steve blair Schlumberger Technology Corp. Austin, Texas uucp: sun!texsun!austsun!ascway!scb ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 88 9:16 +0100 From: Igor Metz <metz@iam.unibe.ch> Subject: Re: Raster ==> TeX (or LaTeX) for figures? wnl responded: > [[ How do these rumors get started? There is no builtin support for > bitmaps in TeX. Any bitmap inclusing technique will depend on what > \special directives the DVI converter supports....But there is no > standard way of accomplishing this. --wnl ]] There is a standard way for bitmap inclusion! See: Knuth, D.E : Fonts for digital halftones. TUGboat, Vol 8 , No 2, July 87, p. 135ff Clark, A.F.: Halftone output from TeX. TUGboat, Vol 8, No 3, Nov 87, p.270ff (TUGboat is the TeX users group newsletter). Regards, Igor Metz X400: metz@iam.unibe.ch Institut fuer Informatik ARPA: metz%iam.unibe.ch@relay.cs.net und angewandte Mathematik UUCP: ..!uunet!mcvax!iam.unibe.ch!metz Universitaet Bern Switzerland Phone: (+31) 65 49 02 [[ Well, okay, I guess you're right. But you have to have the halftone fonts to make it work. Admittedly that's just a METAFONT away... It would also be hard to pick up one of those DVI files and get it to work at a different site. Not impossible, just difficult. Let's stop talking about this... this is for TeXHax. Unless someone has a rasterfile to GF converter... --wnl ]] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 88 06:43:16 PDT From: carrs@trout.nosc.mil (Stephen M. Carr) Subject: Re: SUNLINK Users Forwarded mail follows: Date: Mon, 16 May 88 20:24:35 GMT From: Jeff Beard <quintus!jbeard@unix.sri.com> pte900@csc.anu.OZ.AU (Peter Elford) writes: > Has anyone got some experience with the SUNlink product that makes a SUN > 3/160 look like a local controller to an IBM/MVS host and hence provides a > TCP/IP gateway to the IBM host for other TCP/IP machines on the same network > as the SUN ?... We use SUNlink for access to TSO & VM access with both interactive and ftp services. Product is stable and useful. The FTP operation requires a host session (ie: user logged on), but that's the nature of LU2 3270 emulation. It will allow multiple sessions (unique Host user_id's however) to/from the Sun workstation, and with windows, you can FTP in one and still edit from another(assuming you've got two log ons). wish list: FTP multiple files with one command. This gets to be a pain for large file set transfers in either direction. The EBCDIC/ASCII/EBCDIC translation provided fails on the characters []{}\n which limits the internal translator. The tty to 3270 mappings get a bit involved, but it's managable. We solved the FTP & translation issues by using our own GLUE.c program and doing the translation ourselves from the SUN side. The FTP was executed without translation. On the IBM Host, we UNGLUE the inbound stream based on an internal header "*** <file.ext> ***". The Unix file.ext is mapped on the HOST as (MVS)?ddname=file"FN.FT=file.ext ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 88 09:52:51 EDT From: Matt Landau <mlandau@diamond.bbn.com> Subject: Re: make bug It looks like you're using the "enhanced" version of make that comes as part of the SunPro package. This make has a lot of nice features, and a number of nasty bugs. One of the bugs is that you cannot make a target named "makefile" or "Makefile". I've sent a bug report on this to Sun. I don't know if it's fixed in SunOS 4.0 or not. Matt Landau mlandau@bbn.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 May 88 17:23:31 mdt From: era@scdpyr.ucar.edu (Ed Arnold) Subject: Re: MAXUSERS > 12 in SunOS 3.2 and 3.4 In v6n80, Robert Bruner writes: >I've used MAXUSERS = 16 in both 3.2 and 3.4 with no problems. (Also in >SunOS 3.5) Under 3.3, we found that MAXUSERS *greater than* 16 causes kernels that won't run. Since we couldn't upgrade to 3.5 immediately, we found that editing param.c after running config to boost the necessary parms (esp. NPROC, MAXUPRC, ntext) was a workable solution. ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 88 02:13:58 GMT From: tekbspa!tss!joe@uunet.uu.net (Joe Angelo) Subject: find(1) bug in 3.4; sun has a fix We noticed a bug in find(1) when accessing NFS files... when an NFS file (directory) was at mode 000, find(1) would properly report that the file wasn't accessable. However, find(1) continued to report that error message for any subsequent directory (note: not subordinate directories as one would expect!); further-more, find(1) would stop dead at the next NFS mount point. For example: mount sys1:/usr/sys1 /usr/sys1 mount sys2:/usr/sys2 /usr/sys2 chmod 0 /usr/sys1/deaddir find /usr/sys1 /usr/sys2 -type d -print . . . /usr/sys1/sys /usr/sys1/sys/conf /usr/sys1/adm . . /usr/sys1/deaddir: permission denied /usr/sys1/nextdir: permission denied /usr/sys1/nextdir2: permission denied . .more errors . <END: without reporting /usr/sys2 files!> Sun sent me a new find(1) which worked (thanx!). I doubt that I can email this program, since it is Sun's property; however, you might want to contact the Sun-hotline (uunet!sun!hotline) and ask for it. I wish I knew the SON, but, sorry, I don't. Joe Angelo -- Senior Systems Engineer/Systems Manager at Teknekron Software Systems, Palo Alto 415-325-1025 uunet!tekbspa!joe -OR- tekbspa!joe@uunet.uu.net ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 May 88 12:40:05 EDT From: umix!lokkur!scs@rutgers.edu (Steve Simmons) Subject: Visual Performance Of VT-100 Emulator We've recently been comparing the performance of the PD vt-100 emulator and Sun's emulator they supply with their DNA package Sun's is much much faster at high baud rates. We've done all kinds of mucking about with vtem and got only marginally better results. Any suggestions? We've already profiled vtem intensively and found it spends most of it's time in write. We cut the writes by an order of magnitude, and got less than 1% improvement in response speed. Any hints? Steve Simmons Schlumberger CAD/CAM scs@applga.uucp ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 May 88 17:01:53 PDT From: dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) Subject: TrailBlazer+/ALM-2 interaction with Ethernet on Sun 3/280 Weekend before last, I came into work on Saturday to help our site's hardware/net guru ("Madame Server") reconfigure our thin Ethernet. We'd been having a slow but steady increase in the number of Ethernet errors... typically output errors on our Sun 3/280 file server and input errors on the 3/50 and 3/60 workstations. The error rate had increased to somewhere in the .1-.2% range, and was beginning to cause occasional problems especially during periods of heavy net usage (NFS glomming, heavy paging by diskless 3/50 workstations, and "dump workstation file systems to the server's tape drive" sessions). We had replaced the server's thinnet transceiver (a Cabletron ST-500) to no avail. We knew that our thinnet wasn't installed entirely "according to Hoyle"; the cables snaked through the ceiling in a couple of areas (getting out of the server room and into the workstation bullpen), and were hung down along the "spine" of our workstation area next to 120-volt power strips. We weren't sure whether the primary problem was interference from fluorescent lights, interference from the power-strips, bad cables, or what; Madame Server decided to tear down the entire workstation-spine portion of the net and rebuilt it one piece at a time, with the cables strung up on the top of the cubicles, well away from any 120-volt power. We started by detaching the all of the workstations save for one diskful 3/60, and then loading down the net with a set of "spray" and "rcp" scripts. Sun's "traffictool" indicated 20-30% saturation on the net... a good deal higher than we see during any but the highest levels of real-life activity. Few, if any errors were to be seen. At this point, I asked Madame Server if I should power off our Telebit TrailBlazer modem in order to keep off-site UUCP activity from skewing our test results or loading down our server's CPU; she agreed. I cut the modem's power, and M.S. said "Whoops... we just got 16 errors in 10 seconds!". I waited a few seconds, powered the modem back on, and then off again... and we got another 17 errors! This proved to be a highly repeatable phenomenon... powering the modem off generated a rapid burst of Ethernet output errors whenever the net was under a substantial load from the server. As an experiment, I disconnected the modem from its port on our ALM-2 16-line serial board, and plugged it into port A on the server's CPU board. I then reconfigured the /etc/ttys file to enable dialin on CPU port A, kicked /etc/init, and tried the power-on/power-off sequence again. Lo and behold, the errors did not recur! My working hypothesis at this point is that powering off the modem generates a burst of activity on the serial port; I'm not sure whether it's a spurt of garbage data on the RD line, or whether DSR or CD is hopping up and down, or whether it's something else entirely. Whatever it is, I believe that it causes the ALM-2 board to begin generating a swarm of interrupts and/or grabbing the VMEbus for DMA input... and, in either case, is somehow locking out or interfering with the Ethernet interface. The same level of serial-port activity doesn't seem to cause problems if the modem is attached directly to port A on the CPU board. Based on a very limited set of observations, I believe that uucp I/O between the modem and the ALM-2 board does not in and of itself cause Ethernet errors under these conditions. I suspect, however, that the dropping-and-raising of DTR and/or CD that occurs at the beginning and/or end of a uucp session may cause such errors to occur. I could well be wrong about either or both of these hypotheses... I haven't done enough experiments to be sure. At this point, we've decided to leave the TrailBlazer connected to CPU port A... it eliminates one source of Ethernet errors under some conditions, and the CPU seems to be able to ingest 19200-baud data from the modem much more efficiently (~ 30% of the processor when connected to CPU port A, vs. ~ 60% when connected to the ALM-2). We've also moved our hardwired link to "aimt" to the CPU-board serial ports (port B) for the same set of reasons. Our 2400-baud dialup modems will remain on the ALM-2, as there's no place else to put them. I haven't yet experimented to see whether power-cycling these modems also causes errors under heavy-net-load conditions. I don't know whether this situation is a design problem in the ALM-2 (excessive VMEbus/interrupt activity), a glitch in the TrailBlazer Plus (swarms of garbage during power-off... a death-rattle? ;-), a software problem in the Sun's ALM-2 interface code, or a phase-of-moon problem. If anybody else out there has seen similar happenings, I'd really like to hear about it! [After several hours of reconfiguring and testing our net, we seem to have nailed the other sources of packet-errors. Restringing the cables along the tops of the workstation partitions helped, as did finding and replacing one cable that had a sloppily-attached connector, and another that looked as if it has been attacked by a rabid hair stylist armed with a curling iron. We didn't have to restring the portion of the cable that goes through the ceiling and past several fluorescent lights... apparently that wasn't the problem. Happiness is a clean network!] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 88 7:42 BST From: Piete Brooks <pb%computer-lab.cambridge.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk> Subject: Running 4.0 clients from a 3.5 server? After hearing all the real nice things that SunOS 4.0 does, I'd like to get a copy running ASAP. The problem is that we need SUNLINK X.25 on our server, which we have been told will not be available for some time yet, so it has to stay on 3.5. At our local SUG meeting we were told that Sun does not support a 4.0 client off a 3.5 server [ I am really looking forward to the ease of running mixed releases when 4.x is running ] but I got the impression that it might work. [ diskless clients would be nice, but diskfull would do ] Has anyone tried it ? Anyone contemplating it ? I guess the major upheaval would be all the directory renaming. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 88 10:17:54 PDT From: stevo@jane.jpl.nasa.gov (Steve Groom) Subject: ld and a.out in SunOS 4.0? Does anybody know what ld and the a.out format will look like in future releases of SunOS? Will it be changing to look more like SYSV? I am doing a bunch of cross-compiling for exotic systems that need things loaded at different places in memory. BSD's ld has always been terrible at this sort of thing, while the SYSV ld has had all sorts of very useful features that make it much more flexibile. We used to be able to get by with the the BSD a.out format, but alas, the day is upon us where things are becoming too complicated for BSD's ld and a.out to handle. I have used every trick I know short of writing my own loader to make things work. I would appreciate reasonably informed comments and suggestions. thanks- -steve Steve Groom, MS 168-522, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109 Internet: stevo@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov UUCP: {ames,cit-vax}!elroy!stevo ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 88 03:28:35 GMT From: Educational Software <edusoft@mv03.ecf> Subject: silo overflow??? HELP!!! What is a "silo" and why would it overflow?!? This may seem like a very broad question, but I can't find anything regarding this in any of our sun manuals and our console just had a screen full of "silo overflow" errors. Any ideas? How can I fix it? Any correct information however general would be appreciated. Thanks... Rick... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 88 15:59:12 EST From: munnari!barnard.cs.anu.oz.au!daw@uunet.uu.net (David Wanless) Subject: Plea for information on Sun to 68K Modula-2 cross-compilation. Does anybody out there have any information on software for Modula-2 cross-compilation from Suns to generic 68K boards ? We are looking for software of commercial quality. Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. David Wanless, Australian National University, Canberra Australia. daw@anucsd.oz ------------------------------ End of SUN-Spots Digest ***********************