bcs212%psev@BOEING.COM (Vince Skahan) (01/21/88)
I'd appreciate any information available about running rn, rnews, and nntp on Apollo workstations. Are there any special considerations to be taken into account due to Apollo's implementation of unix ??? All of our nodes are currently at SR 9.6 and will probably remain there for quite a while. Thanks in advance, Vince Skahan Boeing Computer Services Phila., PA ARPANET: bcs212%psev@boeing.com UUCP: ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!vader!bcs212 PHONE: (215)591-4116
rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees) (01/23/88)
The news software pretty much works as is. If you try to use it on a network containing lots of users, you start running into some locking and concurrency problems. Many of these are present in the software to begin with, but no one notices them because they don't have thousands of simultaneous users (as we do). Others result from the implicit locking used in the domain network. I have about 50K of patches to the news software to make it work better on apollo systems. I'll mail it to anyone who is interested. It's completely disorganized. You have to wade through 27 patches, decide which ones are needed, which ones are just hacks, which ones depend on what else, and so on. I would be really happy if someone would take this mess, turn it into a useable package, and give it to ADUS. It should be someone familiar with the news software and with the way the domain file system works. Any takers? By the way, we have about 3000 nodes here all reading news out of a single lib and spool directory. (Not all at the same time, of course. We actually do real work, too.)
rcodi@yabbie.rmit.oz (Ian Donaldson) (01/24/88)
in article <8801201837.AA20797@BOEING.COM>, bcs212%psev@BOEING.COM (Vince Skahan) says: > I'd appreciate any information available about running > rn, rnews, and nntp on Apollo workstations. Are there any > special considerations to be taken into account due to Apollo's > implementation of unix ??? All of our nodes are currently > at SR 9.6 and will probably remain there for quite a while. Well, I ported news2.11, patchlevel 12 to SR9.2 some months back and ran into a few problems. It seems that Apollo I/O checks the permission modes on every read/write operation, rather than the traditional (and correct) UNIX way on open() only. This breaks postnews, which opens a file in /tmp and then feeds it to inews as stdin. Inews is suid/sgid to news, and postnews isn't. If your umask has bit 2 set (eg: 027 or 077) that causes files created to -not- have "other" read access, then postnews will create the file in /tmp with a mode that inews can't read! AAARRGGH! The fix (ie: hack) is simple - issue a chmod() inside postnews before calling inews. Here is a fragment of the fixed code in "postnews.c": ------- prep_article() { FILE *tf, *of; struct stat stbuf; (void) strcpy(tempfname, "/tmp/postXXXXXX"); MKTEMP(tempfname); /* insert a header */ tf = xfopen(tempfname, "w"); #ifdef APOLLO (void) chmod(tempfname, 0644); #endif fprintf(tf, "Subject: %s\n", subject); fprintf(tf, "Newsgroups: %s\n", newsgroups); ------- Whether this kernel bug is fixed beyond SR9.2, I don't know since we haven't got a more recent version installed yet. There was some other bug that I didn't fix in rnews that causes it to cr*pout (ie: segmentation violation) somewhere when unbatching. If you don't use batching of news, it seems to work ok though. Not yet being sufficiently familiar with the Apollo debuggers, I didn't bother pursuing the bug (I long for a core file and any of adb/sdb/dbx :-( Ian D
giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) (01/29/88)
I'm just about to put news and rn for the apollo into the adus library.
I'm just putting together some installation help info before I do.
--
UUCP: {uunet, ihnp4!umn-cs}!hi-csc!giebelhaus
ARPA: hi-csc!giebelhaus@umn-cs.arpa
Nobody I know admits to sharing my opinions. I don't even have a pet
which will share my opinion.Jinfu@cup.portal.com (01/31/88)
Is the ADUS library online somewhere here in the USENET? Jinfu Chen Arpa: Jinfu@cup.portal.com
giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) (02/02/88)
In article <2833@cup.portal.com> Jinfu@cup.portal.com writes: >Is the ADUS library online somewhere here in the USENET? Not yet, I am working on this. In the mean time, you should become an ADUS member to get the ADUS library (catalogs will be mailed to you if you are a member). This is no big deal as ADUS membership is currently free. How to become a member has been posted here. If you lost the message, please send me mail and I will mail you the info. -- UUCP: {uunet, ihnp4!umn-cs}!hi-csc!giebelhaus ARPA: hi-csc!giebelhaus@umn-cs.arpa Nobody I know admits to sharing my opinions. I don't even have a pet which will share my opinion.
krowitz@mit-richter.UUCP (David Krowitz) (02/03/88)
No, some small pieces are available from the Argonne National Labs online software library. To get a listing of what's available send the message "send index from apollo" to "netlib@anl-mcs.arpa". The the message "send index" to the same address to get a listing of what libraries they have online (mostly math libraries) and some instructions on how to have software sent to you. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu mit-erl!mit-richter!krowitz@eddie.mit.edu mit-erl!mit-richter!krowitz@mit-eddie.arpa krowitz@mit-mc.arpa (in order of decreasing preference)