[comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt] Broken SCCS?

root@dialog.UUCP (Christian Motz) (10/11/89)

I wonder if IBM overlooked a severe bug in AIX 2.2.1. When I tried to
use SCCS one of these days, the machine told me that my user ID could
not be found in the passwd file and that I should contact my Administrator.
After contacting myself :-) (after all, I *AM* the administrator), I
tried the same thing under the root account, with the result that this
time I got "Memory fault - core dumped". That intrigued me enough to
make some further tests. It seems that the SCCS commands (admin in
particular) try to access /etc/security/passwd, which of course fails
for "normal" users. Once i open /etc/security for the public, they too
get the "Memory fault". (Whew. What a relief :-)

That still doesn't solve the problem, though. It just gives you the idea
that someone at IBM didn't test these things before they were shipped.
But then again I might be wrong. I looked all over the manual and found
nothing unusual. So here's my question:

Does SCCS under AIX 2.2.1 need any kind of special setup? Or have I
stumbled onto a bug? If so, is this a known bug of 2.2.1? I would appreciate
any hints ...

--
Christian Motz           uucp: ...!uunet!mcvax!unido!nadia!dialog!root
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing!" -- Sledge Hammer         Bix: cmotz

karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) (10/12/89)

In article <1286@dialog.UUCP> root@dialog.UUCP (Christian Motz) wrote:

>I wonder if IBM overlooked a severe bug in AIX 2.2.1. When I tried to
>use SCCS one of these days, the machine told me that my user ID could
>not be found in the passwd file...

>It seems that the SCCS commands (admin in
>particular) try to access /etc/security/passwd, which of course fails
>for "normal" users. Once i open /etc/security for the public, they too
>get the "Memory fault". (Whew. What a relief :-)

>Does SCCS under AIX 2.2.1 need any kind of special setup? Or have I
>stumbled onto a bug? If so, is this a known bug of 2.2.1? I would appreciate
>any hints ...

I haven't seen this behavior.  We have a large SCCS archive that's
accessed several hundred times a week, always by ordinary users,
some from the source server (2.2.1) system and some by NFS from other
2.2.1, 2.2, and non-IBM systems.

This sounds like a file permission problem.  I have no idea which file(s),
but probably not the SCCS utilities.  They have ordinary permissions
on our systems (user bin, group bin, a=rx).

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	(415) 493-9000		karish@forel.stanford.edu

jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) (10/13/89)

In article <5796@portia.Stanford.EDU> karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) writes:
>In article <1286@dialog.UUCP> root@dialog.UUCP (Christian Motz) wrote:
>>Does SCCS under AIX 2.2.1 need any kind of special setup? Or have I
>>stumbled onto a bug? If so, is this a known bug of 2.2.1? I would appreciate
>>any hints ...
>
>I haven't seen this behavior.  We have a large SCCS archive that's
>accessed several hundred times a week, always by ordinary users,
>some from the source server (2.2.1) system and some by NFS from other
>2.2.1, 2.2, and non-IBM systems.

At AWD all of the AIX sources are kept under SCCS.  This stuff is
accessed thousands of times a day and I've never heard of any trouble,
other than an RT runs slow if you put more than 100 people on it ;-)

Your s-files may be corrupt.  You might want to examine your data files
by hand and see if the contents are correct.
-- 
John F. Haugh II                        +-Things you didn't want to know:------
VoiceNet: (512) 832-8832   Data: -8835  | The real meaning of MACH is ...
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root@dialog.UUCP (Christian Motz) (10/15/89)

In <17130@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>
>At AWD all of the AIX sources are kept under SCCS.  This stuff is
>accessed thousands of times a day and I've never heard of any trouble,
>other than an RT runs slow if you put more than 100 people on it ;-)
>
>Your s-files may be corrupt.  You might want to examine your data files
>by hand and see if the contents are correct.

The problem is that I am unable to create an SCCS archive in the first
place. If I try to create one using

                         admin -itest.c s.test.c

I get the memory fault. I haven't tried archives from other systems yet,
but I will do that RSN.

--
Christian Motz           uucp: ...!uunet!mcvax!unido!nadia!dialog!root
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing!" -- Sledge Hammer         Bix: cmotz