TKIRKMAN%MOE@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU (Tom Kirkman) (05/08/91)
This note reports the problems I've had as a complete unix novice trying to get an SGI workstation working. I'm posting it to inform any other first-time buyers of what problems they might face. If anybody finds this useful, please drop me a line & I'll do a follow-up in a few months. The bottom line is that there have been/are problems with my workstation & the geometry hotline has provided answers slowly or not at all & info-iris has been quite useful. I do not (yet) regret going with SGI instead of a larger market share corp. First, you should know that I know next to nothing. This was the first workstation I was responsible for, although I have sysmgr'd PDP's & am a competent VMSer. My workstation users (mostly undergrad physics majors) are generally even less computer literate than me. There are no unix wizards around for help, so most of my info has come from info-iris, geometry hotline, & RTFM. I'm sure 99% of those of reading this will be surprised at how stupid I was, the remaining 1% might be people at the geometry hotline and/or complete novices like me. My workstation arrived about a month ago on 8 April. (To me this was a week "late" cuz when I asked my rep when the machine would arrive he quoted me [or at least I only heard] the ship date: 29 March.) Physical assembly of the 4D25 (to be upgraded to a 4D35 "30 June") was quick: I added the 760 MB internal SCSI disk, 150 MB tape, 8 additional MB RAM w/o problems. It was a pleasure to have irix already on the disk, so I could boot w/o reading the manual. But then I couldn't immediately figure out how to log off, so I just turned off the power switch. The re-boot was quite scary as the system displayed how I had messed up the file system...live & learn. I modified the root password using the system management tool (easy), before leaving the system to the students. I was very surprised not to find some sort of README.1st manual telling me where to start & what to do first. This turned out to be a re-occurring problem. Not having any idea of what to do leads to a try-first-&-ask-geometry-hotline-later attitude. The next day I added several accounts using the system management tool (easy), and started to think about installing software. But RTFM told me I should first do a backup. This was a slight problem as the suggested tape: DC600XTD now goes by the name 6150. I had tape in hand by 11 April (I borrowed it), so software installation began (eoe1, eoe2, ftn, dev, vtools; & mathematica). The install software on "eoe1" was fairly staightforward (nevertheless I did get lost in it once). Since I had lots of disk space I decided not to do an automatic install, and instead install anything that sounded useful (e.g., the man pages are not included in automatic & I wanted them). Despite my liberal intentions, I missed at least two products (eoe2.sw.Xfonts "no longer part of X...needed only for some older programs" & eoe2.sw.terminf) which are required to run demos and tutorials in SGI's manuals. Questions (and answers!) to geometry hotline (phone number changed) were required to get me on track. X turned out to be a problem. First, I did not load eoe2.sw.Xfonts (see above). Second, even when X works, it dies with a scary error message: XIO: fatal IO error 32 (Broken Pipe)...another call to the hotline. Third, the hotline also told me that if I planned to do X development I had to buy it as an additional option (I had told my rep that I planned on doing X-development, but somehow the option evaporated from the quote, a problem that reoccurred RE nfs). Fourth, according to the docs I have only X11R3, and hence am more than a year behind to start. After installing mathematica, I found math's man pages were not in the .z format required for people who didn't buy the DWB option. I was dimly aware of this problem from reading info-iris, and after trying some things myself that didn't work, I submitted the problem to the net & got a quick answer (basically: nroff -man & pack on a sun). Next thing I tried was to check out my serial ports. After making the null-modem 3-wire 9-pin to 25-pin cables, I was ready to connect up a printer. Since my rep had told me that postscript was fully supported on the machine, I had expected to find a setup for a postscript printer. Think again...postscript printer support is yet another $$ option. OK so I hook up my dot-matrix printer to the serial line (oops! make that the second serial line) and presto...it drops lines at the end of long (7 page) files. But it doesn't do it if I connect the printer line to a terminal...something wrong with my printer? or my cable?...more testing ending with definitive proof that something is wrong with the SGI driver. Another call to the hotline and eventually an answer: add the line sleep 300 > /dev/ttyd2 & to the spooler. Now it's time to try networking. I got a nice transceiver from MiLAN & some coax to connect me to our vax. I ignore the .5m length increments & pass the coax near the elevator transformer. As I add the workstation to the net using the networking tool I get strange error messages (the workstation says nobody on the net is responding) another call to the hotline--no reply 3 weeks later. Nevertheless some things work (ping & rlogin & telnet ...) and some things don't (mail & nfs: two more messages to the hotline). The nfs problem is quickly resolved. I never bought nfs. (But I told my rep I wanted it & SGI sent me licence stuff. Yep, but you only bought a right to use--just get a copy from another SGI workstation. But there are no other SGI workstations & my rep knew it. Oh, then get a copy from your rep. [The copy arrives a week later, sent by 2-day mail.]) That solved the nfs problem on the SGI side, but I made another stupid error on the VAX side using DEC's UCX software as the nfs server: I put the workstation name in caps instead of lowercase. (Fixing this required a call to DEC's hotline. This, admittedly simpler problem, was fixed immediately on the first call. I did not have to pester the DEC's hotline or wait forever for a re-call as is usual at SGI.) (PS: I'm using UCX as it's essentially free to educational institution. Anybody out there using the Carnegie-Mellon VAX-unix connection?) The mail problem was another trap for the novice. Lacking any readme.1st guide, I thought mail would be designed to work out of the box. No way solar breath, you're supposed to RTFM I guess. But not knowing, I called the hotline & (eventually) received a fax titled: If Chew can cook so Can you (sendmail made easy). That solved half my problem: I could send mail, but not receive. Another hotline call (first they try to blame the other vendor's mail). I fax back with the mail error messages sun's & dec's get when they try to send. Two weeks later & I'm still waiting despite many attempts to contact the SGI rep who is working on it. OK, time to get back to terminal/SGI problems. The problem is my environment is mostly DEC: dec terms--220s (& emulators) & VMS. Students who connect to the workstation mostly do it by telneting (via UCX) to the workstation. UCX passes TERM=vt200 (for vt200 series) to the workstation, but there is no terminfo/v/vt200 file on the SGI (Sun & DEC have such files). I try to work this one out for myself & come to (the perhaps incorrect, remember I'm a novice) conclusion that SGI's terminfo/v/vt220 file is faulty. (It is certainly different from Sun's & DEC's, but I didn't find that out till much later.) A request to info-iris came up mostly dry, but I came up with a hack that seems to work for me. (I've posted it.) Along the way I discovered that I needed to install eoe2.sw.terminf if I want the tutorials in the SGI manuals to work. I've had one more interaction with the hotline which was slightly more positive. I came in one morning to discover that workspace no worked: The usual arrow cursor had become a hand & you couldn't grab with the hand. I tried to RTFMs, but I discover my workspace manual is unusable: it has lots of blank pages (printing error?). A call to the hotline & a few hour wait. (During this time I talk to students who tell me what happened: a student thinking computer=VMS tried to ed something & messed up the console...the students killed all the console processes...a reboot solves the problem.) SGI comes back with the solution: a sticky control key. OK in re-reading this it sounds like I'm trying to trash the hotline & SGI. I'm not. I got a great machine for a great price from SGI & I knew when I bought that it would not setup as easily as Sun or DEC. I knew that SGI hotline would be set up to answer interesting questions from professional graphics folks--not dumb bunnies like me. I knew when I bought SGI that SGI has made optional much of the usual unix stuff (e.g., nroff, transscript, X11R4,...); that's part of the reason for the good price. So some comments for the first-time SGI buyer: 1) Get SGI's direct sales catalog: Visual Connection (800-800-4744). If possible get a price list (or just assume that everything listed is more expensive then you would want to pay). The stuff listed is the stuff missing from irix. Think about how you could get similar stuff on the net. Ask specific questions to your rep. I think lots of my above rep complaints were my fault for not listening & asking. 2) The VMS-SGI connection seems much worse than the Sun-VMS connection. I haven't been able to come up with much PD software to make the transition easy. (If you know of any please e-mail me. I'd be interested in everything from editor emulators to UCX replacements.) 3) Get on info-iris & listen...I learned lots (it may not show, but believe it or not I used to know lots less).
bobg@rains.wpd.sgi.com (Bob Green) (05/08/91)
Thanks for the posting of your experience with the PI setup. I am the Software Quality Assurance manager at SGI and care a great deal about your comments. There are many in the SGI staff including engineering, marketing, and customer support who read the messages on this net each day to improve our contribution to the customer base and make your lives a bit easier. This particular posting will prove very valuable. If you or anyone else have more comments I would greatly appreciate hearing from you. You can either post to the net or mail to me directly. It also doesn't matter what the subject matter is with respect to SGI. I'll make sure your concerns are fed to the right people. Thanks, Bob Green