ladd@cbnewsc.att.com (david.ladd) (05/03/91)
I recently got silverlining 5.28, which I like a lot. After partitioning for A/UX, which I plan to get soon, I started playing with the read/write loops options to see if I could solve a nagging problem with writes to the drive (copying from my internal HD to his new drive causes write errors about once every 10MB). I finally settled on a slightly faster read loop, and a substantially slower, but seemingly reliable, write loop. My question is this -- will A/UX use the silverlining driver? If not, what kind of "read/write loops" will the A/UX driver use? Is the A/UX driver configurable in terms of what transfer loops it uses, assuming it exists?
ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik, 120dB or more) (05/05/91)
In article <1991May3.152215.19034@cbnewsc.att.com> ladd@cbnewsc.att.com (david.ladd) writes: >I recently got silverlining 5.28, which I like a lot. After partitioning for >A/UX, which I plan to get soon, I started playing with the read/write loops >options to see if I could solve a nagging problem with writes to the drive >(copying from my internal HD to his new drive causes write errors about >once every 10MB). I finally settled on a slightly faster read loop, and >a substantially slower, but seemingly reliable, write loop. My question >is this -- will A/UX use the silverlining driver? If not, what kind of >"read/write loops" will the A/UX driver use? Is the A/UX driver configurable >in terms of what transfer loops it uses, assuming it exists? Surprise, surprise, A/UX will not use the MacOs drive stored on the hard disk. Instead it has it's own general SCSI hard disk device driver. We are trying to document a lot of issues concerning MacOS and A/UX SCSI hard disk issues at DTS, you will expect to see a Tech Note or so, let us say, real soon now. Kent Sandvik -- Kent Sandvik, DTS Rock Lobster Disclaimer: I am not working with Public Relations.
nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) (05/14/91)
I'm starting to install A/UX, and I've been informed by American
Peripheral Systems (the disk drive maker) that the disk formatter/
partitioner shipped with their drives is NOT compatible with A/UX.
Nor is Apple's partitioner. They suggest La Cie's Silver Lining.
At La Cie, which is really a disk drive maker (they're owned
by Quantum), I got a response along the lines of "well, that's what
you get with those bargain-basement drives..."
The installation procedure for A/UX is certainly impressive.
I haven't seen anything this complex since I installed a UNIVAC mainframe.
It makes VMS and SUN/OS installations look trivial.
John Nagledittman@skbat.csc.ti.com (Eric Dittman) (05/14/91)
In article <24765@well.sf.ca.us>, nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes: > > I'm starting to install A/UX, and I've been informed by American > Peripheral Systems (the disk drive maker) that the disk formatter/ > partitioner shipped with their drives is NOT compatible with A/UX. > Nor is Apple's partitioner. They suggest La Cie's Silver Lining. Funny, just last month they were recommending that a hacked-up version of Apple's HD SC Installer be used. I said, "Yeah, right." LaCie's SilverLining. > The installation procedure for A/UX is certainly impressive. > I haven't seen anything this complex since I installed a UNIVAC mainframe. > It makes VMS and SUN/OS installations look trivial. I've installed both A/UX and VMS from CD-ROM quite a few times, and I've also upgraded both from hard drive backup savesets, and I'd say that they are both of the same order of time and effort involved. A/UX installs/upgrades quicker, but requires more time afterword for configuration. VMS is a little slower, but there's not much to do afterword, esp. on an update (I just updated one of our VAX Systems to VMS V5.4-2 from V5.4 and it only took about 2 minutes to change a couple of things that the update affected). -- Eric Dittman Texas Instruments - Component Test Facility dittman@skitzo.csc.ti.com dittman@skbat.csc.ti.com Disclaimer: I don't speak for Texas Instruments or the Component Test Facility. I don't even speak for myself.
ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik) (05/14/91)
In article <24765@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes: > > I'm starting to install A/UX, and I've been informed by American >Peripheral Systems (the disk drive maker) that the disk formatter/ >partitioner shipped with their drives is NOT compatible with A/UX. >Nor is Apple's partitioner. They suggest La Cie's Silver Lining. > > At La Cie, which is really a disk drive maker (they're owned >by Quantum), I got a response along the lines of "well, that's what >you get with those bargain-basement drives..." > > The installation procedure for A/UX is certainly impressive. >I haven't seen anything this complex since I installed a UNIVAC mainframe. >It makes VMS and SUN/OS installations look trivial. Well, I installed 1100/2200 systems in an earlier incarnation of ksand, and La Cie is far earlier than doing partitioning on a Sperry mainframe :-). I miss the Communication front-end systems, you had to reboot every time you did a config of a sync line... Frankly speaking, HD Setup is great for Apple hard disks, La Cie is OK for a lot of third party hard disks. Kent -- Disclaimer: Private and personal activities on USENET, non-company sponsored
tony@kahu.marcam.dsir.govt.nz (Tony Cooper) (05/15/91)
In article <24765@well.sf.ca.us>, nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes: |> |> I'm starting to install A/UX, and I've been informed by American |> Peripheral Systems (the disk drive maker) that the disk formatter/ |> partitioner shipped with their drives is NOT compatible with A/UX. |> |> by Quantum), I got a response along the lines of "well, that's what |> you get with those bargain-basement drives..." |> |> The installation procedure for A/UX is certainly impressive. Getting A/UX to work consists of three parts: 1) partitioning, 2) installation, and 3) configuration. Apple says part 1 is the responsibility of the drive manufacturer. If you buy a drive that you cannot partition then you shouldn't have bought it. But that's no problem - use Silverlining. 2) is easy whether you install from floppy, tape, CDROM, or buy A/UX installed. All you do is run the script and wait (or insert floppies). So 1) and 2) are easy. It's 3) that is not. But now we are talking about UNIX and not specifically A/UX anymore. So the rest of this discussion belongs in comp.unix.admin. So as far as A/UX is concerned, buy a drive/formatter combination that works and then installation is easy. What can Apple do for part 3) to make it easy? Well the newconfig command makes much of this much easier than for other UNIX's. Most other UNIX's have everything installed and so newconfig is not required. Adding extra modules is then a pain so I prefer the newconfig approach. Adding extra software is real easy - just type finstall. So Apple has made configuration as easy as I think they can. Fiddly bits such as editing /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf, ... (including that dastardly sendmail.cf) are difficult to automate. But things like adding printers, modems, etc should be done with scripts or programs eg "newperipheral modem modem_port", "newperipheral laserwriter remote machine.site.edu" "newperipheral drive scsi1", (which automatically scans the drive for A/UX partitions and mounts them in order as /usr1, /usr2, ... and fixes ptab and fstab etc) etc. Apple A/UX programmers write good scripts so this kind of thing should not be too difficult. The reason I say that they write good scripts is that the ones I have seen seem to do a good job of checking that things are OK and covering special cases etc. Just take a look at the finstall script. 1350 lines just to install software from a floppy. Apple scripts are the best I have ever seen. Some more of them for the configuration process would really be a boon and make A/UX even more unique among UNIX's. Tony Cooper Idea: "newperipheral drive scsi1 simcity" checks for the existence of a drive, if it does not find one it sends out a fax to order one, unpacks the drive when it arrives, installs simcity, and plays a few games to check that every thing is OK. arrives, plugs it in and