[comp.sys.next] questions not quite covered in the FAQ

sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) (06/13/91)

I've been trying to make the NeXT at work talk to the other machines, namely
a Sun.  I tried following the documentation, but the bloody machine didn't
act like the doc said it would.  My problems have been with printers and
mail.

For the printer, I want the nExt to talk to a Sun printer we have.  Nice
thing:  400DPI, PostScript.  The NeXT should love it.  But I can't seem to
get it to talk to it.  Worse, now I've got three entries that I can't get
rid of with PrintManager.  (I can't Configure them.  Very annoying.)  The
documentation seems to just gloss over how to get the NeXT to talk to a
non-NeXT remote printer.

The other problem is with mail.  Using MailManager, I tried to set the next
up as a mail client.  I checked th sendmail.subsidiary.cf file manually, and
it should do what I want.  mailhost is defined in the database properly.
So, I run MailManager, and the only thing it will let me do is set localhost
up as the mail server.  This is *not* what I want to do!

I'm running 2.0, if that makes a difference.  Has anybody got *any*
suggestions for what to do?  *sigh*

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it;
sef@kithrup.COM  |  I had a bellyache at the time."
-----------------+           -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.

eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (06/13/91)

In article <1991Jun12.183535.13255@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM
	(Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
>I've been trying to make the NeXT at work talk to the other machines, namely
>a Sun.  I tried following the documentation, but the bloody machine didn't
>act like the doc said it would.  My problems have been with printers and
>mail.
>
>For the printer

see below

>The other problem is with mail.  Using MailManager,

Danger, Will Robinson.  Personally, I avoid MailMangler like the
plague, and my blood pressure stays a low lower.  :-)

"mailhost" is a Sun-ism that isn't practical for us, since we
don't have a single central maildrop for EVERYONE.  It's not
difficult to adapt sendmail.subsidiary.cf, however.

In this setup, a single machine ("postoffice") serves some
number of clients with a shared mail spool.  /private/spool/mail
is replaced by a symbolic link to /clients/spool.mail on the
server, and is NFS-mounted by each client.  We *do not* run
sendmail -bd  on the clients.

The server's sendmail.cf lists all of the clients' names in its
Cw list (after its own name, of course).  While we have MX
records for each of the clients (pointing at the server),
the client sendmail configuration is tweaked so outgoing mail
appears to come from the mail server, so replies will go to
the right place.

server /etc/exports: (replace ... with colon-separated clients)

/clients/spool.mail	-access=...,root=...
/LocalLibrary/Images/People -ro,access=...

client fstab:  (folded for clarity)

postoffice:/clients/spool.mail /usr/spool/mail nfs rw,bg,timeo=14,
	mnttimeo=5,intr,nosuid,noquota 0 0
postoffice:/LocalLibrary/Images/People /LocalLibrary/Images/People
	 nfs ro,bg,timeo=14,mnttimeo=5,intr,nosuid,noquota 0 0

diffs between NeXT's sendmail.subsidiary.cf and my client
sendmail.cf attached below.  There are some minor bugfixes
and an expendable minor hack ("fidonet kludge"), and the
names have been changed to protect the guilty.  :-)
Note that I've effectively disabled the UUCP stuff; it takes
a bit more effort to get that stuff to work right.
WARNING: /etc/sendmail/sendmail.cf as shipped by NeXT is a
symbolic link.  Blow it away and replace it with a real file.
Do not modify the original sendmail.*.cf files; you may want to
refer to them later.

>I'm running 2.0, if that makes a difference.  Has anybody got *any*
>suggestions for what to do?  *sigh*

The stock answer to any "I can't get printing to work in 2.0"
questions is "upgrade to 2.1"--lots and lots of buggy code was
replaced in 2.1.  2.0 is *known* not to be able to talk to Suns.

					-=EPS=-
------- diff sendmail.subsidiary.cf sendmail.cf
19c19,20
< FV|/usr/bin/uuname
---
> #FV|/usr/bin/uuname
> CV
22c23
< Dj$?m $w.$m $| $w $.
---
> Dj$?m$w.$m$|$w$.
28,29c29,30
< DRmailhost
< CRmailhost
---
> DRpostoffice
> CRpostoffice
42a44
> DmBOGUS.COM
98a101
> Pbulk=-60
102c105
< T root agent uucp
---
> T root agent
155a159,160
> R$+<@$-:$-/$-.$->	$@$1<@P$5.F$4.N$3.Z$2.FIDONET.ORG>	fidonet kludge
> R$+<@$-:$-/$->		$@$1<@F$4.N$3.Z$2.FIDONET.ORG>	[SFSU]
212a218
> R$*<@$w>$*		$@$1<@$R>$3			from server [SFSU]
214c220,221
< R$+			$@$1<@$w>			tack on our hostname
---
> #R$+			$@$1<@$w>			tack on our hostname
> R$+			$@$1<@$R>			from server [SFSU]
268,270c275,277
< R<@[$+]>:$*		$#ether $@[$1] $:$2		numeric internet spec
< R<@[$+]>,$*		$#ether $@[$1] $:$2		numeric internet spec
< R$*<@[$+]>		$#ether $@[$2] $:$1		numeric internet spec
---
> R<@[$+]>:$*		$#$M $@[$1] $:$2		numeric internet spec
> R<@[$+]>,$*		$#$M $@[$1] $:$2		numeric internet spec
> R$*<@[$+]>		$#$M $@[$2] $:$1		numeric internet spec
295c302,303
< R$*<@$+.LOCAL>$*	$#ether $@$2 $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host.here
---
> #R$*<@$+.LOCAL>$*	$#ether $@$2 $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host.here
> R$*<@$+.LOCAL>$*	$#$M $@$R $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host.here
297c305,306
< R$*<@$->$*		$#ether $@$2 $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host
---
> #R$*<@$->$*		$#ether $@$2 $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host
> R$*<@$->$*		$#$M $@$R $:$1<@$2>$3	user@host

Lovstrand@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM (Lennart Lovstrand) (06/14/91)

In article <1711@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:
> In article <1991Jun12.183535.13255@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM
> 	(Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
> >I've been trying to make the NeXT at work talk to the other machines, namely
> >a Sun.  I tried following the documentation, but the bloody machine didn't
> >act like the doc said it would.  My problems have been with printers and
> >mail.
[...]
> >I'm running 2.0, if that makes a difference.  Has anybody got *any*
> >suggestions for what to do?  *sigh*
> 
> The stock answer to any "I can't get printing to work in 2.0"
> questions is "upgrade to 2.1"--lots and lots of buggy code was
> replaced in 2.1.  2.0 is *known* not to be able to talk to Suns.

Unfortunately, I don't think that will be enough in this case.  It sounds like  
Sean is talking about Sun's SPARCprinter.  Well, we have a couple of those as  
well.  They use Xerox print engines and rely on Sun's XNeWS server to render  
the images before shipping them out to the printer over a high speed interface.   
While they're pretty speedy in print performance (well, they should be -- we  
have them connected to 28 MIPS SPARCstation-2's!), the XNeWS PostScript  
implementation is not without problems...

We got our first NeXTcube about two months ago and while printing on an Apple  
Laserwriter worked just fine, all that our SPARCprinters would produce was a  
page full of PostScript errors.  Well, it turned out to be a bit of confusion  
over the currentshared operator.  The NeXT's 2.1 printPackage.ps will look for  
this, and if defined, call it to see if the PS interpreter is running in  
"shared virtual memory mode".  Well, it turns out that the Sun's NeWS  
interpreter has currentshared defined, but not fully implemented when used with  
their NeWSprint package (sharedvm is not defined).  The fix is to change the  
definition of currentshared in /usr/openwin/etc/NeWS/basics.ps to first test  
for sharedvm being defined before blindly calling it.  A context diff follows  
for your perusal.

We've had other problems as well, most notably with printing RTF files with  
embedded graphics and FrameMaker files with special characters from the NeXT.   
All in all, it works quite well though.  I just wished it could do double sided  
as well...  ;-)

*** basics.ps.orig	Wed Jun 27 21:17:40 1990
--- basics.ps	Thu Apr 16 20:01:32 1991
***************
*** 341,347 ****
      currentprocess /CurrentVM get
  } def
  /currentshared { % - => bool
!     currentvm sharedvm eq
  } def
  /setshared { % bool => -
      {
--- 341,354 ----
      currentprocess /CurrentVM get
  } def
  /currentshared { % - => bool
!     % Ouch, this breaks when XNeWS is used in combination with the NeWSprint
!     % package becuase sharedvm is not defined.  Normally, this is not much of
!     % a problem, but NeXT printouts will try to call currentshared if it
!     % defined.  --Lennart, 910416
!     %
!     % currentvm sharedvm eq
!     %
!     /sharedvm where {pop currentvm sharedvm eq} {false} ifelse
  } def
  /setshared { % bool => -
      {

--
--Lennart <Lovstrand@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM>		R   _A _  N_   K
Rank Xerox EuroPARC, 61 Regent St, Cambridge, UK	\/ |_ |_) | | \/
Heart-of-Gold, NeXTcube at EuroPARC, NeXT Mach 2(1)	/\ |_ | \ |_| /\
TOPS-20 Command processor 7(109)-8 [alpha]		E u r o  P A R C