From: bob@dalek.mwc.com (Bob Hemedinger)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Coherent 4.0.1; some bad things
Date: 13 Aug 92 14:50:13 GMT
Reply-To: "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet>

>
> In article <9208120959.AA01930@dalek.mwc.com> bob@dalek.mwc.com (Bob
 Hemedinger)
>  writes:
> #> [installation-tale-of-woe by sje]
> #
> # Of the equipment we've worked with... our stuff at mwc, our beta testers',
> # our personal home systems... no one experienced these problems. To see
> # problems arise that we had no way to anticipate is not surprising, in
> # many respects, we've been through before... with IDE drives. We're
> # doing our best to work these problems out, but it is difficult to do so when
>  we
> # can not duplicate the problem in house.
>
> If you have a potential fix for systems like mine that you want to
> try, just send me the disk.  As long as it doesn't blow away any
> hard-to-replace files on my hard drive, I'd be glad to help test it.
> I now see that I made a mistake by not signing up as a beta tester
> early this year.
> # We aren't making excuses, we are working on resolving this.

Give this a try... when you are given the opportunity to press <space> to
abort the boot, do so and type 'info <return>'. Then type in the kernel
name to boot (autoboot). If the prepare_gift message disappears, then
we know what the cause is. Let me know...

>
> #> 9) CURSES failure; some PD software (chess from mwcbbs) that uses
> #> curses will run properly only if it is NOT recompiled under 4.0.1; the
> #> recompilation reports no errors but produces bizzare output.
>                                                 ^^^^^^^ bizarre
> #
> # 4.0 has 2 curses libraries. libcurses.a is terminfo curses, libtermcap.a
> # is termcap based curses. Try to compile this with -ltermcap.
>
> Will do tonight.  A lot of makefiles will need changing.  I also tried
> recompiling Udo Munk's rogue port both with its internal curses and
> with the 4.0 curses library; they linked but crashed under 4.0.1,
> perhaps the termcap library will help here also.  The old 3.2 binary
> works fine.
>
> #> 10) Although advertised as "32 addressing compatible", 4.0.1 only
> #> handles 24 bits and will not access above 16 Mbyte no matter how much
> #> memory your system has.  This has been discussed before, but I thought
> #> it might be fixed by now.  For those with doubts about the need for
> #> fat memories, I suggest a review of the last decade's history and the
> #> growth in PC memory capacity.  My machine allows for 32 Mbytes without
> #> any expansion cards (another 32 Mbytes there), and many motherboards
> #> allow from 64 to 256 Mbytes.
> #
> # IBM designed their (ISA) hardware such that DMA above 16Megs isn't possible,
> # hence, Coherent 4.0 has this limit. EISA machines are a different
> # story. We hope to have this limit removed for EISA machines for 4.1.
>
> Well, this isn't the full story.  True, there are problems with
> accessing ISA cards because of the addressing limit.  However, a
> little cleverness with writing I/O drivers can circumvent this.  The
> idea is to keep DMA transfers in the appropriate region; a little
> double buffering should work.  Remember, the memory is NOT on the ISA
> bus.  After all, MS-DOS (yuk!)  5.0 had no problem using all 20 Mbytes
> on my ISA box.  I expect at least the same from MWC.
>
> However, I agree that this is probably a lower priority than
> regularizing the installation or providing an ANSI C compiler with
> appropriate FPU support.
>
> #> 12) The terminfo subsystem is introduced; a good idea.  But where are
> #> the tic source files?  How can I modify the terminfo for ansipc if I
> #> can't find the source?
> #
> # The terminfo entries were built from the termcap entries in /etc/termcap.
> # You can decode a terminfo file with infocmp and, of course, rebuild
> # one with tic.
>
> Will do tonight.  Somehow I missed seeing a reference to "infocmp" in
> the manual.
>
> #> 14) There are a lot of grammatical errors in the manual, subject/verb
> #> mis-agreements mostly.  Although minor, these errors appear there even
> #> more frequently as they do in my posts.
>                    ^^ than
> #
> # PLease let us know where you found them and we'll update them for future
> # manual revisions.
>
> I'll start a list.  Do you have a target date for the next release?

Actually, we are in the process of updating for the ninth revision of
the manual now... any suggestions you have will most likely hit the
tenth revision, which will be several months away. I stress for other
reading this that I am refering to MANUAL revisions, not actual OS
revisions.

>
> And some other items I noticed last night:
>
> 15) I installed and configured the 4.0.1 uucp package with only a few
> minor problems and got it working in less than an hour.  There is some
> confusion in the manual concerning crontab entries for uucp.  I think
> the book says "login as uucp" when it really means "do an 'su uucp'".
> Also, the crontab file being edited is root's at one point and uucp's
> at another.  Also, the manual has the old "su uucp sh /usr/lib/uucp
> (whatever)" when this is unnecessary with the new crond package.
>

That's part of the next manual rev. clean-up.

> 16) The uuinstall package seems to work okay, but the resulting L.sys
> and Permissions files had duplicated entries.  Maybe this occurred
> because there were already entries for mwcbbs in both files before
> uuinstall began.

That's correct.

> 17) E-mail though uucp remote sites seems to work okay, but there is a
> problem with uucp file transfer.  Received files (requested by uucp
> commands generated by the mwcbbs front end) came in as owned by uucp
> (okay, maybe?) with weird permision bits like "rw-r-sr-s" (can't
> remember exactly, but both set-id bits were on).

Interesting... which files came back with the weird permissions?

> 18) the uucheck program is acting a bit paranoid and is complaining
> about the absence of about six or so files that have my serial number
> as the last segment of the pathname.  Most of these were supposed to
> be in the /usr/spool/uucp directory tree.  I am afraid to try the -f
> option as I don't think any of these should exist.

Are you using any line continuation charatcers in your L.sys file?

--
		   MWC Technical Support (bob@mwc.com)
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