HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: anthis@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Mike Anthis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: avoiding Solaris
Date: 13 Nov 92 22:12:21 GMT
Organization: Boeing

In article <1992Nov13.000938.9002@ultra.com> shj@ultra.com (Steve Jay {Ultra Unix SW Mgr}) writes:
>Sun is betting
>that the pain of moving to Solaris 2 from SunOS 4 is much less than
>moving to another vendor.  If they're wrong, in a few years Sun will
>be where DEC is now...in trouble.

*** HYPERBOLE ALERT ***

In my desultory moments thinking about my future with Sun products,
the IBM trademark comes to mind as another supplier who does it to me
for my own good.

When they're small, they do anything to make the customer happy ...

My $.02,
mike
-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Mike Anthis          anthis@sleepy.ns.cs.boeing.com
90% of good taste is found in 10% of the population.
------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: janet@cs.uwa.oz.au (Janet Jackson)
Subject: writing down root password (was Re: Disabling L1-A sequence?)
Organization: Dept. Computer Science, University of Western Australia.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 01:37:47 GMT

In <1dnuccINNgb@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> craig@ec.uwa.oz.au (Craig Richmond - division)
 says something that I hope is a joke:

>More to the point.  It would be a good idea to keep your root password
>written down ...

Gah!  Memorise it, please!  If you forget it, you can always boot from
distribution CD or tape.

If you *must* write it down, be extremely careful about where the written-down
copy is kept.  Ideally in some sort of locked safe that is accessible only
by the systems administrators and perhaps the head of department (or other
suitable, trustworthy person -- for emergencies only, like if the sysadmins
are all run over by buses).


Janet Jackson
<janet@cs.uwa.edu.au>
Systems Administrator
Department of Computer Science
The University of Western Australia
From: cawilco@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Chris A. Wilcox)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: pty bug fix for 4.1.3?
Summary: Yup, the problem is stupid [shell,cmd]tools
Date: 5 Nov 92 20:29:25 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

In article <1992Nov5.010756.21667@babbage.ece.uc.edu> montjoy@thor.ece.uc.edu (Robert Montjoy) writes:
>In article <1992Nov4.202415.11999@smab.se> hans@smab.se (Hans C Larsson) writes:
>>cawilco@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Chris A. Wilcox) writes:
>>
problem statement deleted...

>I thought this fix was integrated into 4.1.3.
>Are you sure you not just seeing the old problem of cmdtool
>or xterm not cleaning out its old entries in /etc/utmp.
>
>When you do a "w" command are all the processes in question
>'-'(dashes) or blank? If so xterm or cmdtool are not
>cleaning up properily.

That is indeed the case I am seeing. As a casual browser of this
newsgroup, I probably missed the discussion on this behavior of
shelltools. What is not being cleaned up, and if it's an old
problem, why hasn't Sun fixed it? Enquiring minds want to know.

-- 
Chris Wilcox                |     Getting Rid of a Blind Date -- Tip #16
Dept. of Defense            | Sacrifice french fries to the great deity Pomme
cawilco@afterlife.ncsc.mil  |          (as seen on rec.humor.funny)
From: emcguire@intellection.com (Ed McGuire)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: Loopback mounts not working; why not?
Date: 10 Nov 92 16:48:50 GMT
	<1992Nov9.233057.19513@megatek.com>
Organization: Intellection, Inc.

In article <1992Nov9.233057.19513@megatek.com> randy@megatek.com (Randy Davis) writes:

     Well, actually, the generic kernel has LOFS compiled in, by default.  Since
   you, or someone else administering the machine, must have removed it if you
   aren't running the generic kernel, YOU are supposed to *know*... :-)  Not
   really something that you can blame the Sun documentation about, although I
   agree with lots of complaints about the docs.

However, desktop workstations (IPC and IPX that I know of) do not have
the GENERIC kernel installed: instead, they are delivered with the
GENERIC_SMALL kernel.  GENERIC_SMALL excludes a variety of
capabilities (LOFS for one), leaves out some devices, and has 4,
rather than 8, maxusers.
-- 
Ed McGuire                   1603 LBJ Freeway, Suite 780
Systems Administrator/       Dallas, Texas 75234
 Member of Technical Staff   214/620-2100, FAX 214/484-8110
Intellection, Inc.           <ed@intellection.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: syslss@sarah.albany.edu (Leslie S Steckel)
Subject: 8mm Tape Drive
Organization: State University of New York at Albany
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 16:13:03 GMT


Hi, 

At our site back up all disks via 8mm tape.  Does anyone have an idea of the
life expectancy of the 8mm tape head.

Also, does have an idea of approximately how many times a 2.4gig 8mm tape can 
be reused assuming you are dumping 2gig to the tape, time after time.

Thank you,
Leslie Steckel
syslss@csc.albany.edu


-- 
Leslie Steckel				internet:  syslss@csc.albany.edu
UNIX System Administrator		bitnet: syslss@albnyvms
University at Albany			(518) 442-3844
Computing Services Center  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: mtsdldx@gsusgi1.gsu.edu (Deborah Davis)
Subject: TcpXfer on Sun Sparc 1
Keywords: tcpxfer pipes pty tty
Organization: Georgia State University
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 14:50:12 GMT


The situation:

  I work for the Microcomputer and Telecommunications Services group of the
Computer Center at Georgia State University.  We are trying to set up an
SUN Sparc Station 1 (and/or IBM RISC/6000) so that it will have a TCP/IP
connection to a port on a Datability terminal server.  Datability has code
(tcpxfer) but we have not found it to work with our set up.  If anyone has
tried to do this with any device hooked up to the terminal server, whether
it be a printer or something else, please respond to my cry of help.

(- Deborah Davis           -)
(- mtsdldx@gsusgi1.gsu.edu -)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: wilsot@j5208.ads.rpi.edu (Todd C. Wilson)
Subject: Network Backup Software for Archive Python Tape Drive
Reply-To: wilsot@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:13:46 GMT

A friend of mine is looking for network backup software for an Archive Python tape drive for Sun Spark stations.

Any suggestions?

-- 
Todd Wilson
wilsot@rpi.edu
Xref: sparky comp.sys.sun.admin:8048 alt.sys.sun:3355
From: svfenge@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Steven Fenger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,alt.sys.sun
Subject: Re: RPC based daemons using reserved ports.
Keywords: RPC mountd lockd ypupdated
Date: 7 Nov 92 18:23:57 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

In article <1992Nov4.214635.24263@cci632.cci.com> djh@cci632.cci.com (Daniel J. Hazekamp) writes:
>I am having a problem with rpc.mountd, rpc.lockd, and rpc.ypupdated using ports
>that have been reserved by putting entries in /etc/services. Iv'e put in entries
>for both tcp and udp. Do these daemons bother to check /etc/services before
>using a port?? Does /etc/services need to be sorted numerically??

Putting entries in /etc/services does not reserve a port number.
/etc/services just provides the port number to service name mapping
for the function getrpcbyname.  You need to change your code away from
the ports the rpc.mountd/lockd/ypupdated use.
-- 
Steven Fenger    fenger@cps.msu.edu    svfenge@afterlife.ncsc.mil
What for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu (John R Ruckstuhl Jr)
Subject: distributing swap between disks
Organization: EE Dept at UF
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 03:59:09 GMT

I think conventional wisdom encourages distributing swap space between
disks for increased speed.
Is this still true if one is using TMPFS ?
I seem to remember someone claiming this is an exception to the rule.

Thanks,
ruck
-- 
John R. Ruckstuhl, Jr.                  ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu
Dept of Electrical Engineering          ruck@cis.ufl.edu, uflorida!ruck
University of Florida                   ruck%sphere@cis.ufl.edu, sphere!ruck
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.sys.sun.misc
From: adminpb@aau.dk (Nis Peder Bonde)
Subject: How much memory do I have ? HELP
Organization: Aarhus University, Denmark
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 15:38:35 GMT

Hardware: Sun 630MP, 64 Mb RAM
OS: SunOS 4.1.2 (+Sun DBE)

My question is very "simple":
How much physical memory do I have left right now (if any !)

=====
When I run top, the status-line gives me:
Memory: 21352K (21352K) real,  2536K free

Well, I think: I use 21352K of my memory and have 2536K left.
That gives 21352K + 2536K = 23888K, but where is the last
64*1024K - 23888K = 41648K ?
=====
When I run sps, the bottomline gives me:
58 (99408k) processes, 1 (1240k) busy, 31 (23804k) loaded, 27 (624k) swapped

Now the situation looks much different! As far as I understand
(the man-page doesn't help much :-) there is now used 99408K.
That's too much, so the rest must be swapped out, I think:
99408K - 64*1024K = 33872K (hmmm, why did top report any free
memory then? It allready seems to be overloaded !).
=====
When running pstat -s, I get the following info:
14548k allocated + 2280k reserved = 16828k used, 249728k available

Only 16828k swap-space used ?????
I just calculated, that it had to be about 33M !!!!!!
I'm more and more mystified. At this point!
=====
When running vmstat, I get this:
 procs     memory              page               disk       faults     cpu
 r b w   avm   fre  re at  pi  po  fr  de  sr d0 d1 d2 d3  in  sy  cs us sy id
 0 0 0     0  2536   0 23   7   5   0   0   2  1  0  0  0  68 495  41  4  2 93

This gives me not any more information. Besides, that vmstat confirms
top in, that there is 2536K of free memory :-(
=====

Now I've come up with all the possibilities I can think of,
but it hasn't helped me. Instead I'm totally mystified :-(

Shall I tell my boss, that I need more RAM ?

Could someone please explain me what the various programs show,
if there is any other programs I should know of etc. etc. etc.

				Bonde
--
Nis Peder Bonde, System Administrator, Datakontoret, Aarhus University
Phone     : +45 86 20 27 11 ext. 4993
Internet  : adminpb@aau.dk
X.400	  : C=dk; ADMD=dk400; PRMD=minerva; O=aau; S=adminpb

"Be careful out among the English" (Eli Lapp, The Witness)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.sys.hp
From: urban@sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael Urban)
Subject: Re: Mounting /usr/spool/mail from HP?
Reply-To: urban@sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael Urban)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 16:04:04 GMT

In article <TML.92Nov12030940@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi> tml@tik.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) writes:
>
>P.S. Yes, I am old enough to realize that both HP and Sun have their
>own idiosyncranies (sp?), and that neither is more correct that the
>other.  However, I am "root" for our HP machines and have been
>irritated by people on the net continuously asking "why doesn't this
>or that detail work like on our Suns?".

(You can annoy them by correcting their grammar: it should be `why
doesn't this work AS on our Suns?'  :-)  )

Well, in this particular case, it is particularly annoying to find Sun,
the promulgators of NFS and `open standards' and all of that, writing
mail tools that depend on a particular aspect of file system
semantics.  After all, the idea of RPC and NFS is _supposed_ to be
that the server might not even be a Unix system.  Or so I thought.

Now let me tell you what happens when you extract from a Tar archive
containing directories you do not own, onto a non-Sun file system.
Sun's `tar' proceeds to chown the parent directories before putting
anything into them (figuring that this will fail if not root).
Surprise, it cannot write the files into the directory...


	Mike

	Mike Urban

	urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov

Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: malte@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Malte Uhl)
Subject: Re: problems with amd
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 10:32:13 GMT
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld, Technische Fakultaet.

In article <1992Nov11.225817.29248@babbage.ece.uc.edu>, montjoy@thor.ece.uc.edu (Robert Montjoy) writes:
|> 
|> 
|> Hi.
|> 
|> In article <92Nov11.1913.4225@crash.canon.co.uk> tim@crash.canon.co.uk writes:
|> >We're running amd5.3beta (alpha #1) to look after the nfs mount
|> >requirements on our network of sun4s. However, sometimes we have machines
|> >hanging up, seemingly waiting for amd. The syslog message:
|> >
|> >Oct 22 11:03:13 crash vmunix: NFS server amd:140 not responding still trying
|> >Oct 22 11:03:33 crash vmunix: NFS server amd:140 ok
|> 
|> What is happening is amd is getting "swapped" out. You should 
|> patch amd to lock the text pages of amd into memory. This should eliminate 
|> most of these messages. You will need to add the plock system call.
|> Something like this 
|> 
|> 	plock(PROCLOCK);
|> 
|> needs to be added into the main of amd.
|> You will also need to include <sys/lock.h>( #include <sys/lock.h>).
|> 
|> There was a patch avaliable from at the following location.
|> 		csri.toronto.edu:pub/edwin/amd.plock_patch, amd.README
|> -- 
|> Rob Montjoy                   		- Rob.Montjoy@UC.Edu
|> Computer Engineer    	      		- montjoy@ucbeh.BITNET
|> University of Cincinnati      		- montjoy@babbage.ece.uc.edu
|> Electrical and Computer Engineering	- uunet!uceng!rmontjoy
|> 
|> --  To Save the Earth. The Humans must die.
|> 

If a machine swaps out amd it needs more RAM anyway. One of our machines, a
sun 4/330 showed this symptom. It went away after upgrading from 8MB to 32MB.
One should take a close look at the output of vmstat -s. Look at the rows
titled "swap ins" and "swap outs". If the "swap outs" value is higher than
"swap ins" / 10000, I suggest adding memory.

Btw, are you running tmpfs ?

Malte
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: rchen@walrus.mvhs.edu (Rodney Chen)
Subject: elm problems
Organization: Monte Vista High School, Cupertino, California
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:07:37 GMT


I'm trying to setup elm on my system, and I've hit two preliminary road
blocks.  I am a sysadmin of a high school internet site and we received
a slightly 'crippled' system, so occasionally I don't find files that I 
need for installing programs (like in this case).  It's asking for 
/usr/lib/nmail.paths and /usr/lib/domains.  What are the purpose of these
files, and what should be in them?  Thanks in advance.

Another problem, I'm out of hard drive space.  I'm wondering how to 
keep the path of a group of files mounted on another subsystem when I 
move it to another.  It would be a annoyance for me to change the paths
of everyone's .cshrc file.  Again, thanks in advance and I would a
appreciate any replies via e-mail.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Rodney Chen			Head Student Coordinator
 rchen@walrus.mvhs.edu		NASA/NREN High School Project
 rchen@spectrx.saigon.com	Monta Vista High School
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: goyle@tortie.me.uiuc.edu (Vipin Goyle)
Subject: Newsprint with OW3 - any changes required??
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 19:58:34 GMT

Hi,

I just changed the default openwindows version 2 to version 3. Problem is now my
printer doesn't print out anything (eg. when i send it a file to print with 
"filep"). It's giving me the following errors....

------------------
Your printer job (tmp.1) 
could not be printed

Messages from output filter:
xnews: Warning: keyboardtype: ioctl KIOCTYPE failed
xnews: Error: initialize_keyboard: can't get keyboard type
xnews: Error: Press <RETURN> to continue or <CTRL-C> to abort: 
xnews: Warning: keyboardlayout: ioctl KIOCTYPE failed
xnews: Error: initialize_keyboard: can't get keyboard type
xnews: Error: Press <RETURN> to continue or <CTRL-C> to abort: 
xnews: Error: initialize_keyboard: unknown layout; check keyboard DIP switch; trying default
xnews: Error: Press <RETURN> to continue or <CTRL-C> to abort: 
Couldn't get base SunWindow
------------------

I'm running a sparc II with newsprint v 1. Do I need to reconfigure something?

Thanks!

-Vipin

goyle@tortie.me.uiuc.edu
--
---------------------------------------------------------------
 Vipin Goyle			Engg. Psych. Research Lab.     
 305 N.Lincoln Ave, #S205	Dept. of Mech. & Indust. Engg. 
 Urbana, IL 61801		U of Illinois at U-C	       
 (217)367-1219			(217)333-5140 or (217)244-8300 
 v-goyle@uiuc.edu		MC - 244		       
---------------------------------------------------------------
From: shawni@tis.llnl.gov (Shawn Instenes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: avoiding Solaris
Date: 13 Nov 92 19:16:58 GMT

shj@ultra.com (Steve Jay {Ultra Unix SW Mgr}) writes:

>Most installations have to stay reasonably current in hardware and
>software technology.  For current Sun customers, the choice is between
>going with Sun's strategy (Solaris 2), or moving to another vendor who
>provides a product which better suits the site's needs.  Sun is betting
>that the pain of moving to Solaris 2 from SunOS 4 is much less than
>moving to another vendor.  If they're wrong, in a few years Sun will
>be where DEC is now...in trouble.

As a system administrator who is sometimes called to voice his opinion
on the question "Which system should we buy for our application?", I
am finding it more difficult to recommend Sun nowadays.

The short-term pain of migrating is not small: certain Fortran-based code
needs to be completely recompiled, users need retraining, etc. etc.  But
foremost for us is the overhead of running a network of mixed machines.
The simple truth is some users will NEVER give up SunOS 4.1.X; for them,
that would be more painful than the sun3->sun4 transition "a while back."
At least then they could recompile on the new machines with no changes.
Not so today.

The long-term pain would be exactly the same as moving completely to
another vendor.  None of the investment in software you're running now
will remain in either case; sure, there are upgrade paths for some
software packages but most of those will let you upgrade to a different
machine architechure, too.

The bottom line is, with that much current investment in software to lose,
why not shop around?  I can make a real good case for two other workstation
manufacturers right now, based on desktop performance (by far the most
valuable workstation criteria around here).  I like what Sun has done with
their ISDN/audio interfaces in their new products, but between Solaris and
lagging benchmark performance, it's hard not to look elsewhere.

I don't speak for UC, DOE, LLNL, or DCSP, these are my own opinions.  If
anyone else shares them, it's sheer coincidence.

--
Shawn Instenes, shawni@tis.llnl.gov, shawni@s1.gov
Distributed Computing Support Program, LLNL
From: guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: avoiding Solaris
Date: 13 Nov 92 23:17:41 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara

>I have looked at the "sysadmin conversion" book published by
>SunSoft, and I have either found a showstopper or have misunerstood
>something.

No, I suspect *they* misunderstood something.

>In the 'differences in commands' section, they mention that 'mknod'
>is no longer a priviledged command.

It's not privileged in SunOS 4.x, either:

	bootme$ /usr/etc/mknod phipho p
	bootme$ ls -ldg phipho
	prw-r--r--  1 guy      engineer        0 Nov 13 15:12 phipho
	bootme$ id
	uid=126(guy) gid=100(engineering) groups=100(engineering)

Of course, it doesn't let you create a special file *other* than a FIFO
special file if you're not super-user:

	bootme$ /usr/etc/mknod noway c 0 0
	mknod: must be super-user

Solaris 2.0 seems to exhibit the same behavior:

	sloth% /usr/sbin/mknod phipho p
	sloth% ls -ld phipho
	prw-r--r--   1 guy      guest          0 Nov 13 15:14 phipho
	sloth% /usr/sbin/mknod noway c 0 0
	mknod: must be super-user
	sloth% id -a
	uid=126(guy) gid=100(guest) groups=100(guest)

I suspect the authors of that document simply didn't realize that:

	1) the "make a FIFO" function of "mknod()" never *was*
	   privileged;

	2) the "make a non-FIFO special file" function of "mknod()"
	   still *is* privileged;

or perhaps suffered from some other form of confusion.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
From: janet@cs.uwa.oz.au (Janet Jackson)
Subject: A bug in init? (booting single-user)
Summary: Pressing Return at Password: prompt gets you multi-user startup!
Organization: Dept. Computer Science, University of Western Australia.
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 09:14:29 GMT

The environment:  SPARCstation or Sun-4 running SunOS4.1.1.  Various kernel
and other patches.  init has not been patched.

What I think may be a bug manifests itself when the system is trying
to boot single-user and is prompting for the root password.

If I type the root password, it runs a single-user shell, as it should.
If I type some rubbish, it repeats the prompt, as it should.
But if I just press Return, it does a multi-user startup!

This happens whether it is booting single-user because I asked it to,
or because fsck has failed.

It happens whether it is prompting for the root password because the console
is not marked "secure" in /etc/ttytab, or because issecure() returns true
(the latter happens because the system is running Sun password shadowing).

It happens on my systems, and on a colleague's downstairs.

Does anyone know:

Is this a bug?  In init?  Has it been reported to Sun?
Is it fixed in 4.1.2? .3? Solaris?

If it isn't a bug, what's the explanation?

Is there any way to prevent this behaviour?

(I found out about this when fsck failed, and a user thought it wouldn't
hurt to press Return.  The system didn't stay up for long.  Sigh.)

Janet Jackson
<janet@cs.uwa.edu.au>
Systems Administrator
Department of Computer Science
The University of Western Australia
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.ultrix
From: shahryar@crc.ricoh.com (Shahryar G. Hashemi)
Subject: Network Monitoring Software Help...
Organization: RICOH California Research Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 00:48:40 GMT

Dear all,

I have been asked to find a good Network Monitoring Software
[preferably X based] which will allow me to monitor packets flowing
across the net, distinguish if our current net needs to be split
and connected via a bridge, etc.  I would like to get input from
people about what products you think do this job well [a public
domain/shareware product is preferred, but a commercial product
would be acceptable].  Please respond to me about your
recommendations via e-mail.

Sincerely,

Shahryar

P.S.--All help is quite appreciated.

--
Shahryar G. Hashemi
System/Network Administrator -- RICOH Corporation California Research Center
2882 Sand Hill Road, Suite 115         Telephone: (415) 496-5730
Menlo Park, CA  94025-7022             FAX: (415) 854-8740
E-Mail: <shahryar@crc.ricoh.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin