HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tom@uts.cc.wayne.edu (Thomas Richard Stevenson)
Subject: Mainframe UNIX: UTS vs AIX/ESA
Keywords: UTS AIX ESA Amdahl IBM
Organization: Wayne State Univ.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 15:26:40 GMT

We are looking at installing a mainframe Unix, either UTS or AIX/ESA.
At this point we are just looking, but we hoped there might be some sites
out there already running either of these that could send us some feed
back on what you think about either of these versions of Unix. Another
person is getting information on workstations, so I don't need information
on RS/6000, Suns, etc. Thanks!
Newsgroups: comp.unix.large
From: scotte@cdsac.uucp (L. Scott Emmons)
Subject: Re: XterminalServer ratio wanted
NntpPostingHost: cdsac
Date: 15 Sep 1992 17:27:33 GMT
Organization: CableData (U.S. Computer Services), Sacramento, CA

In article <1992Sep12.201312.3019@tybse1.uucp> swhite@tybse1.uucp (William C. "Spike" White) writes:
>In my opinion, Xterminals place a significant load on the server's resources
>and should be figured in.

I think the architecture of the machine and network are factors which
need to be looked at. We run an Xstationonly environment on IBM
RS/6000s over an ethernet network, with several Xstations per RS6000;
each programmer doing heavy software development. The Xstations seem
to make no impact on system performance, certainly not from a user's
standpoint. The RS6000's always have plenty MIPS to burn.

Xstations make for a very nice environment, especially with megapixel
displays (don't go with anything smaller than a 19" monitor!).

 
			   L. Scott Emmons
		      CableData  Research Center
		     csusac.csus.edu!cdsac!scotte
				KC6NFP
From: renev@jupiter.idca.tds.philips.nl (Rene de Vries)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: /usr/preserve/Exaaa99999
Date: 9 Sep 92 09:49:23 GMT
Reply-To: renev@idca.tds.philips.nl (Rene de Vries)
Disclaimer: This opinion is mine alone

In <1992Sep4.102240.9438@vents.uji.es> navarro@pereiii.uji.es (Enrique Navarro Sanchis) writes:

>Hello:
>	I'm working with HP-UX 8.07.
>	There is a directory /usr/preserve.
>	Inside it there is a lot of files named Exaaa<five-digits>.
>	These files (in some cases) are very large.

>	Someone can say me something about these files ?
>	What about them ?
>			
>	Can you help me,please ?

These files Exaaaa<five-digits> are vi or ex recover files.
Vi or Ex leave this files in /tmp/Exaa..., and on the next time Expreserve is 
run (from the crontab or when rebooting) these files are moved to /usr/preserve
and the user whos file it was gets a message by mail. If this user types
vi -r filename, filename is recovered from /usr/preserve. The user has his file
back then and he/she is very happy.
--
______________________________________________________________________________
|   Rene de Vries, Digital Equipment Enterprise, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands  |
|     renev@idca.tds.philips.nl, DTN : 829 2104, PhoneNr : +31 55 432104     |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: mike@pacsoft.com (Mike Stefanik)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: man
Date: 8 Sep 92 06:31:47 GMT
Organization: Pacific Software Group, Riverside, Ca.

In an article, Mike O'Connor <mjo@snclib.snc.edu> writes:
>[...] but it's hard for me to picture someone telling me to sit down 
>at a Unix, want to edit my login inits, type "vi .some-dot-file", and get:
>
vi: Command not found.

Must be new to UNIX... after all, I was thinking the same thing
about /bin/ed. :-)

-- 
Mike Stefanik  mike@pacsoft.com  ...!uunet!pacsoft!mike
Pacific Software Group, Riverside, CA
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jpc@avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov (J. Porter Clark)
Subject: DNSifying Motorola System V/68
Organization: NASA/MSFC
Date:  8 Sep 92 18:55:11 GMT

A co-worker without e-mail or news access is trying to configure Domain
Name Service on a Motorola MVME147SC-1.  This is a VME bus computer
with a 68030 CPU; it runs Motorola's System V/68 version 3.6.

The system includes such wonders (8-) as NFS and NIS, but I don't see
anything like shared libraries, sendmail, or even compress.  (Yes, I
know where to get compress and sendmail.)  The manual section on NIS
doesn't say anything about DNS, and the file layout is different enough
from Sun's that I don't see any obvious ways to make NIS do DNS.  There
is a man page on resolv.conf, and I've got it loaded with the right
data, but lookups of hostnames not in /etc/hosts don't work.

I'm in clueless mode right now.  Can anyone out there help me out?
-- 
J. Porter Clark    jpc@avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov or jpc@gaia.msfc.nasa.gov
NASA/MSFC Communications Systems Branch
From: vulture@carrion.cc.ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Pros/Cons: simple vs. fully-qualified name for workstation?
Date: 14 Sep 92 18:39:22 GMT
Reply-To: cmaae47@cc.ic.ac.uk
Followup-To: poster, comp.unix.admin, andy_d@hyperdesk.com
Organization: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine

In article <420@bertha.HyperDesk.com>, andy_d@hyperdesk.com writes:
- 
- It has been suggested to me that I name my workstation with a
- fully-qualified name instead of a simple name, e.g. name it
- "sweetjane.hyperdesk.com", instead of just "sweetjane". 
.....
- 
- 1) login scripts that check the host name via the 'hostname' command 
-    won't work anymore.
- 
- 2) if we change things around at a later time, so that my machine is
-    part of domain devt.hyperdesk.com, my machine name will be
-    misleading, and many not even be accessible (anybody know?).
- 
- What are the supposed advantages of a fully-qualified name?
- 
Basically, all the advantages and disadvantages of using a constant instead
of a variable. Constants have the same meaning everywhere, variables must
be initialized before they are used. Thus if your host calls itself sweetjane
and you log into my machine and run xclock, then that will appear not on your
machine but on the machine sweetjane here, where it is probably unwanted.
Reason: Xclock has been handed a variable as a display name and used it as if
it was a constant. 

Conversely, constants are notorioulsy difficult to maintain accurate, as you
pointed out.

Check what the hostname command actually does. You may put another hostname
command before it into the path such as:

#!/bin/sh
#
#    replacement hostname - oops, here is another variable vs constant issue
#
/usr/bsd/hostname | cut -d. -f1

You could also recommend that login scripts etc. use the environment variable
HOSTNAME rather than the output of the command hostname - it is more efficient
anyway, and only marginally less secure. You may need to make sure it is 
available on all machines.

Finally, get an idea how important the applications are to you that no longer
work with fully qualified hostnames. Most probably you find a lot of stuff
that has string length restrictions. (shouldn't they have allocated the 
memory rather than just using a constant length ?)

                                 Thomas
-- 
*** This is the operative statement, all previous statements are inoperative.
*   email: cmaae47 @ cc.ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau) (uk.ac.ic.cc on Janet)
*   voice: +44 71 589 5111 x4937 or 4934 (day), or +44 71 823 9497 (fax)
*   snail: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
*   The Center for Computing Services, Kensington SW7 2BX, Great Britain
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5053 comp.unix.ultrix:6945 comp.unix.wizards:3919
From: trt@duke.cs.duke.edu (Tom Truscott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.ultrix,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: random passwd generator
Date: 16 Sep 92 03:01:11 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.admin
Organization: IBM RTP

"Random" password generators rarely are.
Never trust a password generator that using a pseudo-random
number generator.

>	srandom((int)(time((time_t *)0)));

This (seconds-since-Epoch) is the only source of randomness in the program.
Since srandom accepts a 32 bit number, the program can generate
at most 4 billion different sequences of passwords.
At 5k trial crypt()s/second an exhaustive attack using a single
workstation would require 5 days on average to break a given sequence.
A clever Bad Guy might first try times in the current month, of course :-)

Only by keeping the source (and binary) a secret can this weakness be hidden
from the Bad Guy.  But you have just given the Bad Guys a copy.

You need much more randomness.  Create an array of "random_info":
	time-since-Epoch -- seconds and microseconds.
	current process id
	parent process id
	last access/modify times of directories and files such as
		/
		/tmp
		/etc/passwd
	(Even better, have the user type something and time the delay
	between key presses with a high-accuracy clock or by busy-looping.
	That defends against a Bad Guy logged onto your system at the time
	you run the password generator.)
Then use this info rather than calls to random().
Or, if you must, at least periodically do
	srandom(random() ^ random_info[i++ % info_count]);
so that the random info gets folded into your calculations.

Tom Truscott
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jeff@BofA.COM (Jeff Tate)
Subject: core dump on 4.1.2 SunOS / why?
Organization: Bank of America, Capital Products, RMTG #5906
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 22:56:04 GMT

I have just done something very strange to my Sparc2 and am at a loss to recover.  Help is requested.

For irrelevenat reasons, I needed to make space on my /usr partition.  I therefore moved share, diag, and kvm to a /local partition via tar pipe.  After I had finished the experiment that required the space, I attempted to restore these directories.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten to remove the new symbolic links (i chchanged the link from boot->./kvm/boot to boot->/local/usr/boot) and so the return pipe was doing something really wierd.  Anyway, I got messages to th effect that 'warning:  libraries being 

changed'.  Crash, panic, death, ... and after a dirty recovery, commands such as ps, vmstat, adb core dump.

I discovered that /usr/kvm/libkvm.a and /usr/lib/libkvm_p.a where garbaged (ranlib reported this) and replaced them with copies from another 4.1.2 2 machine, but the behaviour persists.  I can operate most of the rest of the machine, but cannot get a ps or an adb to work.

Please suggest either cause or fix or both, else I must reinstall /usr from the cdrom and that would be a pain.

Thanx in advance

Regards
Jeff Tate

-- 

  +------------------------------------------------------------------+
  +  Jeff Tate                            Voice:  (415) 622 0890     +
  +  Manager, RMP Systems                 Fax:    (415) 622 2892     +
  +  Bank of America #5906                                           +
  +  San Francisco, CA 94104              e-mail: uunet!odinba!jeff  +
  +                                               jeff@BofA.COM      +
  +------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: burkhardt@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com (Spike Burkhardt)
Subject: Crontab file format
Reply-To: burkhardt@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale, California
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 15:57:21 GMT

Thanks to all of you who sent me information on their crontab format and in
specific, what number the day of the week Sunday was.  The results were that
an overwhelming number used 0 as Sunday although about 50% explicitly men-
tioned that for compatibility Sunday could also be specified as 7.  The 
bottom line determination seemed to be that if the crontab was based on
AT&T version 7 or later will specify Sunday as 0 and before that Sunday is 7.
If the crontab is BSD(4.3) based, Sunday is 7.
Spike Burkhardt
Systems Management VMS/Unix programming
Internet address - spike@lmsc.lockheed.com
408-756-4790(w)
From: me@amiganet.chi.il.us (Corey Sweeney)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: adduser
Date: 6 Sep 92 02:16:20 GMT
Organization: Amiga Network Information Systems

My new unix system came without a adduser command.  Would anyone know where I
could find a PD adduser command? 

Thanks in advance.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.windows.x
From: jonathan@gabriel.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: NIS vs DNS
Date: 10 Sep 92 10:17:52 GMT
Organization: Keele University, England

jzwiebel@pgl-devsvr.den.mmc.com (John Zwiebel (303)977-1480) writes:
>This is a poll.  For those of you who made a concious choice to use DNS
>instead of NIS (or the other way around) Why?  

We run NIS and DNS using the Sun approved method.  Each NIS master has
a resolv.conf which it uses when a host lookup isn't in the NIS maps.

Here's why:
1)	The software is maintained by Sun so they fix the bugs.
2)	The installation is simple and doesn't involve messing with
	libraries and things each time you install the operating system.
	(We don't have the person power to invest in this).
3)	When a new client is added it is already able to use the DNS service.
	You only have to worry about the NIS masters.
4)	It works well.
5)	The NIS master processes the hosts.txt file to produce a hosts,
	networks and netmasks file, so all the NIS clients get these too
	at no extra administrative cost.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: ddavis@highlite.uucp (Darrel L. Davis)
Subject: Help: need to read a DOS floppy on att3B2 under UNIX 3.2.3
Keywords: dos floppy unix
Organization: Gotham Communications Research
Distribution: comp
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 15:57:17 GMT

I don't know if this is the right group for this question, but I desperately 
need a utility that will allow me to read a MS-DOS floppy on an AT&T 3B2-500 
UNIX Box under UNIX SV release 3.2.3.

There is a company who sold this kind of utilities for the 3B, but they have 
stopped supporting it after UNIX 3.2.1.  I have a site that needs to be able to read an ASCII file from a DOS Floppy.  Any info or even source code would be 
greatly appreciated.

Darrel L. Davis:  ddavis@gotham.com  ddavis@highlite.uucp  uunet!highlite!ddavis
-- 

Darrel L. Davis:  ddavis@gotham.com  ddavis@highlite.uucp  uunet!highlite!ddavis
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jdavis@bordeaux.kpno.noao.edu (Jim Davis)
Subject: Re: Can't get DNS running
Followup-To: comp.sys.sun.admin
Summary: Yikes!
Organization: National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson AZ
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 04:06:29 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.123131.164470@dstos3.dsto.gov.au> gxn@dstos3.dsto.gov.au writes:
>Re:- can't get DNS running on a SUN...
>
> I had a similar problem. But reading the Answerbook tells you
>that you have to have NIS running for DNS to work. I.E. all
>calls to the resolver are done via NIS. Therefore you have to
>have NIS running, and initialised with the -b option on the makefile.
>Hope this helps..

Great Horny Toads, not this again... Yes you _can_ run DNS with NIS.  No you
do _not_ have to run NIS to run DNS.  The instructions on how to run DNS
without NIS have been posted many times, and I'll be glad to email said
instructions to anyone who wants DNS without the NIS goo.
-- 
Jim Davis       | "Outside of licking dirt for a living, it was easily
jdavis@noao.edu |   the world's deadliest job."  -- Pete
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5044 comp.windows.x:16696
From: pd@x.co.uk (Paul Davey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Xterminal-Server ratio wanted
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:32:11 GMT
	<1836euINNaqs@early-bird.think.com> <1992Sep12.201312.3019@tybse1.uucp>
Organization: IXI Ltd.


One of our distributors was telling me the other week of a pair of
sites using multiple processor Data General machines.

They are running 100 - 150 X terminals per box with no problems.

Software is mixed office automation stuff with X.desktop.

The DG hosts have 96 or 128Mb RAM mind you.

Response is apparently excellent.



--
		     Regards,				
			    Paul Davey			
					
		 "These are interesting times"	

  **	  LOOK - the NEW address & phone numbers for IXI	**

  **	  IXI	         	Internet: pd@x.co.uk		**
  **	  Vision Park   	UUCP:     pd@ixi.uucp		**
  **	  Cambridge        	Bang:     ...!uunet!ixi!pd	**
  **	  CB4 4ZR       	Tel:      +44 223 236 555	**
  **	  United Kingdom	Fax:      +44 223 236 550	**
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.windows.x
From: bjl@loki.research.ptt.nl (Ben Lippolt)
Subject: Re: Xterminal-Server ratio wanted
Reply-To: B.J.Lippolt@research.ptt.nl
Organization: PTT Research
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 07:02:39 GMT

tucker@bedford.progress.COM (Kyle Tucker) writes:

>decision itself. And if we do go with Xterminals, then the question of how
>many Xterminals running off of how many Sparcs, Sparc2s, Solbournes, etc. We

We have a mixed environment of SUNs and X-terminals (NCDs). The heuristics
we use are that a power-user (one who uses Lisp-based applications, does
simulation-work, etc) gets a Sparc-ELC. 'Normal' users get an X-terminal.
We have a number of Sparc-2s with 32 MB RAM and 128 MB swap. Each SS-2
serves about 6 X-terminals. This situation is workable (our bottleneck
is our fileserver, not the SS-2s). I looked into the same question when
we started and concluded that you should use at least SS-2s (or better)
to serve the X-terminals. The smaller machines (like the ELC) can serve
maybe 2 or 3 X-terminals (the SS-2 is much better, because of better 
hardware support, eg. for context-switching). I'm looking into the
new SS-10s. I hope I one of those can serve 20 - 30 X-terminals.


PS. There is also the question of how many X-terminals you can put
on one ethernet. You might find that a few dozen X-terminals will
swamp your ethernet. ('xlock' is a notoriously example of this)


Ben Lippolt.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.misc,comp.misc
From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: What is the best way to communicate remotely?
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:05:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep04.172530.22261@wap.oau.org> bdixon@wap.oau.org (Bill Dixon) writes:
>My current hardware configuration is:
>   IBM RS/6000 model 320
>   Datability Vista Terminal Server (ethernet-attach)
>   Wyse 60 terminals
>   Assorted printers

>I just found out that my company plans to open up warehouses out of state
>in the next 2 or 3 months, and of course they want terminals and printers
>there.

>If it was just terminals they wanted, I would just give them PC's with a
>modem running ProComm.  But I don't know how to handle the printers.  I
>have toyed with the idea of faxing their reports to them with a fax modem
>(which I don't have right now, but this would give me justification to get
>one :).

Even if it were just terminals they wanted, you'd be better of with
termnals and not PC's.   Cost is MUCH lower.  Maintenance is lower.
You don't have to have a software program which emulates the hardware.
Most recent/decent terminals already have a port for a printer and many
of the new ones have a parallel port.

If you can't buy a PC with a printer port and software for $450 then
you save money with the terminal!

And faxing reports!  That means someone locally would have to gather
them and then fax them.

If they need to be online all the time you have line charges, if not
just rig the modem to dial when the front button is pushed.  I have one
site I do that with.  And they have an attached printer to print
locally.



-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.oau.org  bill.vermillion@oau.org
                - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|ge-dab|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill
From: leisner@eso.mc.xerox.com (Marty Leisner 311/? x?)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: re: multiple machine distribution architecture
Date: 15 Sep 92 17:51:35 GMT
Reply-To: leisner.henr801c@xerox.com
Organization: Xerox
X-Received: by usenet.pa.dec.com; id AA02277; Tue, 15 Sep 92 14:10:52 -0700
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X-To: amd-workers%acl.lanl.gov@eso.mc.xerox.com,

X-        comp.unix.admin.usenet%decwrl.dec.com@eso.mc.xerox.com,
X-        sunsystem.all_areas%xerox.com@eso.mc.xerox.com



I asked:
>I'm looking for a good way to put binary versions on a known good machine, and then distribute what was
>updated
>or is new via cron??
>
>I supposed the best way is to do a make install on packages on the primary servers, where the mount point
>is a link
>file system (so I'm guaranteed to get this file system).  [I'm using amd, I have no idea how to do this
>in automounter]
>
>Then some type of cron script to copy what is new/changed to the other redundant machines...
>
>I did a little playing with rdist, and couldn't get it to work (gave me some wierd error message, the
>man page says:
>something to the effect "If you get this message, you must be doing something wrong".
>
>I also have coda, but I didn't spend enough time to figure out how to use it...
>
>

Most responses mentioned rdist, sup and track.

I liked the response best from mdixon@parc.xerox.com

	rdist is pretty ugly.  i'd recommend nfs mounting the good machine and
	then
	using gnu's cp, which has an 'update' option to just bring across changed
	files.

I haven't got it running via cron yet, but I liked this...If the accounts are the same on the
two machines and both machines run nfs, this seems to be very clean.

Something like cp -a --update does aupdate archival copies.


Marty    leisner.henr801c@xerox.com 
          Member of the League for Programming Freedom 
 	Computer science is an oxymoron	
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:4899 comp.unix.misc:3529 comp.unix.sysv386:14099
From: aland@informix.com (Colonel Panic)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: yp (nis) map changes - how do they happen
Keywords: passwd yp nis
Date: 5 Sep 92 22:43:41 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.admin
Organization: The Helen Keller Bondurant High Performance Driving School for the Blind

In article <z7rpbsyc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> cudcv@warwick.ac.uk (Rob McMahon) writes:
>In article <cg51Hktf99@atlantis.psu.edu> barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr) writes:
>>Is yppasswd setuid root?  (It needs to be)
>
>No, it doesn't.  At least not under SunOS 4.x.  Ours isn't, and it works fine.

Then, what have you changed it to setuid *to*???  On SunOS 4.1.2, it's owned
by root and is setuid:

/usr/bin/yppasswd: sparc demand paged dynamically linked set-uid executable
  32 -rwsr-xr-x  1 root     staff       32768 Oct 23  1991 /usr/bin/yppasswd

>The security comes from the fact that the request contains the old password.

But why would Joe User be allowed to dink with the maps in the first place?

>Cheers,
>Rob

Followups to comp.unix.admin.

--
Alan Denney      aland@informix.com      {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland

  Smith and Wesson: the Ultimate Point-and-Click User Interface.
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5032 comp.sys.sun.admin:6318