HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: missing system calls
Reply-To: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:54:05 GMT

udo@umunk.GUN.de (Udo Munk) writes:
: I would like to collect a list of system calls which are missing in
: COHERENT 4.0, but are available under System V.3. This list may
: help a lot while porting programs from SV.3 to COHERENT. So if you
: know about some missing system calls please mail me about them.
: I'll collect all the stuff and post a collected list of what I get.
: Thanks for your help!

We should also make up a list of any SVr3 calls that _are_ in Coherent
but don't operate identically. 

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  Now I get to think
Rosemount Inc.                                |about all the BAD THINGS I
                                              |did to a BOWLING BALL when I
grante@aquarius.rosemount.com                 |was in JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL!
From: messina@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Colorado Systems - Conversation
Date: 14 Dec 92 17:57:00 GMT
Organization: Messina Software

magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto) writes:

>: Anybody willing to give this a try?  Or should we try and convince
>: Colorado systems to change their mind?

>If they have a lousy attitude, I'd say let's move on.

That's a noble intention.  Just show me a tape drive first that's as
inexpensive as Colorado and as proven as Colorado.
I think we should try to convince them first.

t.
From: tundra@eskimo.chi.il.us (Tundra Tim Daneliuk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Colorado Systems - Conversation
Date: 18 Dec 92 12:07:34 GMT
Reply-To: "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet>
Organization: TundraWare

>
> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>
> >In article <1992Dec14.175700.22691@netcom.com> messina@netcom.com (Tony
>  Porczyk) writes:
>
> >>That's a noble intention.  Just show me a tape drive first that's as
> >>inexpensive as Colorado and as proven as Colorado.
> >>I think we should try to convince them first.
> >
> >The real answer is SCSI tape.
> >Tape drives that connect to floppy controllers suck.
>
> Agreed.  That still doesn't answer my question, though.  Have you compared
> the prices for SCSI tapes vs. floppy tapes lately?  Also, for many small
> businesses floppy tape solutions are more than sufficient (if a bit slow).
>
> t.
>
I use SCSI tape exclusively. Consider:

The "low cost" tape solutions are typically about $300 for an internal unit.
A 250M SCSI internal tape unit  can be yours for about $500.  The extra $200
buys you 5 - 7 Megs per minute of backups which *far* surpases the low-end
units.

More importantly, you protect your hardware investment.  I can buy one SCSI
tape (or CD or whatever) and it will work on a wide variety of hardware.
So, instead of having to have one tape drive for a PC, another for a Unix
workstation, yet another for a server, and so on, I buy a single unit that
works everywhere.  Try running your Colorado tape hardware on a Sun workstation!

Finally, by doing all this, I get media portability across all this machinery.
I can read and write tapes on everything from a $1000 PC clone running DOS up
to a $100 multi-processor server.

This seems to me to be $200 very well spent.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        "Tundra" Tim Daneliuk
        PREFERRED: tundra@eskimo.chi.il.us
        OR (Yuk!): eskimo!tundra@clout.chi.il.us
        ALSO:      ...uunet!gargoyle.uchicago.edu!clout!eskimo!tundra
        US SNAIL:  4927 N. Rockwell, Chicago, IL  60625
        MA BELL:   (312) 989-1052

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
From: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: installation help
Reply-To: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:44:45 GMT

udo@umunk.GUN.de (Udo Munk) writes:
:
: Just to remember: if no partition is active COHERENT's master boot
: outputs a prompt and lets you enter the partition to boot, without
: the need to type in the # at the right time.
:

That's how I normally run my system -- when I upgraded to a 386
motherboard the window for hitting a number key shrunk to almost
nothing.  But I still have to remember that partition 0 is DOS and 1
is Coherent -- or is it the other way 'round?

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  On the other hand, life
Rosemount Inc.                                |can be an endless parade of
                                              |TRANSSEXUAL QUILTING BEES
grante@aquarius.rosemount.com                 |aboard a cruise ship to
                                              |DISNEYWORLD if only we let
                                              |it!!
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
From: ringgold@netcom.com (Thomas Essex)
Subject: Re: Additional library directories
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 07:30:29 GMT

hph@hphbbs.E.open.de (H.P. Heidinger, Essen) writes:
: In article <1992Dec12.063736.25929@netcom.com> ringgold@netcom.com (Thomas Essex) writes:
: 
: >The error I get indicates it is unable to locate library libmylib.a. And
: >looking withing the /usr/local/lib directory I have the file libmylib.a.
: >Also, if I link /usr/local/lib/libmylib.a to /usr/lib the command line works
: >perfectly.
: >  Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? 
:                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
:        You take COH' as a reliable system - that's your mistake ...
:        COH' is "banana software" (gets ripe at the customer's site) and
:        for $$99 you cannot expect MWC that they test the stuff decently
:        they deliver. Sad to say - but that's the mere truth as the V4
:        release proved in many ways ...
: 

  Actually, after having been a system administrator on an AT&T Sys V unix 
system for the past three years. And having a roommate that's a system 
administrator on a BSD system longer than that, I consider Coherent to be rather
well behaved. I've had a few problems with this release and also with 3.2. But
I've ALWAYS gotten fast, accurate responses from tech support when I've called
them (And that a lot more than I can say for some of the AT&T support I've
seen). And for $99 I don't expect to have an operating system that is totally
bug free. Especially considering the amount of software that you're really 
getting for that price. And you can hardly find a stand-alone package for that
price that doesn't have bugs in it.
  I've also received a message from MWC that they will be fixing this problem,
and they've given me a suitable work around. Specifically, using the $LIBPATH
variable. And that's without calling tech support.
  Currently, my only real beef with MWC is that I want tcp/ip and it's not out
yet!!!!!
-- 

ringgold@netcom.com

Motto: PFP!!!  ;)
From: patbob@sequent.com ("Patrick White")
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Linux ??????
Date: 14 Dec 92 20:12:39 GMT
Reply-To: "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet>
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems Inc.

In article <9212131817.AA49339@st6000.sct.edu> you write:
>    what is  linux ???

        A port of BSD 4.? to 386 boxes.  Is full BSD from what I hear.

>     How does it compare to COH ?????

        Has networking, sockets & virtual memory.  Is full BSD, not something
trying to be sys V.
        Is "PD" so is no support number you can call when there are problems.
Current rumor is that one must have ftp access to get it and the many patches..
and be able to apply them.  If that is so, I wouldn't recommend it for the
beginner or faint of heart.

>      Where do I get it from ?????

        Ask on comp.os.linux.. it's probably in a FAQ there too.

--
Pat White (patbob@sequent.com, work: (503) 578-3463)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: GNU Emacs
From: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 04:13:16 GMT
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)

In article <1992Dec11.114545.23055@philips.oz.au> brianw@philips.oz.au (Brian Wallis) writes:
>tundra@eskimo.chi.il.us (Tundra Tim Daneliuk) writes:
>
>>If anyone has taken a shot at porting GNU Emacs to COH 4.0, please contact
>>me.  I'd like to get it working and would be interested in collaborating
>>with anyone else working on this.
>
>I have it running (18.57) and have been using it for 4-5 weeks now and it is
>quite reliable (is that "fully tested" :-).
>
>It was quite a simple task to port it, basically coming up with the
>appropriate config file. Undump doesn't work yet but it doesn't take
>to long to load up the lisp (15-20 seconds on a 25Mhz 386) so that's
>not a real problem.
>
>This was my test of Coherent. If I couldn't get GNU emacs going, I would have
>ditched Coherent!
>
>If there is interest I could try to retrive the original 18.57 source and do
>diffs.

Consider me interested.

-- 

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	unixland!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP
From: fredex@fcshome.UUCP (fred smith)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Additional library directories
Date: 13 Dec 92 12:10:11 GMT
Organization: What?!? Absolutely none!
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]

Thomas Essex (ringgold@netcom.com) wrote:
:   I am currently working on a project, and want to build my own library.
: However, whenever I specify the -L directive to indicate the additional
: library path, I get an error indicating it can't find my library.
:   Here's an example of how my command line looks:
: 
:   cc -o program program.c -L/usr/local/lib -lmylib
: 
: The error I get indicates it is unable to locate library libmylib.a. And
: looking withing the /usr/local/lib directory I have the file libmylib.a.
: Also, if I link /usr/local/lib/libmylib.a to /usr/lib the command line works
: perfectly.
:   Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? 

Back a few months ago when I was trying (spent a LOT of time on this) to
get the "performance release" of cnews going on 4.0, I found the
same problem. I sent e-mail to support@mwc.com but they apparently didn't
think it was a sufficiently important problem to waste their time
replying.

The only workaround I found was to actually put the library in /lib or
/usr/lib.

Even trying this didn't work:

	cc -o progname foo.o bar.o mylib.a

didn't work. The linker gives a cutesey message (almost nauseatingly
cutesey, IMHO) about  an "unlikely name" for an object file and refuses
to link it.

Fred
From: kestas@lith.UUCP (Kestutis Sliupas)
Subject: Slow IDE perf. fixed!
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Date: 20 Dec 92 19:16:47 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Vacaville, CA

Hi:
	I would like to report that mkfs on my IDE drive increased
the performance 4-500%.
	
	A couple of months ago, I measured my IDE performance as
@27Kbytes/sec. for read/write. (Seagate ST-1144A, 8M Memory, 386-25)
This was not acceptable. I posted to the net and support@mwc.com,
and received many suggestions.

	The solution was to re-mkfs my file system while modifying
the 'n' (virtual cylinder size) and 'm' (free list interleave) 
parameters. After much experimentation and angst, I found that 
using n=210 and m=6 increased the drive speed to 149 (read) /
131 (write) Kbytes/sec. The most important parameter was 'm'.
These parameters may not be optimal for every IDE drive; they 
worked for me. This needs to be determined for each drive.

	I used a borrowed IDE drive as a backup unit, and a floppy
based O/S for the root partition mkfs. HAVE A BACKUP! Hard drive 
performance was measured using iozone v1.14b by Bill Norcott 
(norcott_bill@tandem.com) with a 4Mb. filesize. I mailed it to 
mwc; they may have it available for D/L.

	I want to thank the following people, in no particular order,
for their help and advice:
	norm@mwc.com            (Norman Bartek)
	bob@dalek.mwc.com       (Bob Hemedinger)
	abner@mwc.com           (Abner John Snell III)
	doug@htrails.mwc.com    (Douglas Peterson)
	and anyone else who I missed.

				Regards, Kestas

 Kestutis Sliupas            x  (510) 231-1540 (work voice) 
 kestas%lith@infopro.com     x  (510) 231-1285 (work FAX) USA CA  
 kestas@infopro.com          kestas%lith@uunet.uu.net
From: sjsobol@WARIAT.ORG ("Steven J. Sobol")
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: request for beta testers follow-up
Date: 18 Dec 92 06:04:00 GMT
Reply-To: "Coherent operating system" <COHERENT@indycms.bitnet>
Organization: APK Public Access Unix * Cleveland, OH

In article <9212171312.AA02302@dalek.mwc.com> you wrote:
: I forgot to mention one minor detail when asking for people to beta new
: terminfo/termcap & ported Taylor 1.04gamma uucp stuff... please
: include your postal address. Also allow a few weeks for the disks to
: get out, as I'll be disappearing for a couple of weeks for the holidays.

I'm game.

Steve Sobol
The Tiny Software Company
23707 Glenhill Drive
Cleveland, OH 44122-1234   (I'd like taylor... don't have a lot of use for
                            termcap/terminfo as I haven't been doing a lot
                            of programming lately.)

--
Steve Sobol   Head Cheerleader, APK Public Access *nix/Internet
(216) 481-9436 <2400 baud>     (216) 481-9425 <v.32bis, TurboPEP>
Telnet: wariat.org   To register: send e-mail to info@wariat.org, or
log in to BBS and download file 'user.new' from file area 2.

Also President of The Tiny Software Co.   E-Mail Address: sjsobol@tiny.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
From: mike@mallard.demon.co.uk (Mike Zanker)
Subject: tar with Coherent 4.0.1 
Distribution: world
Organization: Mallard Independent Mail and News, Leeds, UK
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 11:37:14 +0000

In article <7ia8sB1w164w@darktow.GUN.de> tn@darktow.GUN.de writes:

>I've massive problems with tar extracting under Coh 4.0.1.
>I got cnews from raven and try to unpack it. 
>
>tar xf cnews.tar
>
>Then tar starts and says something like:
>
>cnews.tar: this doesn't look like a tar archive

Sounds like you may be ftp'ing them as ASCII instead of BINARY. I
did this (by accident) and got the same thing. When you next ftp
to raven, type "binary" at the ftp> prompt before you "get" the
archive.

Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Zanker          |  Mail : mike@mallard.demon.co.uk
10 Mount Gardens     |
Leeds  LS17 7QN      |  Voice: +44 532 675893
United Kingdom       |
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
From: brianw@philips.oz.au (Brian Wallis)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 23:29:43 GMT
Organization: Philips Public Telecommunications Systems, Melbourne, Australia
Subject: Re: perl??
Distribution: world

(I hope this didn't go out twice!)

vspicer@ccu.umanitoba.ca writes:
>has anyone out there got perl working on coherent yet?    

I have a version (4.035 I think) running. It currently fails 6 of
the tests. I've examined two of the failures so far and they are
not to important and may be fixable, I'll be looking at the other
four this weekend.

The fact that I could get Coherent's 'sh' to run the Configure
script says a lot about the shell's reliability and compatability!
I'm impressed. (Minix's sh wouldn't do it)

I am using it for other things and it's not done anything nasty so I
suspect the other four problems are also not too important.

If I get these fixed I'll say so here and see if I can find the
original source to produce diffs. (I wish my floppy drives would
work under Coherent!)

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Wallis <brianw@philips.oz.au>	     Phone: +61 3 8813576
Philips Public Telecommunications Systems      Fax: +61 3 8813577
Melbourne, Australia
From: magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Coh/linux/gcc/etc
Date: 18 Dec 92 11:51:42 GMT
Organization: DarkTower Software
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Charles Shannon Hendrix (shendrix@PCS.CNU.EDU) wrote:
:         A little high for a GCC compiler don't you think?  If they put
: it on raven or some other public access, with complete source, then the
: $49 for those who don't have net access is OK.  A little high, but OK.

High?  I beginning to wonder who is high rather than what is high.

The bison script alone is 28 pages.  Any commercial C++ compiler you
would buy would easily be >$300.  So here is your choice: 1) port all
the GNU tools or port the bison script, the makefiles and all else and
then port GCC, or, 2) let MWC do it for $49.

I ordered mine already.  I don't have the time to play with it.  If you
do, more power to you.  However, I don't expect everything to be free,
and I realized when I bought a $99 OS it wouldn't have everything that
a $1,500 OS would have.  If it did, SCO would be out of business in about
an hour.

The major difference between freeware OS's like Linux and low-cost OS's
like Coherent is a centralized support and development organization.
That is what you pay for, not the software.

If support doesn't interest you, yeah, then $49 is way too much.  $4 would
be way too much.  You can write the software on your own.  If you want
someone else to do it for you, you pay for it.  That's called free trade.

You've had the OS for a while now, why don't *you* port
it and distribute it for free?  MWC couldn't do squat since GCC is
copyleft freeware.  I notice that you like having free software, DDK's, etc.
Well, what have you contributed to either Coherent or Linux in the form
of ports or original compositions?

I thought as much...

-Louis
--
---------------------------------------------------------
 Louis J. Giliberto, Jr.   ! magus@drktowr.chi.il.us
   -sysadmin drktowr       ! lgilibe@orion.it.luc.edu
  Chicago, IL  USA         ! 
---------------------------------------------------------
From: messina@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Why no ANSI C compiler?
Date: 14 Dec 92 17:54:13 GMT
Organization: Messina Software

D Parsons (dfp10@thor.albany.edu) wrote:
> What is the problem? We have a standard why not follow it? Some of us
> obtined COHERENT in order to learn programming. Don

Standards?  All algorithms will work the same.  For all I see, ANSI C
compilers just do some additional checking for you and allow type
declarations with arguments passed to a function.  I don't see how these
two will affect your ability to learn programming.  If you wish, you
could even do "#ifdef ANSI" blocks, and that would teach you a very
useful C programming technique  :-)
If you want to have all warnings that you can possibly imagine, use lint.

Best,

Tony
From: magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: Colorado Systems - Conversation
Date: 14 Dec 92 12:05:03 GMT
Organization: DarkTower Software
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

David Scholten (scholten@esseye.si.com) wrote:
: 
: Well, I called Colorado systems today, and they made it clear that
: they would not support Coherent.  However, if somebody else wrote
: the device drivers, they might consider becoming the maintainers.

I motion we take our business somewhere else.  If they are so dead set
against supporting our product, why should we bend over backwards to
support theirs?  If they had said, "there isn't enough of a user base
for us to commit R&D and funding to developing one, maybe in a year or
two" that would still be jerky (IMHO), but at least tactful.

: He did point out that all of the TAPE Drives are compatable with each
: other.  And that the Specs needed from the QIC committe are:
: 
: 	QIC-40	(JUMBO 120 DRIVES)
: 	QIC-80	(JUMBO 250 DRIVES)
: 	QIC-117 (COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL)
: 
: The phone number for the committee is (805)963-3853
: 

I'd be willing to try, but I don't own a tape drive.  I am going to purchase
one (or 2 -- OS/2 has a 120meg drive, and I don't want to back that
up on floppy!).  I've written a SCSI driver for microchannel before, and
after that disaster (you should see what MCA is like -- it's great for
everyone except the programmer) this shouldn't be too bad.  I can look
at the Linux drivers for the particulars since they also support non-SCSI
QIC format.

Can anyone recommend a tape drive besides colorado?  If I buy one, I'll
start playing with it.

: Anybody willing to give this a try?  Or should we try and convince
: Colorado systems to change their mind?

If they have a lousy attitude, I'd say let's move on.

-Louis

--
---------------------------------------------------------
 Louis J. Giliberto, Jr.   ! magus@drktowr.chi.il.us
   -sysadmin drktowr       ! lgilibe@orion.it.luc.edu
  Chicago, IL  USA         ! 
---------------------------------------------------------
From: dfilip@colornet.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: 16550 support appears buggy
Date: 16 Dec 92 03:07:26 GMT
Distribution: world
Summary: KISS
Organization: ColorNet Information Systems

H.C. Pulley writes:
>>
>>What we need is either a gettytab/gettydefs type configuration where we
>>could create any fallback mode possible.
>>
>>How about a SysV init and use the getty_ps getty MWC?  Please?
>>If we had multiple run levels and a SysV getty we'd have more flexibility
>>in set up.
>>
>>Also - the SVR3/SVR4 method of startup with /etc/init.d and seperate
>>startup files for each option (i.e. TCP, SMTP, CRON) would be quite
>>nice.  I implemented this on an SVR2 machine with some minimal scripts -
>>so if MWC comes up with a SYSV init and getty I'm set.
>>
>>(just skip the SVR4 port monitor / ttymon stuff please MWC).
>
>While I would like multiple run levels, full getty, etc., Coherent caters to 
>users who don't know a heck of a lot about unix stuff.  If MWC is to develop a
>full blown SysV init then they should do what they have done with cron.  Allow
>users to use the SysV method or the simpler v7 method, whichever they want.
>This may be complicated and difficult to implement though...

I agree fully with Harry (and I hope MWC is listening !). One of the strongest
selling points, I believe, of Coherent is that you can use it as a LEARNING
system, and you don't have to put a lot of blood and sweat to keep the thing
going.

That, BTW, is one of the concerns I have with UUCP and 4.1, which is rumored
to ship with Taylor. Although I have heard a lot of good things about Taylor,
Coherent's current UUCP kludge basically just runs itself, and I havn't
really had any problems. I don't want to have to start worrying about UUCP
problems when I upgrade, and really DON'T want to have to worry about should
I install with HoneyDanBer config files and V7 log files, or BSD config files
and HoneyDanBer log files, or Taylor config files and ...

Does anyone else feel the way I do ?
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=   David E. Filip                UUCP   : dfilip@colornet.com              =
=   ColorNet Information Systems  CIS    : 76430,3111                       =
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=    If David Cutler had been a heavy drug user in the 60's, he probably    =
=                    would have written Unix instead ...                    =
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=