From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: SGI Patches available ? (GRRRRRRRRR!!!!)
Date: 6 Apr 92 21:32:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: zuni.j7h81ng
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1992Apr6.074002.21039@ml.csiro.au> hart@ml.csiro.au (Bill Hart) writes:

| Is it possible to pick up patches off the network for Irix ? Is it possible to
| get patches from SGI ?

There are *some* patches, primarily for security bugs, available via
ftp from sgi.com.

| Here in Australia, in my lonely little outpost at the end of the Internet, we
| have a whole bunch of Sun's and a couple of SGI servers. Maintenance for the suns
| is no problem, I either pick up the patches off the network, or get them sent
| down by email (takes about 15 minutes to get a call back from the engineer and
| 10-15 minutes for the patch to arrive). Software upgrades arrive on CD regular as
| clockwork, 2-3 months behind the rest of the world (not so hot but I can live with
| it).
| 
| It is 18 months since we bought our first SGI server, during which time we have
| recieved no patches, and no software upgrades (we are still on Irix 3.3.2) even
| after paying a hefty maintenance fee. Calls to the local maintenance centre
| produce 2 responses :-
| 	1) All the staff are in a training seminar but will call you back as
| soon as possible (call back time ranges between a couple of hours to usually
| never).
| 	2) Sure, the software to fix your problem will be there in within 2 weeks
| (Ho Hum I'm still waiting).

You should definitely start escalating this up the support management
chain, until somebody gets your problems resolved.  There are definite
procedures in place for escalation.

| The major problem at the moment is that Irix 3.3.2 has a serious problem with
| exabyte tape drives, which seem to cause the machine to hang every 2/3 days.

There is *no* bug like this that I know of, (and I maintain the tpsc driver),
so whoever told you it was fixed in 3.3.3 is probably thinking of some
other bug.

| Evidently 3.3.3 fixes this. Also it would be nice to build some X11 R5 software
| which worked reliabily (we spent several days getting the core release to build),
| which would be much easier with 4.0X (we were promised this before christmas).
| 
| My users are pissed off, I'm pissed off, is this SGI's usual standard of 
| operation around the world ? Or have we been singled out because (naughty us)
| we thought it was more sensible to pay $3000 each for disk and tape drives rather
| than SGI's list price of $10,000 for the same items.

Where you bought your disks, memory, or other peripherals should have
absolutely no impact on your software support (or hardware either, as
long as the FE can use standard SGI stuff (like a minimum system) if
they suspect the third party hardware.

| I don't expect a squad of software engineers to fly in to hold my hand through
| an installation. All I want is a manual, some software and a support service which
| responds when you request information.
| 
| Sorry to bitch and whine filling up the bandwidth, but it's got to the stage
| where I don't know what else to do.

Please escalate this.  It reflects poorly on SGI when customers have to
resort to the network to get problems taken care of, particularly if they
are on full support.  It means we have a breakdown somewhere in our
procedures, and it needs to get fixed.
--
Let no one tell me that silence gives consent,  |   Dave Olson
because whoever is silent dissents.             |   Silicon Graphics, Inc.
    Maria Isabel Barreno                        |   olson@sgi.com