From: osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Subject: NSR 2.0 -- Hmmm, veddy veddy strange... And another condist gripe.
Organization: CS
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 00:49:14 GMT



Well, after heeding the advice of some guys internal to DEC who basically
just warned me about shutting down the DECnsr server while backups were
running (big, bad, no-no), I went ahead and installed NSR 2.0.

First the condist gripe:  Why doe the OLD CD have documentation for software
that's not shipped on the corresponding Binary CD?  For example, on the 
DECEMBER Ultrix Condist, ADA 1.1 and NSR 2.0 are provided (NSR sans
required patch. :).  however, the OLD only has docs for ADA 1.0 and
NSR 1.1. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????  I'm sure
there's a good reason, I'm just dying to hear it.  Now another 2 month
wait.  Grrrrrrr.

Some of you may remember an earlier list of gripes, well, here it comes
again, all new ones.

1)  I have my normal admin account 'osyjm' as an NSR administrator, but
for some reason, under 2.0, I'm now not allowed to mount/label tapes, nor
can I mount/label tapes using the 'decnsr' command.  Why, I'm not quite sure.
but the options are grayed-out for me on the menus.  If I log in as root
and run decnsr, then I can do things.

2)  There seem to be some motif problems with the decnsr motif app.  The
use of color is nonexistent, and there seem to be a few bogosities listed
later.

3)  in decnsr, select devices from the 'Administration' menu.  It has my
previously defined types, and has a set of pushbuttons for 'Media type',
but the font is grayed out, and it's very hard to read them to see if
they're right.

4)  in decnsr, when 'File indexes' is selected under 'Operation', it
shows the list of clients, and under the Used column the number is
either non-existent, or '0%'.  I assume that the nonexistent ones
are because my indices haven't all been converted to 2.0 format yet, but
several have, and they all show used as 0%.  Unless the 0% means wasted
space which should be 0 since the indexes were just rebuilt.  Who knows.
Selecting 'Help' for the File index window just says that there isn't any
help.

5)  Under 'scheduled backup savesets' in the same window, it shows the
filesystems, and the number of cycles of saves, but the size is always n/a.
Also, the lower window is created with the scrolling set to the bottom.  If
you don't look at the scroll bars to see that, you might wonder why it
doesn't list all your savesets.

6)  In the same menu, if you select your nsr server, and you use FQDN's 
for hostnames like a good little nsr admin, then the window is not
formatted properly, and the 'n/a' (meaningless) shows up under cycles,
and the number of cycles doesn't appear anywhere, and there isn't a
horizontal scrollbar to see.  BUG!

7)  Under 'Administartion' and then under server, decnsr will let you
add the same person twice as an admin.  ie, click on an existing
admin, then click on add, and it'll stick it in there twice.  Also, it
after selecting apply, it redraws the screen, with the apply box highlighted,
but grayed out so you can't select it anyway.  Not sure if that's legit
motif or not.

8)  Under 'Administration' and the 'Clients', it's listing some of my
clients twice.  when you get into that menu, it highlights all of the
first clients name (ie, caesar appears first on the menu, and multiple
times, and it highlights them all), but the lower menus for selecting
saveset and schedule only apply to the first one highlighted.  You have
to click on the second one to see it's savesets and schedules and such.

9)  More of a nit... It seems that in all of motif windows that need 
vertical scroll bars, you're left at the bottom of the scrolled area
rather than at the top...  Seems like most other programs I use that are
like this leave you at the top.

10)  Big gripe.  Lots of the windows don't have the horizontal scroll
bars, so you can't see all the savesets names, ie I have some
fairly deep directory structures with disks mounted waaaaay out there, and
I can't see them.  I can see to /xyz/abc/def/gh, but I can't see
if it's i/jk or i/xyz out there.

11)  Under the 'Saveset' window in the Volume index menu, I can't see
what the 'Status' region is for. At least in all the volumes I checked
there was nothing there.

12)  Sloooooooooooooow.  decnsr (the motif program, not the whole package)
is slow.  Clicking on different volumes gives you a blank screen, except
for some shaded areas where a scroll bar is going to go.

13)  Exit button.  In almost every menu, the only option under 'file' is
exit, so why not just put a damn exit button on the menu and save the
hassle?  Pain in the butt.

There's a bunch more.  I'm just tired of writing.  If a non-administrator,
(well, my osyjm account which used to be an admin, but now can't seem to
convince nsr that it is) fires up nsr, I have been able to make it leave
'Exit' buttons sitting at odd places where the old menu was, that are still
active, but when selected cause a seg fault.  Seems to do it under the
device menu more than anything else.

Also, I question the need for all of the nsr stuff to be in /bin, seems
that /usr/bin would've sufficed.  At least for things like decnsr and
other utilities not absolutely critical.  They're just symlinks to 
/usr/kits/... stuff...  Just a nit.

Also, in the man page for nsrim, it's retention, not retension.  I would
love to see a 'retension policy' for save set info :).

Just trying 'nsrim -n' results in 'RPC prog not registered'.  But w/o
docs, it's hard to guess.


All in all, most of the stuff listed is cosmetic...  I'll get back to
the net about the performance after I've done a few saves.  Right now
I'm stuck waiting for all my indexes to get converted to the new format.

Definitely a significant savings in disk space, it's much appreciated.
-- 
 Jaye Mathisen, COE Systems Manager                (406) 994-4780
 410 Roberts Hall,Dept. of Computer Science
 Montana State University,Bozeman MT 59717	osyjm@cs.montana.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix