HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mjr@tis.com (Marcus J Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Recommendations for high disk throughput
Date: 28 Jan 1993 15:37:27 GMT
Organization: Trusted Information Systems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.tis.com

pavlov@niktow.canisius.edu (Greg Pavlov) writes:
>> for database or other applications like imaging than it will
>> be for NFS. ..... 
>
>  Imaging, maybe, but I see this statement made a lot re databases and I
>  don't understand it.  "Database" does not equate with large sequential 
>  reads; in some cases it does, in some cases it doesn't, there just ain't
>  no generalization since databases span much of the applications spectrum.

	Yeah, good point. I guess my remark was colored from back when
I used to have to watch bulk unloads and loads run for hours and hours.
Perhaps the reason it was so slow was because the data was scattered
all over the disk. I guess it's implementation dependent, but I'd
*hope* that a database would try to cluster related tables or tuples
within close blocks. Admittedly, if your dbms goes through the filesystem
all bets are somewhat off, though the BSD filesystem might not make
this totally agonising. Stuff that uses the raw partition *should*
take advantage of these things. They probably don't though.

	Remember what dbms' were like when they worked through the
filesystem, when it used the old v7 block allocation stuff that
put data all over the disk using a "fifty-two pick up" algorithm?
Sorry. Hope I didn't ruin your appetite.

	Greg's remarks about using stripe sets for dbms applications
is certainly more accurate than mine. :) In just about any given high
I/O situation a stripe set of {small|fast|cheap} disks with as many
controllers as possible is a Good Thing Indeed. When I was at DEC
a buddy of mine did a pretty frighteningly fast demo using a stripe
set of Rz57s. Update times were small. Track caches are a nice thing. ;)
What happens to your database when one of the drives flames out is
left as an exercise to the reader. :)

mjr.
-- 
                                                 "guns don't die. people do."
From: jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Ultrix 4.3 and load averages
Date: 25 Jan 93 16:21:29 GMT
Reply-To: iain+@cmu.edu
Organization: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


Folks,

  I'm running Ultrix 4.3 on a Personal DECstation 5000/25. In doing
so, even when everything is "idle", there is a load average above
1.00.  For example, if I run top and let all my other processes idle,
it shows top as the "top" consumer, but it shows the load average
between 1.15 and 1.5.  Why is this?

  Speaking of top, why is it that when you ask top to display idle
processes, it says something bogus like 

281 processes: 57 sleeping, 2 running, 221 starting, 1 stopped

even though 

ps aux | wc -l

returns

    70

/*****************************************************************************/
/* Jon `Iain` Boone   Network Systems Administrator     boone@psc.edu        */
/* iain+@cmu.edu      Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center  (412) 268-6959       */
/* I don't speak for anyone other than myself, unless otherwise stated!!!!!! */
/*****************************************************************************/
From: lau@desci.wharton.upenn.edu (SH-DH 1325)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Upgrading to Ultrix 4.3 with a common /usr?
Date: 21 Jan 93 14:33:58 GMT
Organization: A Private Heaven

We're at the precipice of upgrading from 4.2a to 4.3.  Our "unsupported"
configuration is the common /usr for the server and diskless clients, i.e.,
one /usr area for everyone.

What is the proper procedure for ugrading to 4.3 in this situation where there
is only one /usr?  How to do upgrade the clients' /dlenv0/root0.mips without
the /usr tree?

Also, with 4.2a, we installed the Ultrix DECwindows for OSF/Motif V1.1.3.
Is this going to be affected by the upgrade?  Does 4.3 come with it built-in,
do I have to re-install or is it untouched?


Yan.
-- 
          "I think we're both gonna make it *big*. I am very optimistic."
   )~  Yan K. Lau          lau@desci.wharton.upenn.edu         128.91.11.226
 ~/~   Decision Sciences    The Wharton School    University of Pennsylvania
 /\    God/Goddess/All that is -- the source of love, light and inspiration!
From: mbeattie@black.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: strange path hardwired in awk
Keywords: awk
Date: 28 Jan 93 12:15:15 GMT
Organization: Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford, U
Originator: mbeattie@black

While looking through a more than usually verbose audit log,
I noticed that awk attempts to open /crp/pjw/awkhist/awkhist.
`strings /bin/awk' shows that this path is hardwired into
the binary. Does anyone know why or what this is?

This is Ultrix 4.2a on a DEC5500. The same string is not
present under SunOS 4.1 which is the other awk I checked.

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@black.ox.ac.uk> | I'm not a kernel hacker
Oxford University Computing Services      | I'm a kernel hacker's mate
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN (U.K.)   | And I'm only hacking kernels
Tel: +44 865 273232 Fax: +44 865 273275   | 'Cos the kernel hacker's late
From: pavlov@niktow.canisius.edu (Greg Pavlov)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Recommendations for high disk throughput
Date: 28 Jan 93 10:32:54 GMT
Organization: Canisius College, Buffalo NY. 14208

In article <1k7la9INNk6c@sol.tis.com>, mjr@tis.com (Marcus J Ranum) writes:
>
> IPI's going to be a lot better
> for database or other applications like imaging than it will
> be for NFS. ..... 

  Imaging, maybe, but I see this statement made a lot re databases and I
  don't understand it.  "Database" does not equate with large sequential 
  reads; in some cases it does, in some cases it doesn't, there just ain't
  no generalization since databases span much of the applications spectrum.

  Actually, I would say that a lot of people spend a lot of time to cleverly
  construct databases and software to reduce sequential data traversal to a
  minimum, or eliminate it altogether.  In the situations where this can be
  done (and I would guess that in the majority of applications, it is the
  correct and most useful strategy), and where there is a lot of user activity,
  I would want to spread the data out among as many controllers and under as 
  many read/write heads as I could - to the extent that the cpu and systems 
  software can handle it.  Cheaper, smaller disks, but more of them, would
  then seem to be the more appropriate choice.


  greg pavlov
  pavlov@fstrf.org
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: mats@rigel.efd.lth.se (mats akerberg)
Subject: Infoserver!
Reply-To: mats@rigel.efd.lth.se
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology,Lund, Sweden
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 16:55:35 GMT

Hi!

I have Ultrix 4.3 (DECstation 5000/20) and we have a
CD with program at an Infoserver.

How can I load the program (DECwrite for RISC) from the infoserver.
I couldn't find anything about it in the Grey Wall....

                      /Mats


____
  Mats Akerberg, System Manager (mats@rigel.efd.lth.se)
  Lund Institute of Technology ,School of Electrical Engineering and  
  Computer Sciences. Snail: Box 118  S-221 00 Lund Sweden
  Phone: + 46 46-109847 FAX: + 46 46-104013 
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: manson@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Bob Manson)
Subject: Re: processes with "D" can not be killed.
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 16:27:03 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.081330.17439@e2big.mko.dec.com> tusia@decum.muh.dec.com (Dick Tusia) writes:
>	Once a proc is in the D state there is no way to kill it
> until it changes state. This proc is in Disk wait or other  short-term wait. 

Yeah, we're still getting these periodically under 4.3. Donno what
causes it, but it's waiting for the p_ref variable to go to zero, and
since nothing claims to be ref'ing the process, it'll never do so.
Whee.  We've been periodically calling these in for well over a year
now.
							Bob
manson@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: ccwj@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Wayne Jennings)
Subject: Re: Writing to an Exabyte 8500
Keywords: Exabyte 8500
Organization: James Cook University
Distribution:  world
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 03:55:30 GMT

In article <1993Jan22.162824.22063@mic.ucla.edu> cliff@eggneb.astro.ucla.edu (cliff UCLA Astronomy) writes:
>
>
> I just got an Exabyte 8500 and I want to know if I can write to it at both
> high(5.0gig) and low(2.3gig) density.  I made the device files and like my
> other tape units I get both  rmt0l's and rmt0h's but a preliminary test using
> nrmt0l seems to indicate that the tape is writing at high density.  Any
> suggestions????
>
> cliff


To read 8200 saves on a 8500 use /dev/rmt0a. Also we had to install the new
SCSI CAM software on our DECstations in order to get the use of all of the
5 Gb tape. Before we installed it, only 2.3 Gb of the 8500 5 Gb capacity save
would be used. This was done via recommendations from DEC.

Hope this helps,

Wayne Jennings
-- 
Computer Centre
James Cook University
Queensland 4811 AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 77 814649
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: frank@croton.nyo.dec.com (Frank Wortner)
Subject: Re: POP Server for ULTRIX?
Reply-To: frank@nyo.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 19:13:40 GMT



|>frank@croton.nyo.dec.com (Frank Wortner) writes:
|>>4.2: 	/etc/popd
|>>4.3:	/usr/lib/mh/popd
|>
|>Um, I have 4.2A and /etc/popd is a directory (empty) 

Sorry, started the typing fingers before I started my brain.  /usr/lib/mh/popd
is the POP server, though.  Unfortunately no man page appears in the
ULTRIX distribution for this program and a few others.

Sources (and documentation) for a mh 6.7 (similar to what ships on
the ULTRIX distribution), which includes man pages for popd, can be had
from pub/mail/ua/mh on gatekeeper.dec.com.

						Frank
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Subject: Re: Recommendations for high disk throughput
Organization: CS
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:33:02 GMT

In article <1jp1pfINN3de@sol.tis.com> mjr@tis.com (Marcus J Ranum) writes:
>>We are looking at upgrading our campus Usenet News server from a hopelessly
>>overburdened DECstation 3100 to a DECstation 5000/240.  The biggest bottleneck
>>for handling news has been disk access time, so we're looking at options that
>>will allow us the highest disk throughput possible to a disk with a capacity
>>of at least a gigabyte.  I'm looking for advice on an optimal configuration
>
>	Your message-ID was a Cnewsish one. I'd start by upgrading to
>INN. That will solve some of your problems right away.
>	If that doesn't do it, I think I'd buy a second SCSI controller
>and get the disk striping for ULTRIX software (from assets) and about
>4 Rz25s. Those are the little, *fast* 500or-so-meg disks. I'd build

Of course, adding second SCSI implies that they no longer use the 3100.

I have news serving our campus off a 240 with 72MB's RAM, and news is on a 
RZ25, and I'm running the Cnews perf release, and having no load problems
at all.  Well, actually, I needed more capacity, so now it's running of
an HP 1.3GB drive, but still a single spindle, no probs.

INN will certainly help if you have lots of incoming feeds; I didn't notice
a big improvement with  readers though.  INN is certainly tuned for handling
oodles of incoming news.  
-- 
 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
From: butler@quest.comm.mot.com (Jim Butler)
Subject: DEC FAXserver?  Anybody used this?
Reply-To: butler@quest.comm.mot.com (Jim Butler)
Organization: Land Mobile Products Sector, Motorola, Inc.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:54:52 GMT



	DEC has FAXserver software available for their RISC box, and before
I spend any time or money on it and a modem I would like to know...


	1) What experience anyone has had with it, e.g.,

	- how well does it handle text and graphics
	- (others)

	2) What FAX modems will work with it, and which ones work
	   best.

	I don't know much about these things so please treat me as a 
neophyte.

	Thanks,

	Jim

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Butler                            | Internet: butler@Quest.comm.mot.com
Motorola, Inc.                        | 
Land Mobile Products Sector Research  | Phone: 708-576-5962
Schaumburg, Illinois USA              | 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: dietrich@dxcern.cern.ch (Dietrich Wiegandt)
Subject: Load dependent clock slowdown
Summary: Clock slowdown on moderately loaded DEC5900
Keywords: ULTRIX 4.3, hardware clock, ntp
Reply-To: dietrich@dxcern.cern.ch
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 15:29:57 GMT


Hello,

we observe a load dependent clock slowdown on our DEC5900 running ULTRIX 4.3.
The clock is synchronized once per day (at 00:05) by contacting a time server
using ntp and the result is logged.

The observation is that after a normal working day the clock can be more than
a minute late (load factors may rise to about 30 for short periods of time
and there are often more than 100 simultaneous sessions)
but during the weekend the clock is fast by fractions of a second.

Has anybody else noted a similar behaviour? What is the cause of this slowdown?
In principle the clock interrupt should have quite a high priority and not be
held up for extended periods of time by peripheral activities. There are some
13 disks, mainly RZ57s plus some RZ58s, on the machine.

We have recently upgraded to ULTRIX4.3 + CAM, but the behaviour was similar
before under ULTRIX4.2A and (then) standard SCSI.

Any hints are welcome.

Dietrich Wiegandt
CERN Computing and Networks Division
CH-1211 Geneve 23
Switzerland
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: streater@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater)
Subject: Re: I installed Motif, can I delete DECwindows?
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 04:35:19 GMT

In article <ROBM.93Jan26162453@ishtar.Berkeley.EDU> robm@ishtar.Berkeley.EDU (Rob McNicholas) writes:
>[In response to several postings about how installing the Motif 1.1.3
>subset seems to adversely affect the DECwindows subsets....]
>
>People always act so suprised and then run off to their computer and
>immediately post to Usenet when something like this happens, when they
>_should_ run to the Installation Guide or Release Notes, which
>explains exactly this problem.
>
As original poster here I will ask this: I knew that the Motif install replaced
some subsets, e.g. mail and dxnotepad. But not all, e.g. dxue. My question was
whether there was any *other* stuff I could delete which the upgrade didn't
*bother* to delete (without losing functionality, evidently; I *want* dxue).
I was expecting people either to say "no" or "yes we routinely delete thus-and-
such". That's all.


Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: thomson@zarda.macc.wisc.edu (Don Thomson)
Subject: Recommendations for high disk throughput
Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center
Date: 22 Jan 93 07:39:52

We are looking at upgrading our campus Usenet News server from a hopelessly
overburdened DECstation 3100 to a DECstation 5000/240.  The biggest bottleneck
for handling news has been disk access time, so we're looking at options that
will allow us the highest disk throughput possible to a disk with a capacity
of at least a gigabyte.  I'm looking for advice on an optimal configuration
for these needs, including:

Choice of disk:

	RZ26, RZ58, third-party fast disks, RAID storage systems?

Options to speed up access:

	Prestoserve disk caching, IPI disk interface?

Any and all comments on these and suggestions on other options would be most
appreciated!
--
 
----- Don Thomson ----- MACC, 1210 W. Dayton, Madison, WI  53706 -------------
    (608) 262-0138      thomson@macc.wisc.edu / thomson@wiscmacc.bitnet
From: john@iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Recommendations for high disk throughput
Date: 23 Jan 93 16:35:59 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA

alan@nabeth.enet.dec.com (Alan Rollow) writes:
}thomson@zarda.macc.wisc.edu (Don Thomson) writes:
}>We are looking at upgrading our campus Usenet News server from a hopelessly
}>overburdened DECstation 3100 to a DECstation 5000/240.  The biggest bottleneck
}>for handling news has been disk access time, so we're looking at options that
}>will allow us the highest disk throughput possible to a disk with a capacity
}>of at least a gigabyte.  I'm looking for advice on an optimal configuration
}>for these needs, including:
 ...
}Most of the I/O was 8 KB, but the next biggest chunk was 1 KB.

}An IPI subsystem will probably help, but it seems a bit overkill...

Perhaps not.  A fairly recent Usenix Paper, "Why SCSI is better than IPI
for NFS" (or something like that), held that IPI was really only a win
for large sequential I/Os, for the NFS I/O mix (generally 8KB and all
over the disk [sound familiar?]) SCSI was a win.

John
-- 
John Hascall                   ``An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger.''
Systems Software Engineer
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center  +  Ames, IA  50011  +  515/294-9551
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: eillihca@drizzle.StanFord.EDU ( Achille Hui, the Day Dreamer )
Subject: Re: Zombie processes (Ultrix 4.3/MIPS)
X-Transfer-Agent: nntp.stanford.edu (NNTP)
Organization: Dept. of Physics, Stanford University.
Date: 22 Jan 93 21:31:47 GMT

przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov (Przemek Klosowski) writes: 

>The wait channel for the Xterm process indicates that it waits in
>'select' (as reported by SPS3.0). The Xsession file execs the xterm
>command as its last action, and the zombies are children of Xterm.
>However, when I added echo/sleep commands to the beginnign of .cshrc
>and .login, I realized that the zombies are created before .cshrc is

Did you start your xterm in your .xsession through an "exec" instead
of create it as a subprocess? If that is the case, then the zombies
are the background process you started in your .xsession. A trick
to eliminate them is to start them as the grand child in background
of your .xsession and your .xsession explictly wait for the child
before your exec your last process. Following is an example .xsession
which illustrated the idea.

#!/bin/sh5
cd
xrdb  -merge .Xdefaults;
xset  click 0 m 3 20  s 600 5
(
	mwm &
	sleep 1; xterm -name master -sb +ut -ls \
		-geometry 80x24-8-8 -n Master -title 'Local XTerm (Master)' &
	sleep 2; xhost	cardinal  drizzle   grizzle  frazzle fenrir \
			> /dev/null 2>&1 &
) & wait $!
exec xterm -name console -sb +ut +ls \
	-geometry 80x6+8+8 -n Console -title 'Console'

Hopefully this helps....
-------------------------------------achille (eillihca@drizzle.stanford.edu)
JAXU -- Just Another X User.
From: pavlov@niktow.canisius.edu (Greg Pavlov)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: ULTRIX .or. OSF?
Date: 28 Jan 93 09:58:43 GMT
Organization: Canisius College, Buffalo NY. 14208

In article <1k77i3INN25j@slab.mtholyoke.edu>, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
> In article <1993Jan26.151700.9709@lth.se> mats@rigel.efd.lth.se writes:
> >I have heard a rumour that DEC is going to sack
> >OSF for MIPS.....
> >That means no shared librarys among other things.
> 
> This rumor is more than a half year out of date.  ;-)
> -- 

  I would say "more than half a year OLD", rather than "out of date".  Some
  things, like wine, age well; some go away and come back.  The only statement
  on the subject that I would bet on goes something like this:  "if one of 
  your jobs is to make long-term purchasing decisions for your company and
  your job depends on making correct ones, you would be very foolish to bet
  on DEC's commitment to MIPS processors".  Isn't that obvious by now ?  So
  why bother wasting the time on it ?


  greg pavlov
  pavlov@fstrf.org
  
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: reeves@ayauw.aosg.gsf.dec.com (Jon Reeves)
Subject: Re: the dbx blues
Reply-To: reeves@decvax.dec.com
Organization: AOSG
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:31:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.141018.18497@bmw.mayo.edu>, stan@sabaac.<incorrectly configured> (Andrew Staniszewski) writes:
|> 	dbx does not see upper case variables if a lower case variable of
|> 	the same name exists.

Try the command "set $casesense=1".  dbx is, by default, not case sensitive.
-- 
Jon Reeves	Digital Equipment Corporation, Alpha Open Systems Group
		5 Wentworth Drive, MS GSF1-1K13, Hudson NH 03051-4929 USA
+1 603 884 5859	reeves@aosg.gsf.dec.com		FAX: +1 603 884 1685
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: andrew@daneel.rdt.monash.edu.au (Andrew Moore)
Subject: Serial lines on 5000/120
Reply-To: andrew.moore@rdt.monash.edu.au
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 07:56:02 GMT

Hi,

I have a fax modem connected to the serial line of a 5000/120, we are
having enormous problems with data corruption, most likely caused by data
overrun (a lack of hand-shaking between modem and DEC.)

I am not totally sure what of the DEC control lines work and what do not in the 5000
serial port, ^S/^Q flow control is not really possible given the 8-bit
nature of Fax data, umm Anyone had similar annoyances, and better yet
found a solution ?

The Fax modem is currently connected to the DEC with a piece of ribbon
cable (which I would have thought to have given the best possible
chance of success)  The Fax modem unit works fine data loss to the DEC
seems to be the problem.

Mail me and I will summerise back to the net.

Andrew.
-- 
    Andrew Moore      |    Department of Robotics and Digital Technology
Ph:  +61 3 565 3218   |   Clayton Campus, Monash Uni, VIC 3168, Australia
Fax: +61 3 573 2345   |       E-Mail:  andrew.moore@rdt.monash.edu.au 
 Be interested in the future, you will be spending the rest of your life there.
From: aduhon@lub001.lamar.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Commands
Date: 22 Jan 93 15:19:14 +1700
Organization: Lamar University - Beaumont

Is there a command which gives you both pid & idle time?

Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: mats@rigel.efd.lth.se (mats akerberg)
Subject: ULTRIX .or. OSF?
Reply-To: mats@rigel.efd.lth.se
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology,Lund, Sweden
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:17:00 GMT





Hi!

I have heard a rumour that DEC is going to sack
OSF for MIPS.....
That means no shared librarys among other things.

Why oh why DEC, how can you treat us, the faitful users like
this?



____
  Mats Akerberg, System Manager (mats@rigel.efd.lth.se)
  Lund Institute of Technology ,School of Electrical Engineering and  
  Computer Sciences. Snail: Box 118  S-221 00 Lund Sweden
  Phone: + 46 46-109847 FAX: + 46 46-104013 
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Subject: host::host::user problem revisited.
Organization: CS
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 00:05:20 GMT



I posted a message recently about a problem with ultrix sendmail from
4.3, and getting a ruleset replacement error when the destination was
host::host::user, and it's filling up my mailq.

An ex-DEC employee sent me mail, said he posted the fix, but before
I could read it, my news disk went south, and when it was replaced, expire
toasted the article  before I ever saw it.

Did anybody save this so I can get a copy of it?

Thanks.
-- 
 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