HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wayne@backbone.uucp (Wayne Schlitt)
Subject: Re: Memory Cache and Unix
Organization: The Backbone Cabal
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 21:24:06 GMT

In article <BM92yz.5n5@world.std.com> apl@world.std.com (Anthony P Lawrence) writes:
> Here's my question about CPU caches:
> 
> Let's assume even a small 32K cache.  It seems extremely unlikely
> (to me) that 32K worth of instructions are going to be executed
> before some system call is made and Unix switches away from this
> process to handle something else.

some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations:

on a 1 MIPS machine, 1 million instructions will execute every second.
If, on average, each instruction is 2-3 bytes, then each second, there
will be 2-3MB of intructions referenced.  Of course, a lot of those
instructions could be in a loop or common subroutines, so the actually
amount of memory referenced wont be that quite that high, say
750KB-1MB.  on the other hand, many of those instructions will
reference data of some sort, say one 4 byte data fetch for every 4
instructions, so add in say 250KB.  If the context switch time is even
as short as 1/100th of a second, 100-150KB of memory could easily be
referenced.   

multiply this value by the number of MIPS your machine runs at and you
can see that 32KB isnt that large, and even 256KB could be "small".
some high end workstations from HP have 1MB caches.  (yes, single user
workstations, not mini's and yes, 1MB of cache, not main memory.
makes my 64KB cp/m machine look tiny.  :-)


> 
> Unless that "something else" is the shared text for the same program
> that was running, isn't the cache now totally invalid and doesn't
> it get refilled?

well, no, the cache usually is still valid.  if the cache is physically
mapped (as opposed to virtually mapped), then the cache can remain
valid through the os call, the context switch, into the other program
and then back to the first.  

if you have a typical workstation running unix, X and a few programs,
your cache may have the context switch code in unix, the mouse code,
the X server code, and the application that you are using.

> 
> So what purpose does this serve on Unix systems?  Indeed, wouldn't
> the cache actually hinder performance?  And wouldn't a larger CPU
> cache hurt even more?

a larger cache rarely hurts.  the large the cache, the more programs
can be active without distroying the cache lines.  the only time
larger caches hurt is when the cause chip timing problems and
therefore make the entire cache run slower.

> 
> I'm not trying to be a wise guy here:  if there is something I don't
> understand, please enlighten me...
> 


i am not an expert in this area either, so please enlighten me to any
place that i am wrong on.



-wayne
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com (Alan Edmonds)
Subject: Re: ISC TCP 1.2 Ether Card?
Organization: Texas Instruments, Inc. - Plano, Tx
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 13:23:10 GMT
Keywords: ISC TCP 1.2 Ethernet card

>I use Western Digital / SMC WD8013's on my machines.  I've not run into
>problems with it...

I have a persistent problem with multiple copies of portmapper running,
along the lines of 30 or 40.  Actually, I get as many as NPROC allows
until the process table fills and all work stops.  I have seen this problem 
when mounting NFS filesystems from Suns (Sparcs and others) as well as 
having a Sun mount the ISC's disks.  Anybody go any ideas?

I'm using TCP 1.3, NFS 2.1 (I think) and WD/SMC 8013 Elite cards.

-- 
Alan Edmonds                                        Texas Instruments, Inc.
My opinions are only my own.                        M/S 8513
Work phone: (214)575-6427                           6620 Chase Oaks Blvd.
Email: alan@ernest.UUCP or alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com  Plano, Texas  75023
Xref: sparky comp.unix.sysv386:8634 comp.dcom.lans.ethernet:610
From: bm@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (basil.ma)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.dcom.lans.ethernet
Subject: 10Base-T in ESIX SRV4 system
Keywords: 10base-T ESIX
Date: 14 Apr 92 18:16:06 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories


I want to experiment with installing a 10Base-T card in a 
Gateway 486 machine running ESIX SRV4. 

I would like to receive comments and recommendations from 
people who have done this or similar installations. 

Are there particular 10BASE-T cards to get/avoid? Is there
software  required in addition to the ESIX release? 

Basil Ma
bma@groucho.att.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: hikaru@infoac.rmi.de (Walter D|rr)
Subject: HELP: /etc/getty respawning too rapidly
Organization: RMI Net INFO.box Systems * Aachen * Hamburg * Flensburg
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 13:49:10 GMT

After booting an ISC 2.2 system the message
 
	INIT: Command is respawning too rapidly
	id: co "/etc/getty console console"
 
appears on the screen and the system hangs. The message is repeated for all
VT consoles. This happened after a normal shutdown.
 
I have managed to bring up the system in single user mode by booting from
the distribution disks and setting initdefault to "s".
As soon as I type "init 2" the message above appears. The odd thing is,
that init tries to start the getty very early in the boot process.
Normally I see a message "/etc/mount..." and "cron started" before the
"Console login:" appears. This does not happen now.
I tried to start a getty manually by entering "/etc/getty /dev/vt01 vt01 &".
This seems to work. At least the login: prompt appears.
That is why I think that the problem is not getty but something else,
but I have no idea what it might be. It must be something pretty obvious
since the system went down without problems and was booted without problems
several times prior to this event.
 
If anyone has encountered this problem before or has an idea what I might
try to bring up the system in multiuser again, please mail me!
I want to avoid having to reinstall the system again.
 
Thanks in advance!
 
-Walter
From: rwhite@jagat.uucp (Robert White)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: PANIC: Can't switch to supervisor mode
Date: 17 Apr 92 05:15:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: jagat.1992Apr17.051516.5529
Organization: Rob White and Friends

In article <2454@ucl-cs.uucp> D.Golds@cs.ucl.ac.uk (David Golds) writes:
>
>	PANIC: Can't switch to supervisor mode
>

This is in the "Something to try" category.  I was having some problems
with booting a system.  It would start to boot and then panic.  The
problem ended up being a scrambled CMOS setup.  The boot program
could be loaded and then when *it* tried to load the kernel it loaded
some of it and then got to digital trash.  A vector to that image provided
a partal boot of the kernel followed by a panic and attempted dump.

IF (way *big* if there) this is your problem things are both easy to fix
and possibly a disaster for your data.  Check to make sure that the disk
geometry for your drive is correct in your CMOS, and fix it if it is not.
If the geometry *is* wrong and the "dump" logic was intact durring one
of the dump attempt then there is no telling what that dump overwrote.

How or why did the CMOS go bad?  (if that is the case...) well it can
happen from transient voltage problems, static discharge to a poorly
grounded case, and most notably cheap dos applications.

Good Luck,
Rob.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: peter@zeus.dialix.oz.au (Peter Wemm)
Subject: Re: R4: Too many processes?
Organization: Karam Pty. Ltd., Perth, Australia.
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 05:20:03 GMT

evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:

>NPROC has been raised to 400. Yet there have been times on this one
>system where "ps -e | wc -l" yields under 100, yet there have been
>programs aborted with "fork failed -- too many processes".

[trimmed]

>-- 
> Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software Ltd., located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
>         evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!utzoo!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
>              If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?

MAXUP is another parameter related to the number if user processes. 
Paraphrased from the system admin guide:
MAXUP: Specifies how many concurrent processes a non-superuser is
allowed to run.  This is per UID, not per session.  If you have one
user logged in many times, this limit would be quickly reached.

I had a look at my /etc/conf/cf.d/mtune, and NPROC was 200, and MAXUP
was 30.  Gak!  Time to rebuild a kernel :-)

-Peter
-- 
Peter Wemm : peter@zeus.dialix.oz.au     If it's broke, fix it (The MS-DOS way)
Work phone: +61-9-479-1855      If it aint broke, don't touch it (The Unix way)
Fax: +61-9-479-1134     If we can't fix it, it ain't broke (Maintainer's Motto)
From: larry@news.rn.com (Larry Snyder)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ISC TCP 1.2 Ether Card?
Keywords: ISC TCP 1.2 Ethernet card
Date: 16 Apr 92 21:19:41 GMT
Organization: The Gator Public Access Unix Site (219)289-0777

sam@csi.compuserve.com (Sam Neely) writes:

>I run a series of machines who gateway electronic mail between the
>Internet and CompuServe.  When I first installed TCP/IP 1.2 without

I'm wondering -- how much traffic goes through your gateway?
-- 
Larry Snyder                                    internet: larry@gator.rn.com
keeper of the Gator                                 uucp: uunet!trauma!larry
Xref: sparky comp.unix.sysv386:8710 comp.sys.sun.apps:758
From: jimmy@denwa.info.com (Jim Gottlieb)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.sys.sun.apps
Subject: Re: bootlegging hurts Unix
Date: 16 Apr 92 07:15:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: denwa.1992Apr16.071514.7826
Organization: Info Connections, West Los Angeles

In article <1992Apr11.001104.17201@unixland.natick.ma.us> bill@unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Heiser) writes:

>Recently I
>tried to get them to send us a new key for a copy so I could move it
>off a machine that was going away.  They told me the only way they would
>issue a new license is if I paid the upgrade to a newer version!
>
>That left a very sour taste in my mouth WRT Island Graphics.
>Now when I get their flyers, they go straight to the circular file.

I have also been much less than impressed with the attitude of people
at Island Graphics.  When I bought my Sun I ordered Island's WDP
package along with it.  My reseller (anDataco) didn't have it in stock
but ordered it direct from Island.

When it arrived, I noticed it was their old Sunview version.  I guess
they figured they would try to pawn this off on me.  No way.  My sales
rep at Andataco called them for me to complain.  He tells me that the
guy at Island asked him, "How important of a customer is it?"  He was
appalled at the question.  I guess since I hadn't ordered several
hundred copies, they just didn't care about me.  My rep pursued this
matter for several months until he found someone willing to help me.

Finally, thanks to his efforts, I got the OpenWindows (and color)
version.  And now when I call to inquire about upgrading from 3.0 to
3.1 they tell me it will cost something like $400 and they have an
attitude.

May WordPerfect for X steal all their business.  WordPerfect has always
been wonderful to deal with.
-- 
Jim Gottlieb
E-Mail: <jimmy@denwa.info.com> or <attmail!denwa!jimmy>
V-Mail: +1 310 551 7702   Fax: 478-3060   Voice: 824-5454
From: umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ISC TCP 1.2 Ether Card?
Keywords: ISC TCP 1.2 Ethernet card
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:17:19 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

In <1992Apr14.034717.17741@csi.compuserve.com> sam@csi.compuserve.com (Sam Neely) writes:

>TCP/IP 1.2 is a piece of trash.  Upgrade it immediately or you will need
>minoxidil to replace the hair that you've pulled out trying to get it to
>work.  Last I heard, the cost to upgrade from 1.2 to 1.3 was $50.

Could you explain?  Admittedly, I've only had my ISC 2.2.1 and TCP 1.2.0
running for a couple days, but I installed it all and got NFS running
without any difficulty.  Its only getting VERY light use, and everything
seems to be fine.  The only thing I noticed is that once dfspace showed
I had 53.4 meg available on a remotely mounted 40 meg drive!!!!  But
I'd venture to guess that would be a problem more relating to NFS than
TCP.

Charles

-- 
/ Charles Carlson  umcarls9@ccu.Umanitoba.CA  
\ This .sig now available on a limited edition 2 record set, for 4 easy 
/ installments of $19.95 each. To order, please have your Visa or Mastercard
\ ready and phone: 1-800-555-1212, or send check or MO to 200-155 Carlton St.
From: eb@felix.Sublink.Org (Enrico Badella)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: SCO SYSV386 3.2r2.0 ODT 1.1 80486-33 outperforms SUN SPARC 4/260
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:51:07 GMT
Organization: Soft*Star s.r.l, Torino, Italy

In article <ktvvlmINN7ug@neuro.usc.edu> merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) writes:
>Performance figures from BRLCAD 4.0 ray tracing benchmarks:
>
>The 80386-33 had 64KB cache and 8MB main memory.  
>The 80486-33 had 256KB cache and 8MB main memory.

Have you every tried comparing I/O speed?

That's what makes a machine usefull; these benchmarks are simply crap
just like the fact that PC will replace mainframes, {super,mini}computers etc.

-- 
Enrico Badella				Internet: eb@felix.sublink.org
Soft*Star s.r.l.			          eb@icnucevx.cnuce.cnr.it
Via Camburzano 9			Phone:    +39-11-746092
10143 Torino, ITALY			Fax:      +39-11-746487
From: gerard@netlabs.com (Gerard Horan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Deleting UNIX partition for ISC
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:40:14 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.
Originator: gerard@bunsen.netlabs.com



I have ISC 2.2 on a Gateway 2000 486/33 with 200MB IDE drive. I currently have 2
DOS partitions, C and D (60MB) . The remainder of the disk 140B is reserved
for UNIX. DOS fidsk shows the C partition and the D partition as an
extended partition. My brother who is a DOS user is buying the machine 
from me and I want to delete the UNIX partition. 
Is there any gotchas I should know about? Does DOS fdisk delete the UNIX
aprtition? How do I delete the UNIX partition?


many thanks

gerard
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: bill@unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Heiser)
Subject: Re: bootlegging hurts Unix
Organization: Unixland Public Access Unix  (508) 655-3848
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 00:11:04 GMT

s923074@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Wedo Jozis) writes:
>aps the unix industry will mature to such a stage some day. This licensing has on several ocassions been the deciding factor when selecting software. I don't like the idea of crtical applications being locked up, and my business being relient on a company that someday no longer exist. The unix industry should take a lesson from the PC industry. I'm new to unix, find it flexible and versitile but frustrating when such situations arise.

Me too.  We have some copies of Island Write/Paint/Draw - we bought it
from Sun, and it required node licensing.  The product was then sold
back to the company that wrote it for Sun, Island Graphics.  Recently I
tried to get them to send us a new key for a copy so I could move it
off a machine that was going away.  They told me the only way they would
issue a new license is if I paid the upgrade to a newer version!

That left a very sour taste in my mouth WRT Island Graphics.
Now when I get their flyers, they go straight to the circular file.

-- 
bill@unixland.natick.ma.us   ...!uunet!{think,world}!unixland!bill
Public Access UNIX / USENET / E-MAIL Accounts are available! (508) 655-3848
5 lines  -  Located in Natick, MA   USA    Supporting V.32/PEP/V.42bis, etc.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: mark@cyantic.com (Mark T. Dornfeld)
Subject: Re: Univel: USL and Novell SVR4 product - info
Organization: CYANTIC Systems
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 12:55:58 GMT
Keywords: unix novell svr4 univel

In article <732@ncrsaud.SaudiArabia.NCR.COM> Khalid.Bahey-elDin@SaudiArabia.NCR.COM (Khalid Bahey-elDin) writes:
>Here is an excrept from an internal NCR/AT&T publication ("News About AT&T",
>distributed with "NCR NEWS" Vol. 14 No. 2 March/April 1992, an employee/
>customer publication). This is more like a press release than a technical
>description of the product:
>
>Would somebody give us more *technical* info? Specifically:
>
>1. When will this product be available?

To developers:   May 1992
To people: Fall
>
>2. What will be the approx. price (SVR4 2-user license runtime only sells as
>   low as 250$).

Not known yet.

>3. How will it be different from todays SVR4? Will it be a better/crippled
>   version of SVR4? Will the kernel still be big as today's SVR4?

It's based on the USL Destiny product for Intel platforms. It's supposed to
be 'lighter' than the current releases without sacrificing any major
components. It will also include the OpenLook and Motif GUIs.

>4. How much will the C development system cost?

No info yet.

>5. Will it run todays SVR4 i386 binaries?

Yes.

>6. Will it come with ksh, job control, symbolic links, ...etc.?

Yes.

Why not call Univel at 408 473-8788?

They have been very helpful.
-- 

Mark T. Dornfeld                              Voice: (416) 234-9048
CYANTIC Systems                               Facsimile: (416) 234-0477
101 Subway Crescent Suite 2103                Email: mark@cyantic.com
From: pgd@compuram.bbt.se (Per Lindqvist)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Wyse160 vs IBMPC+Kermit
Date: 8 Apr 92 12:42:33 GMT

jrd@cc.usu.edu writes:
: 
: 	Some informal testing here shows that an average PC's video system,
: clone VGA board, runs around 9600 baud effective, limited mostly by screen
: scrolling rates. Some are slower, some video boards are nicely faster.

I have written a high-speed screen driver (for 386BSD), and it gives
over 90000 chars/second both scrolling and non-scrolling, which
translated to around 900000 baud, if run over a serial line. For a
16-bit architecture I would expect half these numbers. I also think
you can increase this speed, maybe double it or more, by writing
assembly code for the time-critical loop.

So the video system is obviously capable of much higher speeds than
what the current crop of pc programs gives. It has always been a
mystery to me why terminal emulation programs are so slow on a pc,
even on a fast 386 machine.  They commonly drop characters at rates
over 19200 baud (1920 chars/second). (I have not tried the newest kermit)

Now, different VGA cards might have different number of wait-states
for memory access, so your mileage might vary.

-- 
Per Lindqvist

Internet: pgd@compuram.bbt.se   Fidonet: Per Lindqvist @ 2:201/332
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: bill@unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Heiser)
Subject: Re: Upgrade prices
Organization: Unixland Public Access Unix  (508) 655-3848
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 02:57:26 GMT

orville%weyrich@tnet.com (Orville R. Weyrich) writes:
>Is there something in AT&T's license terms that forces vendors to overprice
>upgrades? Or is it just greed? If so, it seems like a big mistake and an 
>obstacle to more wide- spread acceptance of UNIX.

I think it is greed!  :-)

This example doesn't relate "directly", but look for example at the
pricing of ESIX R4.  Esix R3 was $800 or so -- ESIX R4 is $1700!
ESIX is *STILL* the bare-bones product in the pack, similar to
Consensys and MST - yet the pricing is virtually the same
as DELL, which offers a number of add-ons for no additional charge!
I just don't understand how they could have so drastically changed
their pricing policy yet not their product line!
-- 
bill@unixland.natick.ma.us   ...!uunet!{think,world}!unixland!bill
Public Access UNIX / USENET / E-MAIL Accounts are available! (508) 655-3848
5 lines  -  Located in Natick, MA   USA    Supporting V.32/PEP/V.42bis, etc.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: adkins@turtle.cis.ohio-state.edu (Brian Adkins)
Subject: Re: ISC Install disk problem
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 15:41:48 GMT

I forgot to mention that I used DOS 5.0
From: gauthier@ug.cs.dal.ca (Paul Gauthier)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Getting high order chars to display in GNU Emacs!! Help!!
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:34:12 GMT
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

Hi... I have just installed GNU Emacs on my SCO UNIX 3.2.2 and can NOT get it
to display high-order characters (ascii codes > 127) as anything but a
backslash followed by their octal code. Any help explaining how to get them
to show up as their true IBM-extended character set selves (ie, lines, boxes,
etc) and how to make Emacs boot with this as the default mode would be most
appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
	PG
-- 
============================================================================
Paul Gauthier / gauthier@ug.cs.dal.ca      | "All general statements have
Phone: (902)462-8217    Fax: (902)420-1675 |  exceptions."
   ... I'm a .sig virus, copy me to the stdin of your shell; rm -r *; ...
From: john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: svr4 asy, uucico and ttymon hints (was: Sys V R4, Async problems...)
Keywords: svr4, asy, uucico
Date: 11 Apr 92 19:40:44 GMT
Organization: Private system -- Orlando, FL

In article <1992Apr6.124517.18988@werple.pub.uu.oz.au> andrew@werple.pub.uu.oz.au (Andrew Herbert) writes:
>Finally, I'd recommend against using fas until it becomes a streams driver -
>you lose too much.

What do you lose?
-- 
John W. Temples -- john@jwt.UUCP (uunet!jwt!john)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: kempf@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Markus Kempf [Physik])
Subject: CDROM for Dell SVR4
Summary: What to choose?
Keywords: CDROM, SVR4
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 17:21:52 GMT

I would like to add a CDROM drive to my computer. I'm running Dell Unix SVR4
2.1 with an Adaptec 1542b controller.
I read in the manual, that a generic CDROM driver is included, but with which
drives is he compatible? Are third party device drivers and file systems
available? I am very interested in the expiriences of other people.




-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
| Markus Kempf, Department of Physics/SAGA e.V., University of Kaiserslautern |
| Germany, kempf@rhrk.uni-kl.de                                               |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL --- The Great 1992 UNIX Dream Machines Bake-Off
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 01:52:40 GMT

In article <1g3Jcg#40LYF72HMVVl5SYjrp3sPlXk=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>In <1992Apr7.140644.27039@bilver.uucp> Bill Vermillion wrote:
>> One BIG question.  Why is this limited to EISA machines.  Why not the
>> MCA architecture.   I remember reading specs on an ALR machine (One of
>> the few (if not only) that makes both and EISA and MCA, and the MCA
>> outperformed EISA in some respects.    And what about the NCR machines,
>> or any of the manfacturers of MCA bus based machines other than IBM.

>Because MCA isn't commodity hardware.  So it's got a whole two manufacturers.
>And yes, it's technically nifty.  But it's expensive, IBM effectively controls
>it, and there's no reason to believe either of those things will ever change.

Two?

Let's see.  IBM, NCR, Tandy, ALR, Wyse and about 6 others that I can't
think of at the moment.   It's not commodity, but the EISA isn't quite
that yet.    The NCRs are pricey, but they also boast an 80MB/sec xfer
rate - so they definately aren't commodity.  The ALR pricing is about
the same for both.   The WYSE is expensive.  But yes, it's not
commodity.

Thanks.
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|ge-dab|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386