HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: guy@wmsg02.wm.estec.esa.nl (Guy Brooker)
Subject: lptops for man pages ?
Organization: ESA/Estec/WMS, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 11:46:43 GMT

How can I print my standard manual pages to a postscript printer ? (preferably
nicely!). Man pages for PD software comes out beautifully, thanks to groff,
but standard man pages are messed up, due to lptops...

The manual page for lptops states

     lptops converts  any  file into a PostScript  file  for  printing on  an
     Apple LaserWriter,  or  any  other  PostScript-compatible  output device.
..
     It can  also handle overstruck text used by many document
     formatters for underlining.

However, I find that preformatted manpages (using the normal esc sequences
for bold underline, etc) are not handled correctly.

man -t lptops for instance results in a completly garbled page, due to multiple
characters for bold, and underlined printing. It can also be seen by typing

pcat /usr/catman/u_man/cat1/lptops.z | lptops -u >lp2ps.ps
xpsview lp2ps.ps

If I use the -a option in lptops for 'scribe-like' format (whatever that is)
the resulting postscript contains errors.

Is there a filter to convert the man pages to 'scribe-like' format, or a better
lptops around? The xman utility makes a nice job of formatting the man pages, so
it should be possible for PostScript.


Guy
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: Problem with resolver on R4000 Indigo on 4.0.5F
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 15:22:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.131437.28859@vela.acs.oakland.edu>, bbesler@ouchem.chem.oakland.edu (Brent H. Besler) writes:
> I have an Iris R4000 Indigo/Elan running Irix 4.0.5F.  The is apparently
> a problem with the resolver.  If I setup resolv.conf, so that name
> resolution is enabled, mail and telnet, ftp, etc. all work fine, but the
> resolver seems to ignore the entries in /etc/hosts.  When I rename
> resolv.conf to another filename so that the resolver only checks the
> hosts file, the entries are read correctly.  I have the "hostrorder 
> local bind" line in the resolv.conf file.  Is this a bug in Irix 4.0.5?
> How does one allow namerserver use and local hosts file use on this
> system.  Our two 4D/220's on 4.04 work fine and don't have this "either
> or" problem


What if you use "hostresorder" instead of "hostrorder"?

It works for me, and a lot of other people.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com
From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: rup giving "Remote system error"
Date: 14 Oct 92 17:26:34 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1992Oct14.102325.23768@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> jcpearso@ps.ucl.ac.uk (James Pearson) writes:

| I've just installed an R4000 Indigo (cirrus) on our net, but I can't rup it:
| 
| % rup cirrus
|               cirrus: Remote system error
| 
| /usr/adm/SYSLOG gives:
| 
| Oct 14 10:23:43 cirrus rstatd[2651]: read: iotim: No such device or address

Yes, this was reported internally just recently.  It is reproducible
on some machines, and never happens on others (with more or less
identical configuration).  rpc.rstatd (on the remote) is trying to
get the disk stats, and failing for some reason.  We don't have a
fix yet, and this probably won't be fixed in the near future.

The workaround (for rup users) is to alias it to 'rsh w' or equivalent.
If you need the other info rpc.rstatd returns, sorry...

--
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
From: lombardo@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: undefined: istream::get_complicated(char&)
Date: 7 Oct 92 22:49:38 GMT
Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA

Hi,
  I am getting the following linker errors:

/usr/bin/ld:
Undefined:
istream::get_complicated(char&)
istream::rs_complicated(char&)
ostream::ls_complicated(char)
*** Error code 1
`all' not remade because of errors

Can anyone tell where these guys come from?


Thanks in advance,
Chuck

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Charles P. Lombardo			|           lombardo@cs.nps.navy.mil |
| Computer Science Department		|		 voice: 408-646-2102 |
| Naval Postgraduate School		|		 fax:   408-646-2814 |
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: gsprow@lordvader.nswc.navy.mil (Gregg Sprow)
Subject: Code for reading DTED data?
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 19:44:22 GMT

	Does anyone have any code to read DTED data, Level 1?  I have some DTED CD's from
DMA that I want to use but do not want to reinvent the wheel.  I would think that there
should be some publicly available code to read this data and put it in a useable form.
I thought I would try here first before going off and spending my time trying to write
code that is already written.  I want to use it in an animation and display real world
terrain data instead of my select digitized points.  Any help would much be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 Gregg Sprow
 NSWCDD
 Dahlgren,VA 22448
 (703)663-8715 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: dcs@neutron.chem.yale.edu (Alexander Szewczak)
Subject: Re: PLEASE!  read the group before asking questions.
Organization: Yale University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 12:21:47 GMT

Dave Olson (olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com) wrote:
: [snip] I know that we don't have an FAQ for the group, but still, please
: check the recent articles before asking again.  I'm starting to
: reach the point where I won't answer some questions, just because
: they are too frequent (or were just answered recently). [snip]

Braaap! Braaap! Braaap! Warning! Warning!

When Dave Olson, as level-headed a poster as ever I've seen, notices the
noise level, it's too high! Am I foolish in thinking that an FAQ would help?
Maybe, but if someone doesn't volunteer soon _I_ will ... and I am definitely
not qualified! Consider that a threat, people.

Cheers,

--
| Dave Schweisguth   Yale MB&B & Chemistry   Email: dcs@neutron.chem.yale.edu |
| Lab phone: 203-432-5208      Fax: 203-432-6144     Home phone: 203-624-3866 |
From: dominik@perm.geologie.uni-freiburg.de (Dominik Ulmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Impressario in Germany ?
Date: 7 Oct 1992 11:29:18 +0100
Organization: "Geologisches Institut, Freiburg, Germany"
NNTP-Posting-Host: perm.geologie.uni-freiburg.de

I recently asked the local SGI representative at Karlsruhe for the price
of the Impressario software package. He didn't know at all what I was talking
of. He thought (and, presumably, he still thinks) that it is some kind of 
third party software. 
Is Impressario officially available in Germany, and if not, when will it be
available ?

 Dominik Ulmer

-- 
Dominik Ulmer, Geologisches Institut, Albertstr.23-B
D-7800 Freiburg i.Br., FRG
Phone +49 761 203-2408   Fax +49 761 203-2463
e-mail: dominik@perm.geologie.uni-freiburg.de
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: sysmark@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt)
Subject: to preallocate, or not to preallocate (that is the question AGAIN?)
Reply-To: mark@cita.toronto.edu
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:22:56 GMT

Now that the group has rehashed, for the Nth time, the age-old question
of whether IRIX's default behaviour of not preallocating swap space is
a Good Thing or a Bad Thing (and the side discussion of whether it means
that SGI's malloc() is or isn't "broken"), I'm prompted to ask a related
question:

The standard SGI response to those people who don't like it is "Rebuild
your kernel so that it will always preallocate swap space (and suffer the
consequences ;-)", or something along those lines.

It occurs to me that this provides an all-or-nothing solution, with the
possibility that there may be some installations where neither the "never
preallocate" nor the "always preallocate" options may be satisfactory.

How hard would it be to make backing store preallocation selectable on a
per-process basis?  Then one could configure one's kernel to use whichever
default made more sense most of the time, but would also permit one to get
the alternate behaviour if/when desired.

Difficult, I suspect.  But one can always dream ...

Mark Bartelt                                                  416/978-5619
Canadian Institute for                               mark@cita.toronto.edu
Theoretical Astrophysics                             mark@cita.utoronto.ca

"Clothes not busy being worn are busy drying."   -   Dylan, on laundry day
           [ singing "It's all right, ma (I'm only bleaching)" ]
Xref: sparky comp.sys.sgi:15069 comp.text.tex:12191
From: gpfrn@cam.nist.gov (Glenn_P._Forney_x2313)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi,comp.text.tex
Subject: something wrong with tar or me?
Keywords: tar, uncompress
Date: 14 Oct 92 17:07:48 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.sgi
Organization: National Institute of Standards & Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

i ftp'd (with bin option) the file dvips5493lib.tar.Z
( a dvi to postscript converter used with tex) from labrea.stanford.edu
( in /pub) to a sgi 4d35 running system 4.0.5 .
after uncompressing, i got the following output upon using
tar xvf dvips5493lib.tar

.
.  output left out
.
x PSvfs/ptmrrn.vf, 1844 bytes, 4 blocks
x PSvfs/pzcmi.vf, 1824 bytes, 4 blocks
x afm-extra/Makefile, 8337 bytes, 17 blocks
x afm-extra/ptmr.ed, 1907 bytes, 4 blocks
x afm-extra/ptmro.ed, 2116 bytes, 5 blockstar: tape blocksize error

apparently the last file, ptmro.ed, was not untarred properly.
(here is a ls -l listing of the afm* files :

-rw-r--r--   1 gpfrn    user        8337 Aug 28 22:42 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 gpfrn    user        1907 Aug 28 22:42 ptmr.ed
-rw-r--r--   1 gpfrn    user        1024 Oct 14 12:44 ptmro.ed

)
note the difference between 2116 which tar reported above and the actual
value of 1024 reported by ls.

doing the same exersize on a sun, i didn't get the blocksize error message
and the file size of ptmro.ed looks ok.

so, am i doing something wrong (if so what) or is there something wrong
with tar?  any help or education will be greatly appreciated.

glenn forney
gpfrn@cfr6.cfr.nist.gov
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi)
Subject: "Totally Insane" CD NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 15:40:01 GMT


A few weeks ago, I explained how to get a copy of the
"Totally Insane" developer's CD, containing source
code for 3D, font, and image manipulation.

All of the available copies are now gone, but thanks
for your interest....


--
Michael Portuesi   Silicon Graphics, Inc.   portuesi@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: ertas@athena.mit.edu (Mehmet D Ertas)
Subject: DATs- are all OK to use in DAT drive?
Followup-To: comp.sys.sgi 
Keywords: DAT,sgi,tape drive
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 19:23:36 GMT

Hi,
I was wondering if the DATs sold in neighbourhood music stores are
adequate to use with the DAT drive of IRIS Indigo's. If so,
are 60 minute tapes 1.3GB and 90 minute tapes 2.0GB, or
is it different? Considering that a 2.0GB tape is $90.00 from
SGI (with a minimum purchase of 5!) whereas a 90min. DAT is
$10.49 in the Newbury Comics CD Store, it is quite important for
me to know if there's a difference. I'd buy one and try, but
the computer hasn't arrived yet.

Deniz Ertas
MIT, Dept. of Physics



Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: nhuang@cs.ulowell.edu (Bat Man?)
Subject: FAQ needed
Organization: U. Mass. at Lowell
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:04:49 GMT
From: rindress@ctron.com (Rindress MacDonald)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Reading the prpsinfo structure...?
Date: 15 Oct 92 11:49:16 GMT
Reply-To: rindress@ctron.com (Rindress MacDonald)
Organization: Cabletron Systems Inc



  Does anybody know how to read the prpsinfo structure on an SGI?
  I am trying to write a program that figures out how much CPU percentage
  each process is taking.  If someone has any solutions, ideas, comments on
  this I would be glad to here them.  I realize there is "top", however
  I can't seem to find "top" for the SGI on the net. :-(  Does anybody
  have a copy of "top" that has been ported to the SGI?


  Thanks in advance,
  Rindress


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                   Name: Rindress MacDonald
                  Email: rindress@ctron.com
        
Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed herein are not that of Cabletron Systems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Quotas: Pathname to block dev - how??
Date: 10 Oct 92 08:03:00 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1992Oct9.100213.6272@ohm.york.ac.uk> lgt1@ohm.york.ac.uk (Laurence Tyler (Guest - CompServ)) writes:
| I'm trying to write some tools for manipulating disk quotas using
| the quotactl interface, so we can batch up modifications/updates -
| we have a lot of users so edquota is not an appropriate way to do
| things. I've hit a few programming problem with it and would
| appreciate any suggestions:
| 
| 1) quotactl requires as a parameter the block special device name of
| the filesystem whose quotas are to be modified. What is the
| best/recommended way of translating a filesystem name (or in
| general, a pathname in that filesystem) into the appropriate block
| special device name? The 'devnm' command seems to do this but I
| can't find a programming interface for such a function.

That's because it is decidely non-trivial.  I wrote a library
that does most of this for some tools we have, but it really
isn't shippable quality (no documentation, and some clumsy
interfaces).  I'd just use popen("devnm ...", "r"), if I were
you.

| 2) On a similar note, how does one test to see if a filesystem (or
| pathname in a filesystem) is local or remote? Again, I would like to
| include such a test in my utility.

There really isn't any way.  statfs and fstatfs will tell you the
filesystem type, but, that isn't terribly reliable (the number is
internally generated in the kernel, and doesn't match any defined
constants anywhere).  You could stat the mount point and look at
st_dev, and try to use some hacks to figure out that it is NFS,
but even that isn't reliable (ISO-9660 and DOS filesystems go through
the automount (i.e. NFS) interface currently).

| 3) One other quotactl problem I need to solve: there is apparently no
| program interface to read *all* the disk quota entries - only entries
| for specified uids can be read. Obviously I could do a repquota and
| then process the resulting file, but that's rather messy. Is there a
| suppported interface to do what I want, or would I have to write
| something to read the quota file directly?

Can't help you there, I've never used quotas, and have no desire
to look it up...
--
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
From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: file size limit (2^31?)
Date: 7 Oct 92 04:24:11 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1992Oct5.193943.8979@nrcnet0.nrc.ca> cantin@nrccsb3 (Claude Cantin) writes:

| some of my users are running programs requiring HUGE files.  I have installed
| 2 Elite 2 drives, and stripped them together to make a 4GB filesystem.
| 
| It seems the largest file size we can create is 2147483647 characters (that's
| from ls -l command).  This is also 2**31...
| 
| If we try to append to that file, we get the error message:
| 
|    cat: output error (-1/255 characters written)
|    File too large
| 
| Have we reached the file size limit?  Do R4000-based systems have that
| same limit?  Any workaround?

Yes. Yes. No.

A future release (probably  *not* the first SVR4 based release) will
have 64 bit support, and file size limits will then be increased
(I don't know what the new limit will be).  Your only workaround for
now is to split the files into multiple pieces.  File*system* max
size is currently 8 Gbytes.

--
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
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: todd@sparcy.Stanford.EDU (Todd Koumrian)
Subject: requesting swap-in of certain pages
Originator: todd@sparcy.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Lucas MRI Research Center
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 03:49:27 GMT


I'm working with data structures which are several times the size of
the RAM in my 4D/35 (I have a lot of swap space).  My algorithms frob
with the data in steps where the total size of the chunk being worked
on will fit into RAM at once, before moving on to the next chunk.

I'm experiencing quite a bit of swapping activity because during the
processing of each chunk, the pages are swapped-in to RAM in a somewhat random
order because of a sort-of ping-pong access.  I am trying to rewrite the
algorithm, but it may not help much.

Can I request that a range of address-space be swapped in prior to
the processing of a certain chunk of data?

Todd Koumrian
todd@sparcy.stanford.edu
From: jrh@de.deere.com (John R. Howell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Hook SGI CD-ROM drive to Adaptec 1542/B and whimpy DOS?
Date: 14 Oct 92 15:14:59 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.sgi
Organization: Deere & Company

In article <1992Oct13.154054.2061@sequent.com>, tima@sequent.com (Timothy
Alan Anderson) wrote:
> 
> I know this one is bordering on a FAQ, but I have to ask again just in
> case any new information has developed...

Yes I would also vote for a FAQ posting ...


> I have the SGI CD-ROM hooked up to an Adaptec 1542/B...


In article <r2et6mg@zuni.esd.sgi.com>, olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave
Olson) wrote:
> 
> The only way to 'fix' it for systems that expect more common
> (I hesitate to say 'standard') behavior, is to write a program
> that resets the logical block size to 2048 via modeselect.  That
> needs to be done every time the drive is powercycled, or there
> is a SCSI bus reset.

The other thing you may need to do is to tell the CD-ROM to advertise
itself as a CD-ROM drive.  I couldn't get CDROM drivers to work with this
drive on a Mac because (I believe) the CD-ROM says it is a disk, not a CD
at startup.


John Howell
Deere & Company
(The Big Green Tractor People)
jrh@de.deere.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: Bug in SGI's malloc?
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 14:34:00 GMT

In article <5272@bacon.IMSI.COM>, jordan@IMSI.COM (Jordan Hayes) writes:
> Peter S. Shenkin <shenkin@avogadro.barnard.columbia.edu> writes:
> 
> 	it "should" return a NULL pointer when physical+swap has been
> 	exceeded.
> 
> Er ... the entire process must be able to fit in the backing store, so
> malloc() should fail when swap is exhausted.  If you had 32Mb of memory
> and 50Mb of swap, the largest process you could have would not be
> 50+32, but rather somewhat less than 50Mb (other things on the system
> are bound to be using some amount of swap space).  Ask yourself: what
> would the kernel do if a 32+50Mb process needed to be swapped out?

Er ... repeat after me:
	
	IRIX is not SunOS
	IRIX is not SunOS
	IRIX is not SunOS
	IRIX is not SunOS

> 	I agree with the poster, except for the caveat in my last
> 	paragraph;  be that as it may, there is a kernel mod that can
> 	be effected to make SGI's malloc() behave "normally."
> 
> "Normally" ...?  Either I missed the question or you don't understand
> virtual memory.  Maximum process size is limited by swap space in
> Virtual Memory UNIX.  Remember that even if you have 96Mb of physical
> memory, if you only have 40Mb of swap you can only have 40Mb
> processes.
> 
> What kind of "kernel mod" were you thinking of?
> 
> /jordan
> 
> ps: note that this question has nothing to do with SGIs or even UNIX in
> particular.  Any VM operating system will behave similarly.

Not for many years.

For many years, System V systems have treated backing store and main
RAM as one big pool, and required only that programs fit in the sum
total.  Of course, this does raise likelihood of deadlock, but it also
makes systems with 100's of MB of main RAM practical.  Think about
devoting 100's of MB of disk for swap.  More important, think about
what would actually happen if you tried to swap such large programs!
Then think about the near future when people will be running programs
using GBytes of RAM and imagine swapping one of those.

This policy also makes it possible to add RAM to a system without
having to buy another disk (since almost no one is be able in practice
to expand the the swap partition(2) on an installed machine.)

Doesn't even SunOS use this policy now that they have embraced the
DeathStar?


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: atems@igor.physics.wayne.edu (Dale Atems)
Subject: comp.sys.sgi archives (was: Re: PLEASE read this newsgroup first)
Organization: Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 17:31:13 GMT

Hi everyone

Dave Olson complained recently that some people ask questions here
without browsing earlier replies here first. A consensus seems to have
been reached that a FAQ list is in order for this newsgroup, and I
agree that this is a needed thing. Many questions answered here,
though, are not FAQs, and Dave suggested that people consult the
comp.sys.sgi archives at sgi.com.

As a relative novice, I may be missing something here, but is there
any easy way to browse these archives? Suppose I'm looking for a post
of Dave's on the R4K Indigo that I neglected to save, and all I know
about when it was posted is that it was sometime during the last
week. What the easiest way of going about finding it in the archives?

Sorry if I'm rehashing something that's been discussed here recently.
Our news server has been *very* flaky of late, and missed at least 3
days worth of messages over the weekend.

------
Dale Atems
Wayne State University, Department of Physics and Astronomy
atems@igor.physics.wayne.edu
From: kipp@warp.asd.sgi.com (Kipp Hickman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: disabling page cache on memmory mapped files
Date: 12 Oct 1992 16:31:12 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: warp.asd.sgi.com


In article <5265@bacon.IMSI.COM>, jordan@IMSI.COM writes:
> Forgive me, I'm an SGI Newbie ...
> 
> I'm trying to port an application from SunOS to IRIX, and I'm looking
> for information on the transition ... specifically:
> 
> 1) In SunOS, you can set the sticky bit on a file, and it will disable
>    the use of the page cache for that file.  We've found this to be
>    *extremely* helpful in our application.  From the man page:
> 
> 	If the sticky bit is set on a regular file  and  no  execute
> 	bits  are  set,  the system's page cache will not be used to
> 	hold the file's data.
> 
>    Does IRIX have something similar?
Not that I have heard of.  I can imagine a strange usage for this, but
it doesn't seem like it would help things.

> 2) In SunOS, newfs and tunefs were extended to allow multiple blocks to
>    be allocated before inserting rotational delay.  The -C flag to
>    newfs and the -a flag to tunefs are used to bump up the maximum
>    number of blocks to contiguously allocate.  For us (and for many
>    folks with modern fast disk drives), setting this value to 7 (for
>    56k read/write clusters rather than the default 8k) has doubled our
>    throughput.
We use the EFS (an extent filesystem) which was internally developed.
There is no such thing as "rotational delay" in our systems.  Unlike our
competitors filesystems (usually BSD based), ours provide 100% of the
capabilities of the drive.  So you don't need this kind of "rotational"
nonsense to slow things down.


Hope this helps.

					kipp hickman
					silicon graphics inc.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi