HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: crawfis@ramius.ocf.llnl.gov (Roger Crawfis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Inventor experience
Keywords: IRIS Inventor
Date: 12 Nov 92 20:21:41 GMT
Reply-To: crawfis@ramius.ocf.llnl.gov (Roger Crawfis)
Distribution: comp.graphic.sgi
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

In article <1992Nov11.084715.14929@cophos.co.at>, js@cophos.co.at (Jodok
Schaeffler) writes:
|> Our organization is developing a viewer for rendering applications.
|> In the moment we are discussing about using IRIS Inventor to do
|> the graphics work. What we have to deal with are mainly triangle meshes.
|> I think about inserting the mesh data into the scene database and
|> let Inventor do all the data housekeeping work in addition to the 
|> rendering. We need pick functionality also, so Inventor seems a 
|> quite good tool for our needs to me.
|> 
|> So what is the problem? Nobody here has experience in using Inventor.
|> I would appreciate any kind of information from Inventor users with
|> experience in similar applications. To give you an idea of the 
|> complexity of our application: we are expecting a couple of thousand
|> polygons meshed into triangles in the order of ten to houndred each.
|> Is this complexity a problem for Inventor? 
|> Can anyone tell me of his/her experience in using Inventor?
|> 
I am just getting started with Inventor, but have scanned the painful manuals
and have a good feel for its power and flexibility. One of the strong suits is
the object oriented (not!) and C++ functionality. What this allows YOU
to do, is
to think about adding a class (which is much harder than using Inventor)
for your
couple thousand of POLYGONS. Then you can define several renderers for
this class,
the default being your meshing into triangles. This buys you the advantage of 
having a set of renderers for different time/quality trade-offs. For
interactive
rotations, render in a streamlined fashion, when the mouse stops update
the display.

We are thinking of adding a volumetric (polyhedra) class that does this.

|> Please send replies to me by email. If there comes something of 
|> interst for others in the same situation, I will place an article 
|> with this information.
|> 
Oops. okay I will do that too.

|> Thank you in advance.
|
Your welcome (if it was of any help). I tried my best (if not).

Roger A. Crawfis
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(510) 423-1320
(crawfis@llnl.gov)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: duda@brokaw.lcs.mit.edu (Andrzej Duda)
Subject: frame grabbers for 4D/320S
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 22:01:04 GMT

We want to take TV or video input, digitize to 320x240x24 frames at
10 or 15 fps and store them on disk. The raw bit rate generated
will be 18.4 Mbit/s (2.3 Mbyte/s) for 10 fps. Do you know if
there exists frame grabber cards for the 4D/320S machine that allow doing
it? Can the disks on 4D/320S support such a bit rate?

Thanks for your help,

Andrzej Duda

Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: dhinds@leland.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds)
Subject: Re: Switching Elan board between computers
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 02:20:44 GMT

In article <1e1jfiINN2ii@fangio.asd.sgi.com> rck@fangio.asd.sgi.com (Robert Keller) writes:
>desilva@luxor.ced.berkeley.edu (Deanan Da Silva) writes:
>>Is it possible to put an ELAN board from a Crimson into
>>an Indigo 
>
>You'll also need to reinstall the O/S on the Indigo and, likely,
>the Crimson.

Speaking of which... we just added an Elan board to an Indigo R4K
running Irix 4.0.5F.  Following instructions from the TAC, I tried
reinstalling eoe1.sw.unix from the 4.0.5F execution-only CD.  After
restarting, the console came up blank, but I could login remotely.
So, I tried reinstalling all of eoe1.sw, and still got just a blank
screen.  I did 'set neweroverride' both times, and verified that
/usr/lib/libgl_s did in fact get replaced.  Is there anthing else that
needs to be done to reconfigure the system for the new board?  Should
I reinstall more stuff?  I remember reading a post about this a few
weeks ago, but I didn't save it, because I thought the instructions
were more or less what I would have tried on my own...

        - David Hinds
          dhinds@allegro.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: dhinds@leland.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds)
Subject: A dbx problem
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 02:52:41 GMT

We have a large Fortran application that causes dbx to print:

> warning: iaux (11) greater than max (2) for file 28

then core dump after exceeding available swap space.  The program is
not so large that its memory usage should be a problem (it uses around
32M of virtual memory, out of 144M available).  This is under Irix
4.0.1A, with the 3.10 compilers.  Does this warning mean anything to
anyone?

        - David Hinds
          dhinds@allegro.stanford.edu
From: cain@silverblue.fac.cs.cmu.edu (Sebastian Nightingale Cain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Which 3rd party internal disks work on Indigo?
Date: 5 Nov 92 21:58:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bx9Jq8.G90.2
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

Hello again.  I think I've pretty much decided to sell my Cube (for other  
reasons besides I want an Indigo) and eventually (hopefully soon) pick up  
an Indigo.  Since SGI wants an enormous amount of money for a ~ 400 meg  
drive, I was wondering if I could just buy a 3rd party drive and plug it  
into the chassis and run from there.  What drives are recommended ( I was  
looking for anything between 400 and 600 megs)? Someone told me I could  
not put a drive into the chassis because SGI doesn't sell the mounting  
hardware separately - any truth to this?  Same goes for the CDROM - are  
there any that work with the Indigo besides the SGI drive?

Thanks.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Temporarily out of memory and swap space - but bogusly
From: raymond@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz ( Raymond W L Martin)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 03:46:35 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Keywords: dupreg swap process limit
Summary: Under load IRIX 4.0.4 seems to get a corrupted process control table

Our IRIX 4.0.4 on sgi 4d/320 is starting to report :
Nov  9 11:08:10 regu1 unix: NOTICE: fork - temporarily insufficient
memory to allocate uarea, process syslogd [32]
Nov  9 11:08:10 regu1 unix: 
Nov  9 11:08:10 regu1 unix: NOTICE: dupreg - temporarily insufficient
memory to allocate virtual swap space, process mach [5077]

and then refuse more processes.  Even though it has 50 M memory free and

is using 250 processes out of a 1000 process pool.  Is there a fix in
4.0.5?
Ray Martin
University of Auckland 
Computer Centre
Auckland
New Zealand (not yet part of Australia)
From: ben@bytepb.UUCP (Ben Smith @ BYTE)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Stalking the Ultimate Workstation?
Date: 10 Nov 92 18:33:37 GMT

hunter@werple.apana.org.au (James Gardiner) writes:

>nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu (Nathan F. Janette) writes:


>Point being here.  Display postscript was available in the OLD 
>window servers from Irix 3.  Why does it not come on the
>X window servers???

The following may be of interest to you. It is from the Xsgi man
entry and points out that despite the fact that it is now
primarily an X server, it also handles PS. (At least that is my
understanding of it.)
--------- Quoted from man page --
PROTOCOL EXTENSIONS

Extensions to the core X protocol may be available on a
given instance of Xsgi. Among the several extensions
supported at time if writing are Adobe PostScriptTM, X Input
Extension (tablet, spaceball, dials, etc), and SHAPE (non
rectanglular windows).  Available extensions may be
interrogated with xdpyinfo(1), or, from within a program,
via XQueryExtension(3X), or XListExtensions(3X).

-- 
\^___^/   ===================================================
 (o o)    Ben Smith / BYTE Magazine    Peterborough, NH (USA) 
  \|/     ben@bytepb.byte.com       ||         ben@ronin.com 
   m      ===================================================
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: stanj@ferrari.corp.sgi.com (Stan Jensen)
Subject: Re: Login failure
Keywords: FAQ?
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:13:42 GMT

In article <34008@adm.brl.mil>, bclark@wankle.ctron.com (Bret Clark) writes:
|> >I have a user who cannot log in directly to one of our Iris 4Ds
|> >running 4.0.1.  He tries, the screen blanks for a moment, and then
|> >he's back at the login menu.  (Even with no password, he fails.)
|> >All other logins, on that machine or by that user, succeed.  He
|> >has a pretty boring .login and .cshrc.  Any clues?
|> 
|> 
|> I have just starting seeing the problem Iris INDIGO. It appears to be with the
|> program pandora. I have not been able to track it down. .login and .chsrc has 
|> nothing to do with the problem. The only solution I have been able to find is 
|> to disable visual login under /etc/config/visuallogin or to reformat and reload
|> the OS (Not a great fix).
|> 
|> I am interested in knowing of a fix as well.
|> 
|> Bret Clark
|> Mail Address: bclark@ctron.com

See if "/etc/config/system.glGammaVal" is missing or empty. If so, try:

	echo 1.7 > /etc/config/system.glGammaVal

This has been fixed in one of the 4.0.x releases (after 4.0.1).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stan Jensen, Systems Engineer                          stanj@corp.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics Inc., M/S 14L-120                    Phone:(415)390-5822
P.O. Box 7311, 1350 Charleston Road                   FAX:  (415)962-1589
Mt. View, CA  94039-7311                                "I (heart) Tonks"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jchauvin@netcom.com (John H. Chauvin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Accessing a mounted MSDOS floppy from a remote host?
Date: 5 Nov 92 04:29:26 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)


Can some one recommend a more efficient procedure for accessing a mounted, 
MSDOS formatted floppy from a remote machine.  Using rcp results in an I/O 
error. I have tried to NFS mount /usr/floppy on the remote machine, but the 
directory is always empty.The only method that seems to work is to rlogin to the
local machine, copy the files from the floppy to the local machine, then remote 
copy them to the remote host. I am currently using a Indigo XS/XS24 with a SGI 
3.5 inch internal floppy drive. We are  running IRIX 4.0.5F.

Thanks,

jchauvin@netcom.com
-- 
John H. Chauvin jchauvin@netcom.COM
Netcom - Online Communication Services San Jose, CA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Subject: Re: Does 4.0.5(F) exist?
Organization:  Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 06:01:21 GMT

In <1dccvvINN9h5@werple.apana.org.au> hunter@werple.apana.org.au (James Gardiner) writes:
| >> >Does anyone know if there is really a 4.0.5F? If there is a fix
| >> >version to 4.0.5 if there usually a rev number, like 4.0.5F01 or
| >> >some such? 
| >>    Yes, but it's only for the R4k Indigo's.
| 
| >It is for *all* Indigo systems, as well as all RealityEngine-based
| >systems.
| 
| Yes but I was told that it is not for general distribution to
| R3k and IP customers YET.  Only if you buy a R4k or 
| reality engine can you get the Media.

Or if you have the Indigo video board, or have reported problems
that are fixed in that release, or really need the digital media
product which is included.  I'm sure that there are other categories.
I believe it is true that it isn't automatically shipped to everybody
on support, but that isn't my area, so I'm not sure.

It is also being shipped on all new Indigos of whatever flavor
from the factory, or at least, will be soon.
--
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: reset of the parallel interface ikon.
Date: 7 Nov 92 03:22:01 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1992Nov6.175725@masg11.epfl.ch> berney@masg11.epfl.ch (Jean-Claude Berney EPFL-DMA) writes:

| I have a server SGI 4D320S with an IKON Hardcopy controller. I use this
| parallel interface with a printer Tektronix 4693D.
| Sometimes, it is not possible to write to this interface (/dev/cent).
| If I reboot the server,it's OK.
| I would like to know which "ioctl" to use to reset the interface 
| without to do a reboot.
| For the 4D35 or the INDIGO, it is documented which "ioctl" to use
| to reset the interface /dev/plp, but for /dev/cent there is nothing.

There isn't one for that board, sorry.  The 35/indigo reset resets
the parallel 'bus' as well as the chip.  There is an ioctl (for at
least some revs, that does a board reset), but the driver does the
same thing anyway when the port is closed, if it thinks the board is
hung.  Still, you could try IKIORESET, the 3rd arg to ioctl is ignored
for this.  It is definied in sys/ik_ioctl.h.  I have no idea if it
works or not; it definitely isn't documented on the ik man page.
--
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: ccas20@vaxa.strath.ac.uk
Subject: Concave Polygon Problems
Organization: Strathclyde University VAX Cluster
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 11:52:54 GMT

CONCAVE POLYGON RENDERING

Having recently upgraded to 4.0.5 we have come across a new problem in
rendering concave polygons. This appears in FORTRAN and C code by
different authors and is demonstrable on INDIGOs with entry level and
ELAN graphics. This code has worked fine on 4.0.1 with no apparent
problems, also a 4D50 and 4D25 cope just fine.

    Given a concave polygon (yes the GL concave command is set to
TRUE) then as the object is rotated you can see that the polygon is
decomposed into triangles. As the object is viewed from different
angles some of these triangles will not be drawn. I am not the only
one to notice these problems but the UK hotline has been silent for
over a month. 

   The polygons are drawn using bgnpol/endpol delimiters and are not
self intersecting, but may share vertices (like a C with the ends
drawn together to form an O), no illegal functions are called between 
delimiters,

   Has anyone else come across this phenomena or is it yet another
example of GL becoming stricter in the way it handles duff code?

   All clues, hints, workarounds or abuse for stupidty most welcome.

Thanks

Mike.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: restricing root logins
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 17:06:36 GMT

In article <1992Nov10.134956.525@epas.toronto.edu>, adam@epas.utoronto.ca (Adam Iles) writes:
> In article <1992Nov10.000731.2740@alias.com> chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) writes:
> >Is it possible to restrict root logins to certain ttys? Right now, anyone can
> >login as root on any terminal line attached to our machines (including modems).
> >We want to be able to restrict this, so that root logins are allowed only on
> >"secure" terminals, i.e. those in the computer room. For other lines, we want
> >people to login as themselves and then su, so we have at least some idea who
> >became root.
> >
> >BSD Un*x had a configuration file listing "secure ttys"; is there an IRIX
> >equivalent?
> 
> If you are willing to give root or restricted accounts a special shell
> (which could be a symbolic link to a standard shell) you could create
> /etc/dialups and /etc/d_passwd files to put an invalid password on all
> the "unsecure ttys."  The information on these files is in the login(1)
> man page.


That's an interesting idea, and better than my first thought, which
is to do a little testing of `tty` in /.cshrc or /.login.

Unfortunately, neither solution keeps someone on a different tty
from using `su`.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch)
Subject: Re: restricing root logins
Organization: Alias Research, Inc., Toronto ON Canada
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 15:25:56 GMT

In <s6mae5g@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com> vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:

> In <1992Nov10.134956.525@epas.toronto.edu> adam@epas.utoronto.ca (Adam Iles) writes:
>> If you are willing to give root or restricted accounts a special shell
>> (which could be a symbolic link to a standard shell) you could create
>> /etc/dialups and /etc/d_passwd files to put an invalid password on all
>> the "unsecure ttys."  The information on these files is in the login(1)
>> man page.

What a great idea! We already have dialup passwords on the modems, but this
never occurred to me. Thanks, Adam!

>Unfortunately, neither solution keeps someone on a different tty
>from using `su`.

This is acceptable to us for now; We just want our "roots" to login as
themselves before su-ing. That way, we have some idea of who made a change,
rebooted a computer, etc.

Thanks, and keep those cards coming!

--
"What is life?"     "A rich | C. Harald Koch  Alias Research, Inc. Toronto, ON
tapestry when learning from | chk@alias.com                (work-related mail)
a Master like you, sir!"    | chk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca     (permanent address)
"You pass!"   -Purolator ad | VE3TLA@VE3OY.#SCON.ON.CA.NA            (AMPRNet)
From: beck@enterprise.den.mmc.com (Fred R. Beck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: CaseVision/Workshop 1.1 license server
Keywords: license,CaseVision
Date: 5 Nov 92 17:11:45 GMT
Organization: Martin Marietta

I realize that NETLS is getting a lot of bad press, but
I have yet to hear anyone not have troubles with it.

> Hello there,
> I just experienced an uncomfortable behaviour of CaseVision/WorkShop 1.1:
> if a user accidentally kills cvd from his shell, the license server
> (on another computer in our network)  still thinks the license is
> granted to that user and doesn't accept a new request (no license
> available). 
> Is that a bug or a feature ?
> The only solution I had was to kill netlsd on the license server
> machine and to start it again. Then it works ...
>
>   Rainer Kleinrensing      rainer@indigo.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de
>   Institute for Applied Mathematics
>   University of Freiburg
>   Germany

We have had a similiar problem.  We haven't had too many
"accidental kills", but it seems that the first time anyone
tries to issue CVD in a particuliar day, CVD is unable to contact
the license server.  So, I simply go in as root and issue a:

		/etc/init.d/netls start

It always replys that the license server is already running,
but a re-issue of CVD starts up just fine!

For those of you who have yet to find out the hard way, there
is a bug in CaseVision/Workshop 1.1 (CW1.1) which will not
allow you to run with both NETLS licensed S/W and NodeLocked
licensed software.  Evidently, the licensing hooks in CW1.1, 
upon startup, go out to check on how the license is to be passed
out and upon seeing a file called nodelock, shuts down.
I should add that this is only for NETLS licensed CW1.1.
Thus, to fix, there is version CaseVision/Workshop 1.1.1 which
can be obtained from the hot-line upon request.  I have installed
this, and this particular problem went away.

Getting a permanent licence from SGI's licensing dept. is
another long story...

-Fred Beck
 beck@den.mmc.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
From: ssundara@essex.ecn.uoknor.edu (Sridhar Sundararaman)
Subject: Dials and Buttons
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 20:40:18 GMT
Organization: Engineering Computer Network, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

hai

This is regarding connecting dials and buttons on a 4D/20. I have gone through
all the steps the manual says to install the dials and buttons. The hard
wiring is fine and the software set up has been done through the System 
widget. Though the system manager shows that the serial port 2 has the 
Dials and Buttons, the dials are not responding to the checkdials program or
to SDRC-IDEAS. Checkdials says "No dials". Even the confidence test doesnt
work. 

I was told that input devices were part of the kernel in the new operating
system . I do not know what I should do.

Thanks for the help in advance.

 
-- 
******************************************************************************
******************************************************************************
*                                                                            * 
* Sridhar Sundararaman                                                       *
From: ccas20@vaxa.strath.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: R3000 ethernet problems
Date: 12 Nov 92 11:51:36 GMT
Organization: Strathclyde University VAX Cluster



INDIGO R3000 ETHERNET PROBLEMS

We have always had problems with ethernet performance with the INDIGOs
on out network, no other machines experience the same difficulties.
The promiscuous mode fix cured 90% of the trouble but at certain times
performance still dropped to near zero. However now that we have
upgraded to 4.0.5 we have a new symptom. Every so often (twice a week)
my users will complain that every thing has come to a halt. Running
netstat reveals that one of the INDIGOs (client or NFS server) has
stopped transmitting and receiving. There appears to be no common
denominator as to what causes the halt, we are not running any home
grown software that uses network communications and the installation
is unmodified "straight from the box". It is easy to restart the
ethernet with :

        ifconfig ec0 inet indigo up

and instantly all is well again. (until the next time). Suprisingly

        ifconfig ec0 inet indigo down

also restarts communications, but I wouldnt guarantee the the syntax
is correct!

If I turn network debugging on, there is a sready stream of errors
logged on the consul. This is what I found this morning:

Only local loggings work and NIS and NFS service is dead, the
following messages are logged on the consul.

>> NIS v.2 server not responding for domain "abacus"; still trying

Run netstat to see what up

>>alpha: 1#netstat 5
>>    input   (ec0)     output            input  (Total)    output
>> packets  errs packets errs colls  packets  errs packets errs colls 
>>23796550 889998  95143   0 90766 23824154 889998  122747  0   90766 
>>       0     0       0   0     0        0     0       0   0       0 
>>       0     0       0   0     0        0     0       0   0       0 
>>       0     0       0   0     0        0     0       0   0       0 

Nothing is going in or out so toggle the ethernet.

>>alpha 2# ifconfig ec0 inet alpha up

And re-run netstat.

>>alpha 3# !nets
>>netstat 5
>>    input   (ec0)     output            input  (Total)    output
>> packets  errs packets errs colls  packets  errs  packets  errs colls 
>>23796570 889999  95147    0 90771 23824182 889999  122759    0  90771 
>>  2827    33        3     0    16     2834    33       10    0     16 
>>  3677    35        3     0    17     3681    35        7    0     17 

So everything is running again and the following errors immidiately 
start to appear.

>>alpha 4# ec0: CRC error
>>ec0: dma stopped, rstat = 0x11, crbdp = 0x80155760
>>ec0: dma stopped, rstat = 0x11, crbdp = 0x80155760
>>ec0: dma stopped, rstat = 0x11, crbdp = 0x80155760
>>ec0: too many oflows, changing modes
>>ec0: packet framing error
>>NIS server for domain "abacus" OK

The vast numbers of errors/collisions are always present yet none of
the other machines see them (4D25, 2400 and assorted SUNS). I know
next to nothing about the mysteries of the ethernet so if any of the
above means anything to anyone I should be most obliged if you can
point it out. 

Thanks for any help

Mike
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi