HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: matthews@oberon.umd.edu (Mike Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Things You Shouldn't Do
Date: 24 Jul 92 12:32:09 GMT
Reply-To: matthews@ectds.com
Originator: matthews@oberon.umd.edu

Y'know, if you ever think of trying to delete any netboot (bootptab,
bootparams) entries in NetInfo, DO NOT empty out the corresponding flatfile
and niload -d bootptab/bootparam it.

It'll blow away /machines.

No /machines, no serves property.

No serves property, no NetInfo.  I couldn't even use the niutil tag stuff to
GET to the database to FIX it.

So I do a restore (in singleuser mode, no NetInfo running) of it, and use an
ninparse script that I wisely created minutes before I blew everything away,
to bring NetInfo back up to snuff.

Did you all know that niutil -create will create a duplicate entry, unlike
niutil -createprop which BEHAVES ITSELF?

Anyway.

I finally get NetInfo restored (the niunparse *after* the fact is identical
to the niunparse *before* the fact).  Reboot.

loginwindow:  can't find WindowServer port! <kaboom>

NetInfo works fine.  I can boot into console mode just fine.  But I can't get
the damn WindowServer to come up.  It runs according to lastcomm, but then it
dies with an ignominious "X".  netstat shows the machine frantically trying
what looks like every friggin' port on the machine, looking for the
WindowServer (lots and lots of TIME_WAITs).

I restored /usr/lib from a good machine.  Still no go.

When it reboots, it says stuff like
unmounting /local... done
unmounting / ... done
unmounting / ... done
unmounting /NextUsers ... done
unmounting / ... done

not exactly, but there IS no /local in any NetInfo mounts database or fstab
file, and why is it unmounting / so many times?

fsck reports no errors.

I'm at a complete loss.  Looks like I'm in for a 4 hour complete restore
(optical disks are so bloody slow).

Does ANYBODY have ANY hint WHATSOEVER as to what exactly I did to the poor
machine and what can be done to fix it without a full restore?  It's a
NeXTdimension system (USED to be our NetInfo server :-( ), which usually runs
NeXTstep 2.1.

Replies being sent to matthews@ectds.com.  Please respond by Email as our
news feed probably won't pick this message up until tomorrow, so I won't see
any replies until next week.
------
Mike Matthews, matthews@oberon.umd.edu (NeXTmail accepted)
------
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: eps@futon.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Subject: Re: Rebuilting the INTERNAL HD with 3.0
Reply-To: eps@cs.sfsu.edu
Organization: San Francisco State University
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 04:46:46 GMT

In article <1992Jul31.041146.26416@leland.Stanford.EDU>
	m@crito.Stanford.EDU (M Carling) writes:
>If I remember correctly the UNIX command init is the one to use for
>low-level formatting. If not, I trust that a UNIX wizard will correct me.

sdform

					-=EPS=-
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: grace!fishbone!jdyer@moscom.com (John D. Dyer)
Subject: Re: Is cron going to get better.
Keywords: cron, at
Reply-To: grace!fishbone!jdyer@moscom.com
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 04:02:55 GMT

My apologies to the group for not posting a summary after I received  
enough info to do so.  I actually did post a summary from NewsGrazer, but  
for some reason or other it became a dead.letter.  Don't know why.  Hope  
this one makes it out.

Thanks to Irving Wolfe for his summary (he said it better than I could  
have anyway).  Thanks for everyone's help.  

--
*********************************************************
*	 John D. Dyer
*	NeXTMail	: moscom.com!grace!fishbone!jdyer
*	Alternative	: jdyer.wbst129@xerox.com
*********************************************************
-- 
*********************************************************
*	 John D. Dyer
*	NeXTMail : moscom.com!grace!fishbone!jdyer
*	Reliable : jdyer.wbst129@xerox.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: lytras@avalon.physik.unizh.ch (Lytras Apostolos)
Subject: Re: Syntax for .forward file?
Organization: University of Zurich, Department of Computer Science
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 17:00:30 GMT

irving@Happy-Man.com (Irving_Wolfe) writes:
: Here's my .forward file; I hope it helps:
: |/usr/local/bin/deliver irving

The .forward file is used by sendmail which is running suid root, so I
wonder if there is a chance someone might use this feature (forwarding
through pipes) to gain special privileges (a.k.a. hacking). Or is send-
mail prepared to deal with such an attempt?

--
	 lytras@ifi.unizh.ch   		|   Apostolos Lytras
	 lytras@avalon.physik.unizh.ch	|   Informatik Club der Uni
	 lytras@amiga.physik.unizh.ch  	|   Zuerich, SysAdmin
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: eer1@midway.uchicago.edu(Paul Woods)
Subject: NeXT as an APPLETALK SERVER
Reply-To: eer1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 21:46:27 GMT

Hi All,

I know,I know, this is not exactly where this belongs.

I see a need for such a thing in many NeXT installations, so I will put it here  
(and I will keep it short).  

For those of you that do not have a user group and don't subscribe to NeXTWORLD  
magazine, Here is a little tidbit.

AN APPLICATION NOW EXISTS, THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO TURN YOUR NEXT INTO AN  
APPLESHARE FILESERVER (Yes it's ethertalk - phase 1 for now and it's not CAP)

If you look in announce over the next few days, I think I will ask Conrad to  
post the entire review where everyone can read it.

Just thought that this would be very helpful to many a sysadmin.

Paul-

--



____________________________________
	Paul R. Woods
     University of Chicago
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: lemke@MITL.COM (Kennedy Lemke)
Subject: SUMMARY: Repairing bad magnetic SCSI disk blocks?
Originator: lemke@narnia.MITL.COM
Organization: Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory, Princeton, NJ
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 18:25:16 GMT

A couple days I posted a note asking:

> Is there a utility I can use to map out the bad blocks on
> this disk?  It seems like /usr/etc/disk is the right utility,
> but the "bad" command only seems to work on opticals.  Is
> there another utility that will do this, or is my only option
> to replace the disk?  Thanks.

I received a few replies, one of which pointed me to ftp'ing
a program from NeXT.com.  The program is called "reasb" (for
"reassign block") and is anonymous ftp-able from next.com in
the directory /pub/Misc/Utilities/reasb.  I compiled and ran
the program and it seems to do the trick--that is, I no longer
am getting the scsi/"bread" error messages.

Thanks to Bob Brown (brown@quorum.com) for pointing the way to this.

				Kennedy Lemke
				Network and UNIX Systems Administrator
				Postmaster
				Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory
				182 Nassau Street, Third Floor
				Princeton, New Jersey  08542
Work Phone: (609) 497-4600
Fax Phone:  (609) 497-4013	Email: lemke@MITL.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson)
Subject: Re: Turning off SCSI devices and Rel 2.1
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 02:35:08 GMT

rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305) writes:

>I have an HSD scanner at the end of my SCSI chain.  Since I don't use it
>all the time and it gets pretty hot, I like to turn it off when I am not
>using it.  When I had Rel2.0 I did not seem to have a problem with this.
>Recently I installed 2.1 and now the system will go along for a couple
>of days and then suddenly fill up swap space.  It may be that this is a
>problem with 2.1 which is totally unrelated to the scanner but if I
>leave the scanner on swap doesn't seem to fill up.  Maybe I haven't
>waited long enough.  Anyhow I would appreciate any info on this.
I cannot see any correlation between turning off a SCSI device and
having your /private/vm/swapfile grow.

>Something I haven't tried is to actually disconnect the scanner from the
>CD drive and plug the SCSI terminator in.  That doesn't seem like a good
>thing to do on a running system but maybe it is okay.

Any of what you are doing isn't ok.  Never turn off any SCSI device
or remove it from the chain while the host machine is operating.
One of these days, you will find that your hard drive will go blank
and you won't be able to explain why.  Yes, this kind of thing can
happen by mucking with the SCSI chain while the host machine is
operating (esp. if it's writing to one of the disks!)
Theoretically, it is safe to remove stuff after the machine is
sync'd, halted  and in the Monitor (NeXT> prompt), but it's always better to
actually turn the machine off before you disconnect anything.

>-- 
>Bob Peirce, Pittsburgh, PA         rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us         412-471-5320
>venetia@investor.pgh.pa.us [NeXT Mail]  !uunet.uu.net!pitt!investor!rbp [UUCP]
-- 
David Lemson                                                 (217) 244-1205
University of Illinois NeXT Campus Consultant  / CCSO NeXT Lab System Admin
Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu                 UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson 
NeXTMail accepted                                   BITNET : LEMSON@UIUCVMD
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: victor@jezebel.wustl.edu (Victor Wickerhauser)
Subject: Diasappearing wtmp
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 17:39:11 GMT


We have approximately 5000 accounts in a 3-level NetInfo hierarchy.  We have
only a symbolic link .login file in each home directory, since the template
files installed by nu contain 42kb even after Mr. Jobs' letter is deleted
(=>210 MB for all our users).  The linked .login file copies the relevant
dotfiles upon the first login and then removes itself, exploiting the
assumption that many of the users will never log in.  Our system is new and
currently used by only a few consultants; its 5000 users do not know about it
yet.

One afternoon at 17:19 when I was running a background script to install
these links, remove the other dotfiles and recursively change ownership on
home directories, the WindowServer died with a message to /tmp/console.log.
At that point the chown script started complaining "user unknown" into its
logfile.  Also, mail to one of our 5000 users started bouncing, and another
user was unable to log into his account .  I noticed that /etc/wtmp did not
exist, so I created an empty one with `touch', after which the mail stopped
bouncing and the other user could log in.  I then rebooted the mailhost, for
the usual superstitious reasons.

It is natural to test wtmp with `last' if something suspicious happens, so
its disappearance becomes immediately obvious.  Be warned that there are
apparently some surprising side-effects.

Regards,
Victor

----
Prof. M. Victor Wickerhauser (314)935-6771  <victor@jezebel.wustl.edu>
Dept. of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO  63130  USA
From: simsong (Simson L. Garfinkel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Fax dial out numbers with 70# ?
Date: 25 Jul 92 12:26:04 GMT
Reply-To: simsong@next.cambridge.ma.us
Organization: Simson Garfinkel and Associates, Inc.

SBook version 2.3 will automatically export the fax numbers to NeXT's FAX list.   
Then, in your preferences, you can tell it so that phone numbers should be  
dialed with a "70#" as a prefix.

No problem!

For information on how to order SBook, send email to:

	orders@next.cambridge.ma.us


In article <1992Jul23.065036.6333@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca>  
bhead@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Bradley Head) writes:
> 
> Does anyone have a workaround that allows one to insert *70 or 70# 
> into stored fax numbers (in your ~Library/Fax/numbers.txt file)? I need to
> disable call-alert service and 7011 inserted does not work as a 
> substitute for 70# here. (70# is what disables our call-alert). 
> 
> The telephone number filtering/parsing in the Fax software is a little too 
> aggressive as is and will not send the fax/modem ATDT70#555-5555, as I  
> would like it to. Who wrote this shit anyway? - certainly couldn't have  
> been NeXT - my guess is they hurriedly licensed some shit code from an  
> unnamed third party in a flailing attempt to add fax support to 2.0. I  
> sure hope they fix this in 3.0. Seamless my ass!
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> ...brad
> -- 
> Bradley Head, bhead@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (NeXTmail :-)
> InStep Mobile Communications Inc., Vancouver, BC CANADA
-- 

................................................................simson
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: henry@trilithon.mpk.ca.us (Henry McGilton)
Subject: Re: DOS Drive is Slow!!!!!#%$@#&^#@$
Organization: Trilithon Software
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 05:04:03 GMT

In article <!u@byu.edu>  writes:
    *  
    *  Hey!  Be fair!  I think my Apple ]['s disk is faster than
    *  my NeXT with DOS disks!  I hate to see folks not give my
    *  ][ a fair shake! :-)
    *  
    *  -Don Yacktman
    
Gosh -- I didn't mean to impugn the Apple ][.  What I meant was that
Apple used a serial interface to the floppy drives way back in the
dawn of time, and somehow managed to get as good -- you say even
better -- performance than ``modern'' super high-speed-ten-VAX-
equivalents-on-your-desk-workstations.

	........  Henry
From: garyc@eecs.nwu.edu (Gary I. Chang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Preferences - Alert Panel
Date: 31 Jul 92 15:53:27 GMT
Organization: EECS Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Il., USA

After the blackouts, I lost some system files which I wasn't able to to restore
them from lost+found. Here's one of the major problems I am encountered....

        I try to run Preferences to set the date and time, it works flawlessly
for all othe modules like mouse, keyboard, screen,...,etc. But when I picked 
the clock, it poped out an ALERT panel and said "That section could not be 
loaded." I checked the file mode of Preferences which is:

-rwsr-sr-x  1 root      249180 Feb 26  1991 Preferences*

        So, it wasn't disabled at all. I bet it was caused by some missing
system file(s) that is needed to load the date/time module. Besides I am 
running in a stand alone station, I used to be able to set the system time 
from any user; now the missing section could not be loaded even in the root.

        Does anyone know what the missing section is? 

Gary
From: bhead@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Bradley Head)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Fax dial out numbers with 70# ?
Keywords: fax
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 06:50:36 GMT
Reply-To: bhead@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Bradley Head)
Organization: Headfirst Software, Vancouver, BC, Canada


Does anyone have a workaround that allows one to insert *70 or 70# 
into stored fax numbers (in your ~Library/Fax/numbers.txt file)? I need to
disable call-alert service and 7011 inserted does not work as a 
substitute for 70# here. (70# is what disables our call-alert). 

The telephone number filtering/parsing in the Fax software is a little too 
aggressive as is and will not send the fax/modem ATDT70#555-5555, as I  
would like it to. Who wrote this shit anyway? - certainly couldn't have  
been NeXT - my guess is they hurriedly licensed some shit code from an  
unnamed third party in a flailing attempt to add fax support to 2.0. I  
sure hope they fix this in 3.0. Seamless my ass!

Thanks in advance

...brad
-- 
Bradley Head, bhead@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (NeXTmail :-)
InStep Mobile Communications Inc., Vancouver, BC CANADA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: gungner@cs.ucla.edu (David Gungner)
Subject: A non-root user running UserManager?
Originator: gungner@maui.cs.ucla.edu
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 92 06:02:00 GMT

Does anybody know of a way to reconfigure UserManager so that a few
non-root users (but they are in the group "wheel") can add new users?
I want to grant a few maintenance people the ability to add new 
users without giving out root password.

Thanks for any suggestions,

David Gungner             
UCLA Machine Perception Lab

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov (Steve Davis)
Subject: Re: DOS Drive is Slow!!!!!#%$@#&^#@$
Organization: NASA
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 17:22:29 GMT

Laurent Amon writes
> 	Well, the DOS filesystem on the NeXT *is* slow. So slow that you 
> shouldn't use the workspace to transfer files on DOS disks. You should grab 
> the mtools from the net. They are infinitely faster. 

  Hmmm...  What are these "mtools" you speak of?

Thanks,

Steve

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Steve Davis                      | sdavis@laforge.ksc.nasa.gov |
| NASA, DL-DSD-32                  | (NeXT Mail preferred)       |
| Kennedy Space Center, FL  32899  |                             |
| (407)867-7582  fax:(407)867-2173 | #include <disclaimer.h>     |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
From: andrew@cubetech.com (Andrew Loewenstern)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Is cron going to get better?
Date: 21 Jul 92 08:40:21 GMT
Organization: Cube Technologies, Inc.

In article <CKD.92Jul20100637@loiosh.eff.org> ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis) writes:
>Andrew> == Andrew Loewenstern <andrew@cubetech.com> 
>
> Andrew> The crontab files can be owned by any user or group since the
> Andrew> cron process runs as root.  I just checked my crontab.local and
> Andrew> it's owned by andrew.other (oops) and cron doesn't seem to
> Andrew> mind.  Just create a group for the people who will be
> Andrew> administering the crontab files, add those people to that
> Andrew> group, and chown the files as root.groupname and set the
> Andrew> permissions appropriately.
>
>Hey, what a deal!  Now everyone in this group can trivially become root.
>Better make sure they all have really good passwords, nothing bogus in
>.rhosts, etc.
>
>This is *not* a particularly good idea if you have any security worries
>(like, say, you're hooked up to the Internet, in a public lab, or the
>like) and it's probably not that much tougher to port the Vixie cron.

While the solution I presented would be just fine for most situations
where the machines are not accessable from the outside, it was
certainly not to be interpreted as the end-all-be-all solution.


andrew
-- 
andrew@cubetech.com
Andrew Loewenstern      | "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
Cube Technologies, Inc. |  If I am only for myself, who am I?" -Hillel
From: mikes@velo.ucr.edu (Mike Shebanek)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Re: NeXT to VAX,IBM Mainframe...
Date: 21 Jul 92 15:49:55 GMT

In article <1992Jul18.184839.29495@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>  
aj681@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Carlin Wiegner) writes:
> 
> Is there good software for connecting a NeXT to a VAX or IBM 
> mainframe?
> -- 

For connecting to the IBM, check out 3270Vision.  I got a demo disk from  
them and it looks really great.  They're nice people too; very helpful.

Conextions
(508) 689-3570
(508) 689-2450 FAX

--
Mike Shebanek
Computing and Communications
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA.  92521

mikes@velo.ucr.edu
From: root%net23@spectrx.saigon.com (Brian Policky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Ignore
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 05:47:02 GMT

Test
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: basiji@milton.u.washington.edu (David Basiji)
Subject: Re: TURNING OFF SCSI DEVICES AND REL 2.1
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 19:42:13 GMT

isbell@cats.ucsc.edu (Art Isbell) writes:


>In article <139383.2A730219@paranet.FIDONET.ORG> David.Basiji@f236.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (David Basiji) writes:
>>--  
>>David Basiji - via ParaNet node 1:104/422
>>UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
>>INTERNET: David.Basiji@f236.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG


>I have been receiving empty postings (well, not quite empty; the signature
>panel always arrives) like the above one regularly recently.  They all seem to
>be FIDONET postings.  Is there something wrong on my end?
>-- 

>Art Isbell                                                      Cubic Solutions
>NeXT Registered Developer #745         NeXT software development and consulting
>Email: isbell@cats.UCSC.EDU                                Voice: (408)335-1154
>USmail: 95018-9442                                           Fax: (408)335-2515

I got that one too, but I never posted on the subject.  

Dave

-- 
David Basiji 
"C neophyte, Bioengineering Grad Student, Internet Personality"

email: basiji@u.washington.edu          
NeXTmail: basiji@larry.pathology.washington.edu

		"Whining is just anger coming out of a very small hole."
            --Stuart Smalley
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: magnus@Fisher.Stanford.EDU (Magnus Nordborg)
Subject: Re: Emacs environment variable lost
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Distribution: cct
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 23:59:00 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.145633.28258@cs.sfu.ca> patrice@cs.sfu.ca (Patrice  
Belleville) writes:
> From article <CMOORE.92Jul24092902@zenobia.mit.edu>, by  
cmoore@zenobia.mit.edu (Christopher B. Moore):
> > 
> > I've noticed (while installing the Auc-TeX package) that evaluation of
> > (getenv "HOSTTYPE") in an Emacs2.1 window started by clicking on the
> > Emacs2.1 icon in the workspace returns nil.  However, in an Emacs2.1
> > window started from the commandline it returns "next".  What gives?
> > 
> > Christopher B. Moore
> > cmoore@maggie.mit.edu
> 
> 
> 	Well, the problem is that the  workspace does not  run your .login  
or
> your .cshrc.   So programs  started from it  will not  have access  to    
your
> favorite environment variables. One fix is to add the following lines to  
your
> ..emacs file:
> 
> (setq process-environment (append
>         process-environment
> 	'("HOSTTYPE=next" "OTHERVAR=othervalue" [more of these])))
> 
> 
> -- 
>  
/************************************************************************* 
**\
> |* Patrice Belleville 					  
patrice@cs.sfu.ca *|
> |*   --- Simon Fraser University is not responsible for my mistakes. ---    
*|
>  
\************************************************************************* 
**/

This only fixes some problems -- the *best* solution has been posted here  
before and is to rename emacs to (say) real_emacs and then write a script  
called emacs with the following content (replace tcsh with your favorite):

#!/usr/local/bin/tcsh
/usr/bin/real_emacs $1

--


		Magnus Nordborg
		Department of Biological Sciences
		Stanford University
		magnus@fisher.stanford.edu (NeXT mail preferred)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: madler@cco.caltech.edu (Mark Adler)
Subject: Re: Compiling C-Kermit for NeXT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 18:21:47 GMT


>> Can someone tell me what's going on?  Many thanks!  Once i get it compiled,

No, I can't, since I just fetched the same source (cku182.tar.Z) and it
compiled just honky-dory.

>> I'll gladly make the current C-Kermit for NeXT to whomever would like it.

I am uploading it now to sonata.

Mark Adler
madler@tybalt.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: skrbec@tophat4.rtsg.mot.com (Brad Skrbec)
Subject: Re: disappearing home icons?
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 13:28:04 GMT

Thanks to all who replied to my question.  The problem turned
out to be that I had "Large File System" checked.  My face is
red at how simple a question this was...

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| Brad Skrbec       | "For it is the doom of men that they forget." |
| Motorola Cellular     |                         -- Merlin         |
| Arlington Heights, IL | Internet: skrbec@rtsg.mot.com             |
|                       | Home: brad@darby.chi.il.us                |
------------------------------- NeXTMail Gladly Accepted ------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin