Date: Sun, 13 Dec 98 17:12:36 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #34 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sun, 13 Dec 98 Volume 11 : Issue 34 Today's Topics: 4/260 air flow direction? boot floppy for sparcstation 2 Implementing PPP on a Sun 3/80 Network connectivity issues w/ Axil board Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) (5 msgs) Sun386i SunHELP Upgrading Sparc 2? Word 6 for a SparcClassic? (2 msgs) +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com | | Requests: suns-at-home-request@net-kitchen.com | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 23:02:19 -0600 From: Blake Sobiloff Subject: 4/260 air flow direction? To: Suns-at-Home-List I just finished taking apart my 4/260 for cleaning. Boy, what a lot of dust! This is the first time I've taken the bottom fans out for cleaning, and dust was caked on the mesh screen beneath the fans. (Ooops.) However, this got me wondering about the proper air flow direction -- again. When I took apart the machine the first time after I bought it I forgot to note which direction the top fans drew air: into, or out of, the chassis. I put them so that they blew air out, but now I'm not sure that that's correct. I thought that the bottom fans sucked air up into the chassis and that the top two fans expelled the hot air out the back. However, judging from the dust on the mesh beneath the bottom fans, it looks like the bottom fans push air out the bottom. Does this mean that the top two fans should be pushing air into the chassis? Help -- and TIA! -- Blake Sobiloff Higher Education Consulting KPMG -- "It's time for clarity" Washington, DC - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:47:12 -0600 (CST) From: Dan Storie Subject: boot floppy for sparcstation 2 To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Could someone please detail how if there is a way to make a bootable floppy for a Sparcstation 2? I just bought one, no cd rom, that has SunOS 4.1.1 on them. I do have access to a Sparcstation owned by a local ISP that has 4.1.4 on it, and I could perhaps make a floppy from that, or perhaps there is an image out there somewhere on the net that I could use? I just wanted to look around the file system before I blow it away with a new install, (have to find a cdrom for that), but I need a way that I can mount /etc and get rid of the pw for root. I tried booting into single user, but it still asks for a password. Thank you -- dan Just keep saying... "Its only a computer, its only a computer, its only a computer..." - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 03:53:38 -0700 From: "Harry J. Regan" Subject: Implementing PPP on a Sun 3/80 To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I've got a Sun 3/80 running SunOS 4.1.1_U1 and I want to run PPP to connect it to my ISP. I built the pppd sources, but when I install them, it complains that the kernel needs a patch to operate pppd. Does anyone out there know which kerrnel patch (or patches) is/are required? --- Harry J. Regan Phone/FAX: 301.871.4911 hregan@my-dejanews.com - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 14:06:21 -0500 From: Brian Neal Subject: Network connectivity issues w/ Axil board To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Hey guys, I've run across a reoccurring problem with the ethernet adaptor onboard an Axil SS1/2-upgrade mainboard. It seems that after a few minutes, the adaptor fails, with le0 complaining about a disconnection. After that, the whole machine locks. At first, I thought the problem was related to heat (and it may still be), but I'm not certain. Has anyone had any experience with the nic adaptors on these things? One other piece of information to note, I'm using an AUI -> 10baseT tranceiver. Thanks in advance, -Brian Neal - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:13:28 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Vaughan Pratt says: > It's since been retired to router duty, and is running into the following > problem that someone may be able to help me with. (It's at the home end > of a 56kb synchronous (ADN) SLIP line with a similarly configured machine > at the work=internet end.) Running netscape on the machine itself is no > problem, but running netscape on other machines at home that the Sun is > routing to runs into the occasional web page that refuses to download. > Is this a well-known bug in 4.1.4, and is there a patch for it? If the MTU of the SLIP line is less than the MTU of the home network, then I know exactly what the problem is. It's subtle, and it's no fault of yours. I've found several big-name companies' web sites suffering from the same stupid problem. (Plug: this will be a case study in my upcoming book from Addison-Wesley.) Let's assume the SLIP line uses the 1006 byte MTU specified as the default for SLIP, and your house net uses ethernet-sized packets of 1500 bytes. Then a browser on your LAN initiates a connection with a TCP MSS option specifying a 1460 bytes MSS. The server has path-MTU discovery turned on, so every TCP packet it sends has the don't-fragment (DF) flag set in the IP header. Some well-intentioned network admin at the server's site thought he could do a good turn by blocking all ICMP to the web server. (He probably read something about "ping o' death".) Your client's MSS option caused the server's TCP to send 1500 bytes packets, and PMTUD causes them to be marked with DF, so the SLIP router at the office sends the server an ICMP "too big" message, which is blocked by the filter which the well-meaning but underclued network admin put in place. So the TCP handshake and the HTTP query work fine, but you don't get the data back, unless the web page is very, very small. Why does it work from your router? It sees that the route to the server goes through the smaller-MTU interface and adjusts the MSS value it sends when it opens the connection. What can you do? * Try to find an email address for the network admin or the webmaster and gently hint that their configuration problem could be a source of great embarrassment. * Try to reach some higher level of the corporation and cause that embarrassment to fall on the errant parties. * Get both ends of your SLIP link configured for an MTU exactly equal to the LAN MTU. * Hack the source of your browser (www.mozilla.org, you know) to call int ethermss = 1460; /* ugly hack -- don't do it! */ setsockopt(sock, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_MAXSEG, (char *)ðermss, sizeof ethermss); after the HTTP client socket is created but before it's connect()ed. * Don't visit such sites. ______________________________________________________________________ Matt Crawford matt@severian.chi.il.us Mens sana in campari soda - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:30:50 -0800 From: Vaughan Pratt Subject: Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) To: Matt Crawford From: Matt Crawford >If the MTU of the SLIP line is less than the MTU of the home network, >then I know exactly what the problem is. Thanks! My LAN is 1500 (what RedHat 5.1 uses) and my SLIP line was 1006 in 1989 but I dropped it to 296 in 1994, I no longer remember why. I've been running Rayan Zachariassen's SLIP at 56k for a decade now---it's been essentially a zero-maintenance thing. I vaguely recall some recommendation to keep the MTU low; do you know of any reason not to raise it to 1500? Of your five suggested solutions this seems by far the most practical for my situation. Actually I'll wait until the next incident so I can tell for sure if that's the problem. I seem to be encountering the problem less often these days, maybe your advice has been trickling down to the net admins that needed to hear about it! Vaughan Pratt - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 22:02:34 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > int ethermss = 1460; /* ugly hack -- don't do it! */ > setsockopt(sock, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_MAXSEG, > (char *)ðermss, sizeof ethermss); Ooops. Change ethermss and 1460 to slipmss and 968, respectively. - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 21:03:37 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) To: Vaughan Pratt > Thanks! My LAN is 1500 (what RedHat 5.1 uses) and my SLIP line was > 1006 in 1989 but I dropped it to 296 in 1994, I no longer remember > why. [...] I vaguely recall some recommendation to keep the MTU > low; do you know of any reason not to raise it to 1500? The reason to have a low MTU is so a smart driver can slip a telnet-like packet onto the front of the queue during an ftp-like transfer and limit the maximum amount of time the interactive traffic is delayed to a hair less than the duration of one packet. The sensible lower limit on the packet size is the point at which IP+TCP headers take up an appreciable fraction (say, 10%) of your bandwidth. With header compression that point tends not to be reached. Around a tenth to a quarter of a second is a tolerable interactive delay, and at 9600 bps asynch that means something like 296 bytes. At 56000 bps synchronous, 1500 bytes fits within the delay limit, so go for it. And of course if your router doesn't insert little packets ahead of big ones in the queue, you weren't getting any great benefit from the tiny MTU anyway ... > I seem to be encountering the problem less often these days, maybe > your advice has been trickling down to the net admins that needed > to hear about it! You might be surprised at some of the sites that have had this trouble. www.weather.com was one, and I never heard of it being fixed, so try that one. Matt We break more code before 8 AM than most people write all day. - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 21:59:28 -0800 From: Vaughan Pratt Subject: Router/SLIP/Web problem (Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V11 #33) To: Matt Crawford >You might be surprised at some of the sites that have had this >trouble. www.weather.com was one, and I never heard of it being >fixed, so try that one. Worked for me, so either they've fixed it or the Netscape 4.5 I downloaded on Nov. 14 contains a workaround. Vaughan Pratt - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 16:12:21 +0200 From: Ari Reen Subject: Sun386i To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com Tervehdys I managed to get hold on an old sun386i/250 unfortunately it has at least a bad boot block and I havent been able to get OS tape/disks for it. The sun386i FAQ lists sun386i.mono.org as a ftp-place for sun386-sunos disks but I havent been able to connect to that site. Can anyone on this list help me getting the media ? And while we are at it I also have a Sun 2/120 with partially corrupted /usr-fs, so does anyone have SunOS 3.0 media for Sun 2 series machines ? 73's de ari - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 16:13:20 -0600 From: Bill Bradford Subject: SunHELP To: Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com For those of you that may not know about it, I've got a Sun information and reference site at http://www.sunhelp.com, with mirrors at http://www.sunhelp.org, http://www.sunhelp.net, and an Australian mirror at http://www.au.sunhelp.org/sunhelp/. Feel free to check out the site and let me know what you think! Bill -- Bill Bradford * mrbill@frenzy.com * mrbill@sunhelp.com http://www.sunhelp.com / http://www.sunhelp.org ---------------------------------------------------------- >From a Sun Microsystems bug report (#4102680): "Workaround: don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey." - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:05:20 -0800 (PST) From: Pete Harbeson Subject: Upgrading Sparc 2? To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com I'd like to get more processing speed than my Sparc 2 can provide. Can anyone offer me some advice about what would give me the best price-performance? I think my options are: -Upgrade the Sparc2 CPU -Replace the Sparc2 motherboard with something faster -Replace the whole Sparc2 with more recent used equipment (and which model?) I'd like to get the system to a point where using FrameMaker will be relatively painless. Better serial-port performance than the Sparc2 would also be good to have. Thanks! ---- Peter J. Harbeson Technical Writing, Instructional Design, Help System Development voice: 408-779-4886 fax: 408-782-9525 harbeson@garlic.com - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 09:58:02 -0500 (EST) From: Troy Wollenslegel Subject: Word 6 for a SparcClassic? To: jcf@world.std.com, Suns-at-Home@tigger.net-kitchen.com >I have been offered a job that would involve editing in Word 6, a word- >processing program (I presume) about which I know nothing. Is it >possible to run that under Solaris 2.3 on a SparcClassic, and if so, >how great would be the trouble & expense? Check out StarOffice, it is a great office suite that runs under Windows/Solaris/Linux/Java.. It can be found at http://www.stardivision.com. It can read and write most M$ file formats as well as a lot of others. They have a Free for personal use copy you can download, otherwise I think it is under US $300. Just checked, you need Solaris 2.5.1 or greater. :( I wonder if the java version would work? It is worth looking at for anyone that needs to interact with Micro$oft users. Troy -- Troy Wollenslegel - troy@intranet.org - http://neko.mi.org/~tawollen People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 98 23:45:00 PST From: perryh@pluto.rain.com (Perry Hutchison) Subject: Word 6 for a SparcClassic? To: suns-at-home@tigger.net-kitchen.com > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 16:57:06 -0500 (EST) > From: Joseph C Fineman > > I have been offered a job that would involve editing in Word 6, a word- > processing program (I presume) about which I know nothing. Is it > possible to run that under Solaris 2.3 on a SparcClassic, and if so, > how great would be the trouble & expense? Possible, perhaps; worthwhile, I doubt it. "Word 6" almost certainly means Microsoft Word version 6, which runs on MS Windows. It's a fairly old version, which will run under Windows 3.1 rather than requiring Windows 95 as a newer version would; so you could in theory run it on the Sparc under SunPC. However, a used 386 or 486 system would likely be cheaper and less trouble than buying and installing SunPC. - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************