Date: Sat, 18 Dec 99 14:33:11 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #36 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 18 Dec 99 Volume 12 : Issue 36 Today's Topics: Gateway woes (2 msgs) NetBSD is *not* Linux! (2 msgs) NVRAM (Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35) Sparc 2 Ethernet troubles Sparc TTY connection SS1 reporting ff:ff:ff: for an ethernet address... Sun Boot Prom for 670MP (was Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35) SunOS vs. *BSD for older Sun hardware... Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35 (4 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: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 07:38:42 PST From: "v bender" Subject: To: db_computers@pobox.com FILES: /etc/defaultrouter /etc/nsswitch.conf /etc/resolv.conf /etc/defaultrouter: /etc/nsswitch.conf: hosts: files dns /etc/resolv.conf: domain . (i.e. yourdomain.net) nameserver nameserver -- now, reboot the machine, just in case. Do not use the `reboot` command! [19:53] [/etc] #> /usr/sbin/shutdown -y -g0 -i6 -- "The system is ready." "SunOS 5.x" "login:" -- Congratulations. You've just set up your Solaris OE for use with DNS. -- original e-mail begins I'm running Solaris 7 on my Sparc2, (enduser install), and am trying to get my box to go out through my gateway. (win95/nat32) It's been working just fine all along, but I accidently mucked around with several files while I thought I was logged into my Solarix x86 box. (which was NOT talking to the gateway) I put the files back to what I believed they should be, but to no avail. The files in question are: /etc/defaultrouter - contains the IP of my nat32/gateway box /etc/resolv.conf - contains the IP of my nat32/gateway box, and my IP settings for my ISP's dns boxes. /etc/nsswitch.conf - I've added "dns" to the hosts: line, after the "file" entry. I can ping any box in my /etc/hosts file by name or IP address, and I can ping any outside internet IP address, no problem. When I try to ping an internet name, the box doesn't even try to go out. (nothing hits the ethernet segment, which I was monitoring with snoop) This is the same problem I was experiencing with my x86 box, which started this whole mess! (smart me....I've gone from 1 working and 1 not working, to 2 not working.....what progress!) I finally figured I'd changed something earlier that I really didn't mean to, so I broke down and reinstalled from scratch. After doing a complete reinstall, I'm in the same bucket now as I was an hour ago. (still not exiting the box for external traffic) Am I missing something obvious here? David PS - I've tried re-doing the default route with "route -f add net default 10.0.0.100 1", but again, no go. My netstat -rn works just fine, but my netstat -r hangs for about 1 minute trying do resolv IP addresses to names. Just another tidbit of info for this mystery! D. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 99 01:40:19 PST From: perryh@pluto.rain.com (Perry Hutchison) Subject: Gateway woes To: db_computers@pobox.com > Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 11:21:51 -0500 > From: David Barber > > I'm running Solaris 7 on my Sparc2, (enduser install), and am trying to > get my box to go out through my gateway. (win95/nat32) ... > I can ping any box in my /etc/hosts file by name or IP address, and I > can ping any outside internet IP address, no problem. When I try to > ping an internet name, the box doesn't even try to go out. (nothing hits > the ethernet segment, which I was monitoring with snoop) > > /etc/defaultrouter > - contains the IP of my nat32/gateway box This (and all other IP-level setup, such as {ifconfig} and {route add}) must be OK, or you would not be able to ping through the gateway. > /etc/resolv.conf > - contains the IP of my nat32/gateway box, and my IP settings for my > ISP's dns boxes. Unless the nat32 box itself is running a nameserver, I think its IP should not be in the list of nameservers. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 10:21:40 -0700 From: Bradford Castalia Subject: Gateway woes To: David Barber Yes, David, you *ucked crucial network files alright. ALWAYS make a copy of a file before changing it, even if you're dure you know what you're doing (I make it easy on myself and use SCCS). The /etc/defaultrouter file (see the defaultrouter(4) man page) contains the IP addresses or hostnames (the latter only if they are listed in /etc/hosts) of systems that know how to route packets out to other systems on the net. If this file is incorrect communications to systems out on the WAN (i.e. those systems not directly reachable on the LAN) can be expected to fail. The /etc/resolv.conf file (see the resolv.conf(4) man page) typically contains a "domain" line that provides the symbolic name of the domain (as added to all short hostnames), and "nameserver" lines that list (in the order accessed) the IP addresses (one per nameserver line) of systems that provide DNS service. Other options are possible. If this file is incorrect DNS lookups can be expected to fail. The /etc/nsswitch.conf file (see the nsswitch.conf(4) man page) specifies which databases - local files, NIS/NIS+, or DNS - to use, and in which order, when looking up information for a list of needs. If this file is misconfigured some lookups will fail while others will work. Configuring this file can be a bit tricky at first; read the man page carefully. So this is the likely culprit when you're sure you have the right router and assuming you have the correct info from you're ISP for DNS lookups. The safest way to go, initially, is to just use local files for the nsswitch.conf lookups (there should be a model "nsswitch.files" file in /etc). Then dns can be added to the end of the hosts line. This is sufficient in most cases. Things can get messy when NIS/NIS+ is being used (or you just want to experiment ;-). -- Bradford Castalia Castalia@azstarnet.com Systems Analyst http://www.azstarnet.com/~castalia idæim 520-624-6629 712 N. Seventh Avenue Tucson, AZ 85705 "Build an image in your mind, fit yourself into it." The Log of Cyradis, Seeress of Kell. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 00:20:35 -0800 (PST) From: "Anthony A. D. Talltree" Subject: NetBSD is *not* Linux! To: Suns-at-Home-List@tigger.net-kitchen.com >Given that SunOS on old Sun hardware effectively stopped development >some years ago, and that NetBSD is based on a later version of the same >source tree as SunOS, I think you're missing something if you really think >SunOS is somehow more mature than NetBSD Umm, SunOS is rather distinctly subject to ongoing development. Sun has early access 5.8 available now. - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 10:49:04 +0100 From: Peter Koch Subject: NetBSD is *not* Linux! To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Hi! Peter da Silva wrote: >...run an abandoned 4.2BSD derivative when you have 4.4-Lite available? First of all, SunOS 4 is based on 4.3BSD. SunOS 4.1.1 does have all the major improvements from 4.3reno! DOn't make it worse than it is! >I would even argue that NetBSD is closer to what SunOS would have been if >Sun hadn't been seduced by the Dark Side (System V) than either SunOS-4 or >Solaris. Um, yes, i think you're right. Sun made a lot of steps into the SysV direction with SunOS 4 and from a marketing view they surely were right. I was very dissapointed when they told us that they'd stop SunOS and start Solaris which is based on SVR4. But one point: Some of the SysVish features were already working under SunOS: IPC, STREAMS, TLI (ok, ok, a LOT of patches are needed to make TLI work on 4.1.1, but it works ok on 4.1.3!),... Not all SysVish things are BAD. Todays Solaris does have reembedded most BSD features and for me (who's using /usr/ucb before /usr/bin in his path) Solaris is a nice BSD derivate! The ugly /etc/rc* stuff is an exception... >And if you want more of an adventure, try OpenBSD. Oh, no! I do not want to adventure... i want a fast and robust OS for my ol' Sun3's and SunOS is my first choice! >I think you're missing something if you really think SunOS >is somehow more mature than NetBSD. Ok, people, let's make a survey: Tell me the current uptime of your SunOS 4.1.X and NetBSD machines. I'll post a summary. And for the subject line: >NetBSD is *not* Linux! I agree. Even in the intended sense, Peter! But SunOS does have its advantages even after years of stopped development: 1) Support for nifty hardware (especially VME-Bus) 2) Lots of network enhancements (you know that RPC, YP, NFS and more protocols were developed at Berkeley but finished at Sun so they became commercially usable in SunOS 4.1.X) 3) SysV-Stuff (i count it as PLUS here, because it doesn't bother you but IS available if in need) 4) Most free software still supports SunOS As i said before: SunOS was years ahead of other Unices at its best times and it is still a good OS today. NetBSD has it's place too! It will sooner or later overcome SunOS. There will be a time when even Peter Koch will format all disks and install NetBSD on his machines. But not yet! And remember: The goal is to have fun! I have ;-) Peter - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 06:43:49 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: NVRAM (Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35) To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > You can pretty much pick any 6 byte value for the MAC address and hostID, > though you should probably make sure the first three bytes of the MAC are > 08:00:20 so it looks like a Sun to network management tools. Ugh. No, you *should* pick a value with the 02 bit set in the first byte. For instance, 0a:00:20:xx:xx:xx. However, the reasons are fairly thin and esoteric. You MUST NOT pick a value with the 01 bit set in the first byte. (For example, 09:00:20:xx:xx:xx is right out.) The reasons for this stricture are solid and compelling! Matt Crawford - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 07:55:39 -0800 From: Ashley M Subject: Sparc 2 Ethernet troubles To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com I recently bought a used Sparc 2, which did not have an ethernet card. I installed Solaris 7 and then bought two SBus ethernet cards for the machine (I want it to act as a NAT for my home network - I'll probably install OpenBSD when the machine actually works). The problem is that neither of the cards work in the system, individually or together. I can Test Net and the loopback works fine but it gives me cable errors. I've several cables, that I know work, with the same results. Can anyone help me with this? I'm very new to the Sparc architecture. thanks Ashley - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 08:21:22 -0600 From: "The Big CaT (KO)" Subject: Sparc TTY connection To: "Suns-at-Home-List@tigger.net-kitchen.com" What do I have to set to allow a Hyperterm connection on the serial port of my SS-20 running Solaris 2.5.1? I've set the hyperterm to 9600b, 8 bits, No Parity an1 stop bit. Where in SOlaris do I make certain that I'm allowing a terminal connection on the serial port? Thanks. Kobe - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 06:48:20 -0600 From: Matt Crawford Subject: SS1 reporting ff:ff:ff: for an ethernet address... To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > So just go to any computer who you know will never be on your > network, pick its ethernet address, and use it. (Or just use 1:1:1:1:1:1 - > the odds of that showing up in a contemporary ethernet adapter are > astronomically small.) No! Don't pick that. See my previous message. Any ethernet address with an odd first byte is a *multicast* address! It is treated specially as a destination address and is illegal as a source address. (Well, I think maybe token rings do something funky with a multicast source, but ethernet bridges don't allow it.) Matt - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 09:36:37 -0500 From: Erik Fichtner Subject: Sun Boot Prom for 670MP (was Re: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35) To: Dwight McKay > Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 19:21:37 -0000 > From: "Gavin Saxby" > Subject: Prestoserve drivers? HyperSPARC boot PROM? > To: > > I also need to get a new BootPROM so I can use a single Ross HyperSPARC 166 > in a Sparc20, does anyone have any ideas? Will I get a worthwhile speed > increase from the current setup of dual SM71s? Current config is: Dual > SM71s, 1.2Gb Boot disk, 4.2Gb extra disk, 352 Mb RAM, Leo (ZX) Graphics. > Intended use is a personal machine (Netscape, Star Office, Quake) On a similar topic, does anyone know where I can get a new boot prom for a SPARCserver 670MP? I'd like to pull out the poor old 40mhz cpu's and put in something a little faster, not to mention something that will support Solaris 2.5.1 until NetBSD or OpenBSD has SMP support. Thanks. -- Erik Fichtner; Warrior SysAdmin (emf|techs) 34.9908% http://www.obfuscation.org/~techs N 38 53.055' W 77 21.860' 764 ft. "What's the most effective Windows NT remote management tool?" "A car." -- Stephen Northcutt - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 11:07:36 +0100 From: Peter Koch Subject: SunOS vs. *BSD for older Sun hardware... To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Hi! Greg A. Woods wrote: >I've never had any real affection for old software. But i have. Maybe it's a matter of taste. >...with the newer "UVM" virtual memory subsystem in NetBSD the performance >is almost always at least equal, if not better, than that of SunOS. Mmmmmmh... yes, UVM has boosted the performance a lot. But i have both SunOS and NetBSD side by side and i can compare... SunOS is much more optimized for the Sun3... But i'm sure NetBSD will evolve here, SunOS can't! >the binary emulation support for SunOS (and Solaris) binaries is excellent. Yeah! I love this feature of NetBSD. >Oh, but it is (at least SunOS-4 is terribly insecure)! The plain SunOS from CD (or tape), yes! But there are a lot of fixes availble from Sun. And some of the bigger packets should be replaced by modern ones (sendmail, ftp, etc.). But then SunOS-4 is better than IRIX (ok, ok, weak argument) ;-) >built and installed almost everything in the GNU or NetBSD user-land anyway Oh, no need to have GNU-sed, GNU-tar, GNU-whatever,... most SunOS programs are ok. The programs i need from GNU are gcc, bison, flex, gmake,... those that have unique features and that are much better than the SunOS things... but not the whole usr-land! >I do agree that SunOS-4 was once *the* premier Unix operating system, >and indeed it had the best mix of features from the various "camps". >However it hasn't been actively developed for many years now. Sure. We all know that. There is little enough development for SunOS going on, done by enthusiasts like me... and we have to borrow from NetBSD to fix things... At least i have y2k-patches for my Sun3's now. They're available on the Sun3/3x archive. For those that are interested and still have fun running SunOS 4.1.1 on the good old Sun3... >NetBSD really is a *lot* better platform. Not for me. Peter - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 11:07:24 -0500 (EST) From: Curt Sampson Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35 To: Peter da Silva > From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) > Subject: NVRAM > > You can pretty much pick any 6 byte value for the MAC address and hostID, > though you should probably make sure the first three bytes of the MAC are > 08:00:20 so it looks like a Sun to network management tools. I used > "C0:FF:EE" and "60:BA:BE". If you get a collision with these numbers you > can blame me, but if you're on MY local LAN I wanna know how. Normally the last three octets of the host ID and the last three octets of the ethernet Mac address are the same. (The first octet of the host ID is the system type.) I tend to use 12:34:56, because the checksum for it on a type 51 system (sun4c) is easily memorised: 78. Now what is it about this list that attracts so many cynics? cjs -- Curt Sampson 917 532 4208 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil. The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 17:22:35 -0500 (EST) From: Rick Leir EPS Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35 To: Dwight McKay >>Objection! FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are not "Unix clones". >>They *are* Unix. For the uninitiated, sandwich any of those between >Unix is a trade-mark, so neither of those is Unix. McKusick is actively developing the FreeBSD file system, and other leading lights are working on it. I would say it is the leading edge of *nix development. Linux is leading the *nix world on many fronts. Solaris and other commercial Unices are playing catch-up. Unix is in the hands of a quietly fading company (SCO?). Is Solaris officially a Unix? It is my favourite among the commercial Unices. You choose what You want to run. cheers -- Rick Rick Leir rleir@igs.net 613-828-8289 http://www.igs.net/~rleir/ - Fight for web standards. http://www.webstandards.org/ The WaSP! "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 15:15:40 -0600 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com One of my goals in getting a Sun was to automate things as much as possible for my wife (who isn't very technical). I have put in Cron jobs to dial up my ISP 3 times a day. I then run "fetchmail" to download my and my wife's e-mail (we each have cron jobs) which gets the e-mail off my ISP's POP3 server and shoves it into our local mailboxes. I then have a cron job that checks the size of our respective mailboxes and plays a sound file (a .au file) if it's more than 0 bytes (one sound for her, a different one for me). This lets her know, without having to even touch the computer, that she has e-mail. I then have a POP3 server running, which Netscape (a graphical e-mail program to make it easy for her to use) talks to via localhost to "download" the e-mail into Netscape's mailbox. Replies are sent to localhost where they are picked up by sendmail. Of course, sendmail will attempt to send them out, which it will fail to do because I am not on line. The next time that I dial up, I have a cron job that runs "sendmail -q" forcing it to process the queue and so the e-mail gets sent. My ISP's mail server is identified as "mailhost" in my /etc/hosts file, so all e-mail is sent (via SMTP) there and I let them figure out where to send it to. It's been working rather well. Recently, I wanted to setup a calendar for my church (I am the church council's secretary). I immediately though that Calendar Manager would make a nice calendar. I didn't want to use my own Calendar Manager file (it already has stuff like my dentists appointments, etc. on it), so I created a new user, soley to have a calendar. The thought occured to me, I could make an alias for this user (in /etc/mail/aliases) that would forward this user's e-mail to the e-mail addresses of everyone in the church who has e-mail. Then, e-mail reminders that calendar manager spits out would go to everyone. The folks at church were actually quite eager to get these little reminders. Here my troubles began. People who's e-mail accounts are on specific ISPs (AOL, Novia.net, etc.) never got the e-mails, while others did. I kind of suspected perhaps my calendar manager e-mails were being dropped because they looked like SPAM. I've found it's not just calendar manager, it's any command-line like e-mail (like say mailx) that passes through sendmail (i.e. uses sendmail as a client, directly or indirectly, as opposed to say Netscape, which talks to sendmail the server via SMTP). My box is named "apollo" and my ISP's e-mail server is monarch.papillion.ne.us (just for clarity). I've added the following to sendmail.cf in attempts to fix this problem: Djapollo.papillion.ne.us DSmonarch DMmonarch.papillion.ne.us Timeout.queuewarn=24h I bumped up the timeout as I don't dial in every 4 hours and I didn't want the warning messages. The DM tells sendmail to masqurade as my ISP's mail server. The DS line is basically the same type of thing as defining "mailhost" (from what I understand). The Dj line was one of my stabs at getting rid of the "unable to qualify my own domain name" messages, which I thought were (and are) related. My ISP's box appears in my hosts file like this: 209.180.110.200 monarch mailhost I went to sendmail.org and found that they recommended that I add my host's fully qualified domain name to /etc/hosts. I picked through /var/log/syslog (and my ISP's equivalent file) and found that in the SMTP traffic, my machine was refering to itself as "apollo" and this unqualified name seem to be what was causing the e-mail to be rejected. I don't have a fully qualified domain name, so I just kind of pulled apollo.papillion.ne.us out of thin air. It didn't help. I also tried putting my ISP's mail server's fully qualified domain name in as an alias for apollo (i.e. I added monarch.papillion.ne.us to apollo's line in /etc/hosts). Now this actually works (i.e. the e-mail gets through), but it has caused other problems. If I just leave it in my hosts file, then when I am not dialed in, all e-mail immediately bounces (apparently sendmail is fooled into thinking that DNS is enabled and when it can't lookup the hostnames, it bounces the messages). I've tried in my dial up script replacing my /etc/hosts file with one that has my ISP's fully qualified domain name, and then in my hang up script I replace the hosts file with a version without. That has seemed to work, but I still have other weird problems, like "ntpdate" no longer works (as if it can't use DNS to look up the time servers that it should sync off of). Anybody out there tried this type of thing before? How did you get command-line type mail to work so that sendmail will queue it up and send it out when you happen to dial in? Do I really need to abandon Sun's sendmail and go out to sendmail.org get the source and compile it (I'd rather avoid that if I can)? Is there some obscure line in sendmail.cf that I'm overlooking that can make all this work? Is there something that my ISP has to do (they just switched from NetBSD to Linux)? -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 15:00:47 -0600 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V12 #35 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > Subject: "unix clones" > > >Objection! FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are not "Unix clones". > >They *are* Unix. For the uninitiated, sandwich any of those between > > Unix is a trade-mark, so neither of those is Unix. BSD may not be Unix(tm), but it certainly is Unix. AT&T wrote Unix. The people at AT&T who wrote it were friends with some of the professors at Berkley. The professors at Berkley bemoaned the fact that it seemed impossible to teach operating system concepts to their students, because they had to write everything in assember, so it took them a whole semester to do the most trivial of class projects. The people at AT&T (without the permission of AT&T the company) gave the people at Berkley a copy of the source code to Unix. AT&T continued to add features and funtionality to Unix(tm). The professors at Berkley made (undergraduate) class assignments to add various features to Unix. They both added many of the same features (like printing) to Unix, both operating in very different ways. Linux came about because BSD has some intellectual property type copyright issues (not with the stuff that they added, but with the core Unix code that they got from individuals at AT&T; the individuals who gave out the code didn't own the intellectual property, AT&T did). AT&T was pressing the fact that BSD contained intellectual property of AT&T (see below) and people wanted a truly free Unix(not tm). The founder of Sun was a graduate of Berkley, who had done a fair amount of work on BSD. SunOS, all the way up to SunOS 4.x was BSD. AT&T had the idea that they wanted BSD and System V (their Unix[tm]) to merge back into one big happy Unix (synics might add, "with all the royalties going to them"). When they went from SVR3 (System V, Revision 3) to SVR4, they wanted to include many of the BSD ways of doing things (i.e. support both the classical System V way of doing something, like printing, and the BSD way of doing it), so they hired a company with a lot of BSD experience to help them: Sun Microsystems. AT&T sold Unix(tm) to Novell, who renamed it "Unixware" (to match their networking product, Netware). Novell turned around and later sold it to SCO, who has maintained SCO unix (their own SVR4 based unix) and Unixware (Unix[tm]) as 2 separate products (I have not kept up with what the are doing lately and have heard that they are planning to merge SCO Unix and Unixware into one product). IBM, when AT&T was moving from SVR0 to SVR1, didn't like the new licensing agreement that AT&T wanted them to sign. Their Unix, AIX, is still SVR0, however, they have grafted on functionality from BSD where ever they need to add a feature. Technically, because they are SVR0, they can call themsevles Unix(tm), but there have been a lot of features added since SVR0 was written, so there is a whole lot of BSD in AIX. Most of your important features are done "the BSD way" in AIX. SVR4, thanks to Sun, now contains so many BSDisms, and in spite of AT&T's dream that this would allow classic BSD users to easily port their code over to System V and eventually get them on the System V bandwagon, the net effect has been that a lot of people who used to develop things the System V way now do things the (easier) BSD way. Sockets is a perfect example. To pretend that BSD is not an integral part of what we think of as being Unix (and an integral part of what is Unix[tm]), is to turn a blind eye towards reality. "UNIX-like operating system" is a nifty bit of legalese intended to appease lawyers; it's there to follow the law and not to tell the truth. Yes, your answer will hold up in a court of law, but to call BSD "Unix" is "more true than the truth itself". -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************