Date: Mon, 28 Jun 93 09:00:18 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V6 #19 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Mon, 28 Jun 93 Volume 6 : Issue 19 Today's Topics: Pair of Sun 3s -- configuration advice sought +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @harbor.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 20:54:41 PDT From: decvax!sun!dhw68k.cts.com!david@cs.purdue.edu (David H. Wolfskill) Subject: Pair of Sun 3s -- configuration advice sought To: suns-at-home@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu This note is incerdibly long, now that I look at it (135 lines!!). As a gesture of appreciation for those who wade through it (or use other methods to get to the end), I'll mention a couple of things I've learned during all this down there. Anyway, I have some questions; first, the background: You should probably be aware that for a little over 10 years, I have been keeping body & soul together by being employed as an MVS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer. I purchased my first computer (a smaller version of the one I'm using to write this note: a 68010 on a VMEbus) so I could learn about UNIX & C, and gain access to Usenet. (That was in late 1984.) A few years ago, I persuaded my wife (Lynette) that a used Sun 3[/110] would be a reasonable thing for us to acquire. We did; its configuration is 8 MB RAM, a small (13"?) Hitachi color monitor on a cgfour, an Emulex MD-21 SCSI/ESDI "bridge" controller with a 140 MB Micropolis drive, and an Emulex MT-02 SCSI tape controller with a Wangtek QIC-24 drive. At the time we acquired it, it was the most advanced piece of computing equipment we had. (That first machine's manufacturer had gone belly-up -- though it (the machine) remains in service, and remains our link to the outside world (via UUCP).) At the time we acquired it, the OS on it was SunOS 3.5. I was aware that SunOS 4.1 existed; at the time, I believe it was the most current release available. I therefore suggested to Lynette that it might be useful to get a more nearly current release of software -- we have been all too familiar with the pitfalls of dealing with hardware and software that is no longer supported. I called Sun; found that the media charge was about $350; we decided to go for it. I called the order number, and was informed that there was also the minor matter of the Right To Use license... at about $700. I gulped, said I'd call back, and we had a family conference. Lynette did some calculations with the budget; we decided that it would be tight, but thought it would be worth it. I called the order number again and placed the order. (A few minutes later, American Express called to verify that I had just authorized the expenditure of >$1K over the phone....) Anyway, we received the tapes, as well as the $700 piece of paper that allowed us to use the tapes legally. I installed SunOS 4.1 (after borrowing a couple of manuals -- we couldn't afford another $600 for a manual set); I have since customized things a bit here and there. Several months ago, I thought I had found a way to increase the disk capacity significantly -- after all, one of the things I had wanted to do with the machine was to bring up gcc & X. Someone was offering a chance to get in on a "group buy" of 1.2 GB SCSI disk drives for about $1K. After discussion, we went for it. I have yet to be able to format the drive for SunOS. (A friend of mine spent some time with the drive & me where he works; a Mac was able to format it OK.) I suspected that SunOS 4.1 might not be optimal for supporting such a drive. I started debating with myself whether I should try to get the most current SunOS that supports Sun3 CPUs (SunOS 4.1.1, I believe). Recently (a few months ago), another Sun 3 -- a /60 -- became available on the net. The owner claimed that it already had SunOS 4.1.1, gcc, and X installed (among other things). Since he was asking $1300, and the configuration included 16 MB RAM, a 16" Sun monitor on a cgfour, a 300 MB Micropolis ESDI drive, and an Archive QIC-24 tape drive (both on an Emulex MD-21), I thought I might be able to try some experiments -- and if nothing else, I should be able to set up the SunOS 4.1.1 machine so the other one could either be a diskless (or dataless) client, and I would get the upgrade to SunOS 4.1.1. Well... The 3/60 works, but I don't have the installation media for SunOS 4.1.1. Some pieces were evidently never installed. I don't know if I have the right pieces to construct a server out of it. I have managed to acquire a handful of Thinnet transceivers (the /60 didn't need one, but the /110 did), so I'm able to hang the machines together on a wire; they talk OK (though I find SunOS 4.x's default broadcast address of net.0 real annoying, especially since I do have use of a 3rd machine that knows the broadcast address is net.255). So; here are my questions; indirect pointers to answers are also welcome: * Is there any way I'm likely to be able to make constructive use of the 1.2 GB disc drive (without buying Yet Another Machine)? * Do I have a(n implicit) Right To Use license for SunOS 4.1.1 for the 3/60 (since that's what was on it when I bought it)? I'm not real keen on the idea of losing another $700; on the other hand, I am even less keen on possessing software to which I have no right. * I believe that the SunOS 4.1 RTU is applicable to SunOS 4.1.1, if I should choose to run that software on the 3/110; is this the case? * Do I have any (legal) options for acquiring SunOS 4.1.1 installation media other than ordering them through Sun? If so, what? * Given the configurations as listed above (and the information that the Wangtek tape drive on the 3/110 has ceased to work -- except to terminate the SCSI bus), is it likely that some useful configuration could be cobbled together for either direct use or a trade-in for something else that might actually be more nearly usable? (I would like to use a more nearly support{ed,able} configuration for connection to the outside world; I hope someday to have a connection to a service provider so I can actually have more than just mail relay access to the Internet. It doesn't help much that Suns don't do inbound hardware flow control... my MODEMs are Telebit WorldBlazers -- in theory, able to shove 115 Kbps over a serial port.) Oh, yes: the promised "things I've learned": * Do not attempt to format (actually, analyze) a large-capacity drive in a cmdtool window when the amount of space in /tmp is only reasonable: analyze keeps spitting out disk addresses; the larger the drive, the more it spits out (for a constant buffer size). I managed to fill /tmp only part way through an analyze on the 1.2 GB drive; SunOS 4.1 panicked & crashed. This should not be a problem for shelltool; cmdtool retains a history, though.... :-} * As I mentioned above, the Wangtek drive is no longer functional. However, I still wanted to do my regular backups. I therefore set up the 3/60 as "dumphost" and used rdump on the 3/110; I found that rdump seems to be faster than dump (to a local device). As I was listening to the drive, a possible explanation occurred to me: the local drive had been reading a set of blocks from disk, then writing to tape, then reading from disk, writing to tape...; in contrast, rdump (over the wire) reads from disk, then starts streaming as it writes to tape; the reading & writing seem to be interleaved much better. I believe (but have no measurements to back this up) that dumping over the wire has reduced the elapsed time for the full backup (dump level 0) by at least 30%; perhaps as much as 50%. Anyway, I would appreciate responses to my questions (or anything else up there); I will summarize if folks express an interest. Thanks, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@dhw68k.cts.com ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************