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From: capmkt!brent@uunet.uu.net (Brent Chapman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Seeking RPC and XDR information
Keywords: Networks
Message-ID: <383@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 89 01:35:25 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 85, message 3 of 8

# I would like to find out if there are any public domain implementations of
# Suns RPC (Remote Proceedure Call) and XDR (External Data Representation)
# protocols for any operating system.  According to our Sun represenative,
# the protocol specifications are available publicly (I have the specs. in
# the manual 'Networking on the Sun Workstation'), but we require a SunOS
# and AT&T Unix source licences to get the actual implementation source
# code.

Bullshit.  Yet another case of the Sun sales reps not knowing what their
own company is doing, and giving an authoritative and _incorrect_ answer
when they _should_ be saying "I don't know, but here's the Sun technical
person you should contact.".

A while back (late 1987), Sun posted sources to RPC Version 3.9 to the
comp.sources.unix USENET newsgroup.  These sources are available from the
comp.sources.unix archive on UUNET (anonymous FTP to uunet.uu.net; the
files you want are in comp.sources.unix/volume13/rpc3.9/part[01-15].Z).

At the time these sources were released, RPC v3.9 was a _later_ version of
RPC (with substantially greater capabilities) than the binaries being
shipped with the then-current version of SunOS (3.4 or 3.5, I think).  The
version of RPC shipped with SunOS 4.0 appears to be slightly later than
the source version, but I don't think any features have been added.

The contact person at Sun for all this is (or at least was, at the time
the stuff was released) Steve Nahm <sxn@sun.com>.

It's very hard to get reliable, accurate, timely, detailed technical
information out of the Sun sales and sales support staff.  They don't know
the answers, and apparently don't know who inside Sun to ask (note that
this isn't necessarily the fault of the sales force, though).  I consider
this a problem second only to the current abysmal state of Sun's software
support services.  I've given up on trying to get answers to technical
questions like this through "official" channels, and instead rely on the
net and my own personal contacts at Sun.

Brent

Brent Chapman					Capital Market Technology, Inc.
Computer Operations Manager			1995 University Ave., Suite 390
brent@capmkt.com				Berkeley, CA  94704
{apple,lll-tis,uunet}!capmkt!brent		Phone:  415/540-6400