Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf.edu!wet!epsilon From: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Usenet software Summary: Me too Message-ID: <651@wet.UUCP> Date: 9 Oct 89 02:28:56 GMT References: Reply-To: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) Distribution: usa Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco Lines: 42 In article dml@esl.com (Denis Lynch) writes: >I have recently had the pleasure of getting rn, cshar, patch and gnus to run >on our cubes. It wasn't straightforward, but it seems to be working! > >My question is: has anybody else done this, and in particular any other >generally-available Unix software? Yes, under 0.9. (In our last episode, I was wondering where our 1.0 upgrades were. NeXT FedExed them immediately. Now I'm waiting for our "Tech Support" people to "get around to" installing the 1.0 ROMs. Y'see, we're not supposed to do any hardware work on machines they support. The last time I needed a screw for a PC it took three weeks. ROM upgrades are supposed to take 30 minutes, so I'm sure we've been put on December's calendar, sigh.) Anyway, I have B News 2.11.17 (with fixes), nntp 1.5.6, rn 40, rrn seemingly running. (Patch too.) Larry Wall's Configure has some problems. It doesn't like the GNU cpp, so it had to be faked out somewhat. It also guessed wrong on VFORK and GETPWENT. I added window size support to rn, fixed Pnews to use recording and understand how our NeXT clusters handle mail. NNTP needed work too; it assumed that if you define MACH (which you should) that you're 4.2-derived and not 4.3-derived. I had to replace about 4 of NeXT's .h files so they'd work with gcc -bsd. I rewrote uname for the client library to identify as the cluster's server when run from an equivalent diskless client. It's going to undergo a bit more testing before I consider it ready for release, but the problems I've encountered seem not to be NeXT-dependent. Oh yeah, I had to increase the maximum .newsrc lines limit and hash table size--1000 wasn't enough! A few more things too, that I don't remember at the moment. netnews has its own partition on the server NeXT's second 660MB drive, tuned appropriately and fat with inodes. When we have 1.0 running I'll find out whether the SCSI tape support works. Backing up to floptical is no fun, and getting less so as our current 1.3GB fills... Time to order another 660... Thanks to AMBAR for help with nntp--the documentation leaves a lot to be desired. -=EPS=-