Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!eecs.nwu.edu!phil From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore Subject: Re: Umax 4.3 virtual memory problem Keywords: Umax, paging, cow, bug Message-ID: <59@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> Date: 18 Sep 90 19:41:18 GMT References: <1479@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Reply-To: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: EECS Department, Northwestern University Lines: 69 In article , jdarcy@encore.com (Jeff d'Arcy) writes: |>>We reported this bug to Encore around the end of April, so hopefully |>>they are aware of the problem and are working on a solution. We have |>>not yet received a reply from Encore. |> |>. . .so you posted this. We appreciate being made aware of the problem |>(as if we weren't already), but I'm sure you can appreciate that we'd |>prefer a different methodology from what you suggest. I disagree. Ever since we got 4.0.0 we have been complaining about the absolutely rotten VM performance. All we ever got from Encore was "we don't see the problem." It is NICE....REALLY NICE....to know that we are not alone, that this is not a fluke but a genuine wide-spread bug. Without this person's posting, I would still be in the dark. |>Yes, useful to our users, and even more useful to our competitors. The |>fact is that any system as complex as an SMP UNIX kernel is going to |>have bugs, and some of those are going to be pretty scary. Advertising |>our bugs while our higher-market-share competitors don't reciprocate |>gives them an unparalleled opportunity to slime us. As I'm sure you're |>aware, some of our competitors *already* make plenty of misleading claims |>about the relative merits of our machines vs. theirs, and this would be a |>godsend for their marketing/sales departments. So in the hopes of sustaining and increasing future sales, you sacrifice your current customers? Seems like a pretty bad tradeoff to me. Sun distributes something called the "Customer Distributed Bugs List" (it is VERY thick). They even have a bulletin-board-style system set up to enable customers to check the bugs database online. In this way, customers can find out about bugs but (presumably) the so-called "competitors" access to this list is limited. Does Encore have anything equivalent? Sun willingly posts information about serious bugs to appropriate mailing lists and newsgroups. Thye used to put fixes and patches out on uunet, although that hasn't happened much recently because of a change in support staff. Has Encore ever done anything like that? I'm only using Sun as an example because I am familiar with them.... |>Obviously I can't comment on the availability of future releases, and I |>honestly don't know the status of this *particular* problem. What I can |>say is that we have been aware of UMAX 4.3 VM problems for some time (we |>use it in-house too) and have no reason except resources to avoid fixing |>them. Then FIX them! I'm pretty fed up with the problem at this point. If this computer didn't use whiz-bang 20 layer interleaved super-duper high-speed memory that costs more than my house, I'd just go buy more memory..... That's not *any* sort of a commitment; remember that I speak only |>for myself and not for Encore even in this group. Also, my mention of |>VM problems in UMAX 4.3 should not alarm anyone. These things are a fact |>of life, and I'll bet that at least one if not all of Dynix, IRIX and OSx |>have worse problems lurking somewhere. It is also a fact of life that serious problems which go unfixed for a long time tend to get customers very angry and tend to make them wish that they were not your customers. Not that I am personally at that point...........yet! William LeFebvre Computing Facilities Manager and Analyst Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University