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From: phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: net.dcom,net.lan
Subject: Re: BLAST experience sought
Message-ID: <12796@amdcad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Aug-86 14:52:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdcad.12796
Posted: Fri Aug 22 14:52:06 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Aug-86 22:03:14 EDT
References: <204@stsci.uucp> <11@asi.UUCP>
Reply-To: phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai)
Organization: AMD, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 32
Summary: could be ATT's fault
Xref: mnetor net.dcom:1224 net.lan:940

The 3B2 (awful) has a default file limit size of around 1 megabyte.
Only the superuser can raise this limit with the "ulimit" command in
sh.  (There is also a system call to change this.) The file transfer
problem may not be in BLAST at all.

If it is due to "ulimit", why don't you call ATT and complain about
this?  They will in turn tell you a kludge to get around it. But I
think they should get a complaint for every system they sell so
they'll think about whether the market really wants this feature.

Ask them questions like:

1) Why is the superuser the only one allowed to raise the limit?  If a
user is going to fill up the disk he can still make lots of 1 megabyte
files.

2) Why can't the system manager change the default in a convenient
way? As the system is shipped, there is no documented way at all for
the manager to change it. He has to resort to adb'ing the kernel or
writing a set-UID program which replaces login, raises the limit, and
then calls login.

3) Why couldn't the default be made more reasonable? If non-privileged
users can only lower the limit, then the system could be shipped with
a high limit and the system manager could lower it in /etc/profile.

-- 
 Rain follows the plow.

 Phil Ngai +1 408 749 5720
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