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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!dayton!rosevax!sds!dave
From: dave@sds.UUCP (dave schmidt x194)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: News for Xenix on PC AT ?
Message-ID: <145@sds.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Apr-87 17:18:35 EST
Article-I.D.: sds.145
Posted: Thu Apr 16 17:18:35 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 13:07:26 EST
References: <18346@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: SciCom Data Services, Minnetonka, MN
Lines: 40
Summary: Not too hard, not too easy...

In article <18346@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, dantso@bach.BERKELEY.EDU (Dan Ts'o) writes:
> 	Has anyone ported/tried to run 2.11 news on a PC AT running Xenix ?


Well, I did.  Parts of it were painful, and some parts still don't work
(in particular, if I save an article to a file, news dumps core).  Big
problems to watch out for:

1: mail is in /usr/bin rather than /bin where everything expects it to be.
   some programs ignore the MAILER #define, so you have to fgrep the
   source for it.

2: news makes huge stack demands.  Compile w/ the -F switch and a value of 4000
   or so.

3: the cc command can only handle a small number of -D directives, so you
   have to make a header file containing the ten zillion -D flags.  Then,
   either modify localize.sh (boo...) to do this for you, or "correct"
   the Makefile so that whenever you change the Makefile, make doesn't re-make
   your Makefile, thereby destroying your changes.  (I hated that...)

4: stupid problems from [censored] programmers who think that
   sizeof(int) == sizeof(char *) is a universal constant.  similiar
   problems from similar programmers who assign pointers of different
   types w/o casts. (e.g.  char * = char ** w/ no cast).  also present
   are things like:
	charptr = malloc(1024);
	if ( !charptr ) ...	/* this should be (charptr != (char *)NULL) */


5: none of the standard ways to get your system node id work under Xenix.

6: i never got patch 8 to work.


If that makes it sound initimidating, take heart -- it really wasn't
that bad, and I did get it running in a couple of days.  Good luck!


Dave Schmidt