C3 (Sun-Clone) Questions and ?Bugs?

[Brant Pellett]

Hello all you Sun Experts!

I guess I'm a Sun Expert too, except for a few *annoying* quirks, for which I
am at a loss:

Environment:	C3 Computers (Sun Sparc clones)
		Running Sunos 4.0.3 Clone
		Ethernet LAN w/multiple bridges
		NFS mounted partitions
			options: bg,retries=2,timeo=30,...(more)
		*NO* Yellow Pages
		*NO* access allowed by outside world.  Period.

1)	-df- will hang when an NFS server is down.  At first it was annoying.
	Now this is not just an annoyance, this is enraging.  At this point
	I'm willing to `mv df .df.broken ; vi df` write a shellscript
	announcing the utility as "broken".

	Don't give me excuses.  There are too many systems on this net with
	too many NFS mounts to reasonably expect ALL NFS servers to be up
	at the same time.  I don't need cop-outs, I need answers.

2)	-shutdown- will -wall- all users (read "windows of every user") of
	all systems with partitions mounted.  In this environment, shutting
	down a system:

	a)	Destroys EVERY user's display (read "edit session") with
		sadistic flair.
	b)	Makes a very loud noise (many computers all ringing thier bells
		8++ times in a row)
	c)	Lowers morale.
	d)	Provides EVERY user with information they cannot use, don't
		want, and often don't know how to remove from their display.
		(some users still think it inserts the messages in their files -
		 I can't help but wonder how many users have tried to delete
		 these messages...).

3)	-rsh- does not return the =exit(n)= value of a remote program.  It
	always returns good status if the other system is -ping-able.  This
	makes network shellscript programming impossible.

4)	-make- is brain dead.  By that I mean it says in the manual that it
	handles s.makefile and s.Makefile, but in fact, it recognizes neither.
	One time I saw it `cat s.fancyscript.sh > s.fancyscript` !  This is
	without a Makefile and without a reason to create s.fancyscript, as
	it was ALREADY there!  This make needs to be re-hosted to reality...

5)	-man- recognizes *some* of the files in /usr/man/manl (read MAN-ELL),
	but not others.  Appears to be directly proportional to rand()  :-)

6)	-/vmunix- hangs just before the first -fsck- unless it has been COLD
	booted (read "power OFF is a must - no exceptions").  At first I
	thought I was doing something funky, but then a new system came in,
	and I helped take it out of the crate and unpack it.  Fresh out of
	the box it does this!  Somebody "forget" to do a bus reset?  Darth
	Coder strikes again!  Get a clue, Coder!

7)	TFM insists that diskette drives do *NOT* exist except on Sun386i and
	Sun3.  Yet there it is, a 5.25 in HD floppy.  Inside the case.
	=mtools= work except for -mcopy-, which dumps core.  Your guess is as
	good as mine as to device names.  Can't look it up in the manual!

8)	-tar- reads files I created on my UNIX PC (read "System V") just fine,
	but creates files unreadable by -tar- on my UNIX PC.  Is this a problem
	with the Sun, or an unexpected flexibility in the Sun's -tar-?  By that
	I mean that I've always heard that (tar != tar).  Is there a PDtar?
	I can't use =shell archive= because the brain-dead =sh= on the UNIX PC
	loses all the ampersands while unpacking.  So I tar, compress, and
	(PD) uue, then copy onto MS-DOS diskettes for xfer.

9)	Is there a PD clone of NSE?  My boss is cheap and I'm growing weary
	of the shellscript I've written to attempt to emulate it.  I'm trying
	to keep multiple systems comparably configured (but not EXACTLY the
	same...) on a text and binary level.  My shellscripts work, but are
	slooow and disk-wastfull.  I've heard of ConcurrentRCS, but I don't
	know how to get it or if it will meet this need.

Thanks in advance.
-- 
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