Various info (was Re: Flaky behavior after installing 3002 upgrade)

[John P. Eisenmenger]

>From article <18829 at rpp386.cactus.org>, by jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
> (John F Haugh II):
> The "July" update was 3001.  "September" was 3002, and may have had those
> problems corrected.  I ran into a number of problems involving NFS crashes
> in early levels of AIX which were fixed by upgrading the software.  I
> don't know if 3003 has been published yet, but you might want to start
> clamoring for it.

Here is a summary of various things of which I have recently found out through
my extensive dealings with IBM trying to get my XStation 120s to handle IEEE
802.3 networking.  I in no way represent IBM, and these statements are in no
way endorsed by IBM.  Due to the speed of the marketplace some of these state-
ments may already prove to be false.

	1) At one point an IBM rep. at software support mentioned that a
	   new tape was on the verge of being released.  According to my
	   SE, the tape being mentioned was the 3003 update.  I have since
	   heard from my SE that IBM is having problems with that tape and
	   the latest available update so far is 3002.  If you haven't
	   upgraded your system to the 3002 update you should call IBM
	   and get it.  It's free and it's quick (I received my update
	   within 24 hours -- overnight air -- surprised the h*ll out
	   of me!).

	2) This is also from my SE: watch out for telnetd under 3002.  If
	   you haven't applied the 3002 update yet, save the 3001 version
	   of telnetd and reinstall it after applying the 3002 update.  The
	   3002 version will (supposedly) hang up.  We almost always use
	   "rlogin" so I can't verify this, but seeing as how I was warned
	   by an IBM rep. I suppose it's true.  She didn't know if it would
	   be fixed on 3003...

	3) Earlier Robin Wilson said that getting IEEE 802.3 networking
	   going on IBM XStations required the 3002 update plus a hardware
	   change for the XStation Ethernet card.  This seems to be the
	   case, but the hardware EC has been cancelled by IBM.  So far
	   I haven't been able to find out why it was cancelled, when
	   they plan on making it available again, how I'm supposed to
	   get my X terminals to work, or anything else.  Since it's the
	   holiday season I'm not expecting answers overnight...

	   Presently I am going to try subnetting my Xterminals off of a
	   second Ethernet card which is configured to run "Standard"
	   Ethernet.  The card is a loaner from IBM...

I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised with IBM's service.  Even
though my problems aren't solved I haven't had the feeling that my calls
or questions have been in any way ignored or delayed unnecessarily, which
is all-too-frequent with some other companies.  In some ways (like lending
us ethernet cards -- this is the second time) they're bending over backwards
to help.

-John