Ultrix 4.1 on VAX 8800

[Larry Meehan]

I'm looking for sites running Ultrix 4.1 on a VAX 8800.  We have seen several
disturbing problem since we upgraded to 4.1 and I'd like to compare notes
with any sysadmins on similar systems.

I have a test program which demonstrates what I take to be a bug in the
signal handling code when the sleep() call is used.  If you have an 8800
running Ultrix 4.1 (or any other SMP Ultrix) I will be happy to mail you
the program.

Also, we don't seem to be able to use the DMB32 on our system without getting
panics due to vaxbi errors.  We have swapped out about everything on that BI
to no avail.  It appears NOT to be a hardware problem at this point.

This morning we got a panic freeing free gnode, but no disk errors were
reported.

My current hypothesis is that there is a mutual exclusion bug and one CPU
is stepping on the other.  I'm still working with DEC on the problems, but
so far they haven't come up with anything satisfactory (and it has been
weeks since we started on all this).  I would really like to share information
with others running the same kind of system.  I think we could all benefit.

Hmmm... Maybe our site is the only one running Ultrix 4.1 on an 8800.  Please
tell me I'm not the only one.
-- 

			 	Larry Meehan (lwm at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu)