ONC RPC, XDR and Data conversion on DEC RISC Ultrix

[Fletcher Kittredge]

In article <1991May8.154008.2112 at milton.u.washington.edu> dittrich at milton.u.washington.edu (Dave Dittrich) writes:
>I am trying to compile CAP60 (which I picked up from munnari.oz.au) on
>a DECstation 3100 running Ultrix 4.1.  I am compiling CAP to use Ethertalk
>rather than IPTalk.  Looking into my problems a little bit I notice some
>things.
>
>First, it looks as is my system does not have all of the RPC distribution.
>Specifically, there is no /lib/librpc.lib and no rpcgen!
>
>I would like to hear from people who have installed CAP60 on DECstation
>3100's under Ultrix 4.0 or 4.1, especially those who use Ethertalk rather
>than IPTalk.
>
>I also would like to hear from people who have a working distribution of RPC
>properly installed on the above platform so I can find out what I need to do
>to get past this hurdle. (E.g., can I just install RPCSRC 4.0 from any
>Internet archive site that has it?  Are there any conflicts with other
>software or DEC modifications that I need to be aware of?)

You can't install RPC SRC without a fair amount of twiddling.  The default
version only has IEEE little endian and VAX definitions for XDR.  You can
fix this by adding your own definitions.  Look at /usr/include/ieeefp.h for
templates on how IEEE EL is handled.  Remember that the MIPS chip is setable
as to the byte order of the architecture.  There are definitions for both
MIPSEL and big endian (regular) MIPS.

Beware of the fact that DEC has included the RPC and XDR functions in /libc.a

good luck!   DEC really missed the boat by not including support for RPC and
XDR...  Especially XDR, whose general data conversion functionality is missing
in NCS and DCE.  HP included both XDR and and RPC even though they support
NCS and DCE.

regards,
fletcher



Fletcher Kittredge
Senior Engineer, BBN Software Products
150 CambridgePark Dr,  Cambridge, MA. 02140
617-873-3465  /  fkittred at bbn.com  /  fkittred at das.harvard.edu