DEC diagnosis of hardware problems under UNIX

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From wales at UCLA-Security Sat Dec 26 18:44:49 1981
As an addendum to my previous message, maybe I should emphasize that we
were running first UNIX/32V, then 4.0BSD.  Even 4.0BSD was not very good
regarding hardware error logging, and the DEC CE's were never comfortable
at all even with what little it did say.

We are now running 4.1BSD, and I think Bill Joy and company deserve a big
round of applause for the work they've done on cleaning up the error
logging.  In particular, the machine-check analysis stuff and the "%b"
bit-interpretation code are real wins.

If we ever have bad hardware problems again (and I hope we never do!!),
I think the 4.1BSD enhancements will help the DEC people a great deal --
for the simple reason that the error log (/usr/adm/messages) is now
READABLE.

-- Rich