This is the Apollo Frequently Asked Questions file. I compiled it from various sources. Send me your contributions so I can keep this up to date. - Jim Rees, University of Michigan IFS Project Question: Where can I get "foo" for my Apollo (for all values of "foo" where "foo" is some freely available software package)? Answer: Many things are available by anonymous ftp over the Internet. Check the "Anon-FTP-sites" file on dabo.ifs.umich.edu. A good place to find Apollo specific code is the ADUS archive at adus.ecn.uiowa.edu. Also try maths.su.oz.au, ocf.berkeley.edu, dabo.ifs.umich.edu, and ftp.eb.ele.tue.nl. Question: Would anyone have a termcap entry that will work correctly with the VI editor? Answer: Nope. You have to use the vt100 emulator (which ought to get loaded automatically when you run vi - unless you're trying to do it remote). You can also use an xterm. Pads are not terminals. Workstations were supposed to obsolete terminals. But they didn't. But pads still aren't terminals. Question: Why is X so slow at sr10.2? Answer: You need to install "psk5". This should be available from your friendly HP/Apollo sales office. It's fixed in sr10.3. Question: Where can I get x11r4? Answer: Your r4 clients will work just fine with the Apollo share-mode r3 X server. The psk_q2_91 from Apollo includes r4 client libraries and a server that runs simultaneously with the DM, but rather than sharing the screen, you switch between them with a hot key. You can get r4 client libraries in binary form by ftp from dabo.ifs.umich.edu. You can get x11r4 sources from the following sites: Machine Internet FTP Location Name Address Directory -------- ------- -------- ------------- (1) West USA gatekeeper.dec.com 16.1.0.2 pub/X11/R4 Central USA mordred.cs.purdue.edu 128.10.2.2 pub/X11/R4 (2) Central USA giza.cis.ohio-state.edu 128.146.8.61 pub/X.V11R4 Southeast USA uunet.uu.net 192.48.96.2 X/R4 (3) Northeast USA crl.dec.com 192.58.206.2 pub/X11/R4 (4) UK Janet src.doc.ic.ac.uk 129.31.81.36 X.V11R4 UK niftp uk.ac.ic.doc.src (5) Australia munnari.oz.au 128.250.1.21 X.V11/R4 Question: I am looking for addresses for Apollo third-party vendors for disk and memory (DNxxxxx's, PRISM, and 400 series). Anyone have a list of addresses? Any info would be appreciated. Answer: ====================================================================== DISCLAIMER: I will neither vouch for, nor complain about, any of the following companies. I have never worked for any of them, nor am I receiving any favoritism from them. To the best of my knowledge, the products listed are available from them, but it is not necessarily a COMPLETE list of products -- please call them yourself. The vendors listed are not in any particular order. I typed them as their addresses came up in my folders. The last three companies _appear_ to be HP suppliers primarily. If this is true, I would expect them to deal mainly in the 9000 series peripherals. (However -- again -- call them). John Thompson (jt) Honeywell, SSEC Plymouth, MN 55441 thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com ====================================================================== National Peripherals, Inc 1111 Pasquinelli Drive, Suite 400 Westmont, IL 60559 (312) 325-4151 ==> DNxxxx memory ==> 9000/400 series memory, I believe ==> Maxtor 8760E (697MB) disk drives ==> SCSI drives for 9000/400 series ==> Exabyte 8mm tape drives ==> other disk drives, etc. North Central Peripherals 14041 Burnhaven Drive, Suite 114 Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 881-2302 ==> DNxxxx memory ==> 9000/400 series memory ==> Maxtor 8760E (697MB) disk drives ==> Exabyte 8mm tape drives ==> other disk drives, etc. AnDATAco Computer Peripherals 9550 Waples Street San Diego, CA 92121 (619) 453-9191 ==> DNxxxx memory ==> Maxtor 8760E (697MB) disk drives ==> Exabyte 8mm tape drives ==> other disk drives, etc. Infotek Systems 1045 S. East Street Anaheim, CA 92805 (714) 956-9300 ==> 9000/400 series memory Martech 1151 West Valley Boulevard Alhambra, CA 91803 (818) 281-3555 ==> 9000/400 series memory Digital Micronics, Inc 5674 El Camino Real, Suite P Carlsbad, CA 92008 (619) 931-8554 ==> 9000/400 series memory Question: Is there an archive of comp.sys.apollo? Answer: An archive of the comp.sys.apollo newsgroup is maintained by Jim Richardson (jimr@maths.su.oz.au) and is available by anonymous FTP from the following two sites: ocf.berkeley.edu (128.32.184.254) maths.su.oz.au (129.78.68.2) Login under username "ftp", giving your email address as password. IMPORTANT: Unless you are in Australia, please use the berkeley replica site (kindly provided by Sam Shen) so as to reduce traffic on the very busy US- Australia satellite link. The file README.FIRST in directory comp.sys.apollo gives details of the organ- ization of the archive, which goes back to November 1989. There are index files, which contain the following fields from each article: From Subject Summary Keywords Message-ID References Date These indices should be useful to people wanting to search through the wealth of information in the archive for answers to questions that have been discussed in the newsgroup in the past. Question: Where can I get a version of sendmail which supports MX records? Answer: Sendmail 5.61+IDA is available by anonymous ftp from eng.clemson.edu in directory mail+ftp. For some small patches to make it run better under Domain/OS, ftp the file sendmail.5.61-apo.Z from maths.su.oz.au. -- Jim Richardson Also, check out Neil Rickert's version of sendmail 5.65 with the IDA enhancements available from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu in pub/sendmail-5.65+IDA-1.4.2.tar.Z -- ianh@bhpmrl.oz.au (Ian Hoyle) Question: How can I use the DM editor for mail or while su'd? Answer: Many people have written programs to call the DM editor from a program and wait until it exits. For one solution, ftp the file dmedit.tar.Z from maths.su.oz.au. Question: Why won't kermit compile (or run) on my Apollo? Answer: There are some very old versions of kermit that have #ifdefs for Apollo in them. These are no longer necessary with Domain/OS (they were needed for previous versions of Aegis with Domain/IX). Get the standard Unix kermit and use that. I recommend the one on cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu. Question: What is "unknown mailer error 1?" Answer: The Apollo file system uses mandatory, implicit locks. The Apollo mail system has never been fixed to properly deal with this. Mail is usually delivered to the spool file by /bin/mail. If /bin/mail is busy delivering mail when you try to collect it, you will be unable to open the spool file. If you are busy collecting mail when /bin/mail tries to deliver, then sendmail will see the infamous "unknown mailer error 1." As far as I know, /bin/mail doesn't use any other locking scheme. It can't use flock(), since flock() can only be called on open files. It may use .lock files but I doubt it. The proper solution to all this is to write a new version of /bin/mail that retries on locked spool files, and make sure all your mail reading agents keep the spool file open only long enough to collect the mail, and also retry on locked files. Apollo should do this. You shouldn't have to. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen. -- Jim Rees Question: How can I keep my node clocks synchronized? Answer: Use xntp, available from the usual ftp sites. See Readme.xntp on dabo for Apollo patches. See date.tar.Z for a simple program that just sets one node's clock from another node's clock. Question: When I try to use NFS on my IBM PC to access files on my Apollo, it complains about not finding an "Authentication Server." Answer: The brain-damaged NFS implementation for the PC requires a thing called pcnfsd. You should have it in source form with your PC-NFS. Copy it to the Apollo, compile it and install it. You will also need Sun RPC, which is available from many ftp sites. Question: Why doesn't Apollo ftpd support anonymous ftp? Answer: Anonymous ftp depends on the chroot() call, which doesn't work on Apollo. There is a patched version of ftpd that supports anonymous ftp by fixing all path names before passing them off to the system. It's available (by anonymous ftp!) from various places, including ocf.berkeley.edu, dabo.ifs.umich.edu, and ftp.eb.ele.tue.nl. Question: How can I get auto word-wrapping in the DM? Answer: WW is an undocumented DM command to do word wrap on the currently selected region or to set word wrapping mode for text subsequently entered. Options: -ON Turn on word wrap and set column at current right margin -OFF Turn off word wrap -C nn Turn on word wrap and set column at specified value -A Wrap selected region -I Query current column setting -- stluka@software.org (Fred Stluka) Question: How can I connect my Macs to my Apollo in a reasonable way? Answer: See the file mac-apollo (separate file because of its length). -- Carlton B. Hommel Question: Are the VT100 PF1-PF4 keys defined in the Apollo version of xterm? If so, where are they? If not, can someone give me a hint how to define them (or how to redefine any key for that matter). -- John A. Breen Answer: The manual "Using the X Window System on Apollo Workstations" is the place to look for some of this -- it's a good summary, but not an exhaustive treatise on X. The answer to your question is that you will need to use the client "xmodmap" in order to simulate the keys which are not physically present on the Apollo keyboard (PF1-PF4 as an example). Since you are running in a "dm owns root" configuration, you'll need to take into account the "keyboard.config" file which tells XApollo "this list of keys doesn't exist for X, pass them through to the Apollo Display Manager". This is important because you don't want to remap keys for xterm which XApollo will not GIVE to xterm. See section 2.2.2 in the manual for a detailed discussion about the /usr/lib/X11/keyboard/keyboard.config file. Once you have picked a set of physical keys to emulate the PF keys, feed this to xmodmap using the physical keycode and the keysym name (from the include file /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h). Example - you want to make the "AGAIN" key map to PF1. Looking at the output of "xmodmap -pk" you see that it is labeled "Redo" (which agrees with the entry in the keyboard.config file), and it is keycode value 158. Looking at the include file keysymdef.h, you see "#define XK_KP_F1 0xFF91" which is the entry for "keypad function key 1" - also known as PF1. The xmodmap client will take either a file entry or a command line remapping, so you could invoke it as < xmodmap -e "keycode 158 = KP_F1" > (the quotes are required on the command line) and the deed is done. If you don't have a copy of the manual, you can get one by using the order number "015213-A02". Hope that helps. -- weber_w@apollo.HP.COM (Walt Weber) Question: Where can I get emacs? Answer: A new version of my modifications to GNU Emacs for the Apollo is now available. This version supports GNU Emacs 18.57, Domain/OS SR10.2 and SR10.3, and the latest release of the Domain C Compiler... I am distributing this release from labrea.stanford.edu (36.8.0.47). The following files are available for anonymous ftp from the "pub/gnu" directory: APOLLO.README README for Apollo GNU Emacs apollo-emacs.tar.Z Apollo GNU Emacs modifications As always, to install my Apollo GNU Emacs modifications, uncompress and untar "apollo-emacs.tar.Z" on top of a unmodified GNU Emacs 18.57 distribution tree, and consult "APOLLO.README" for building instructions. Note: There is a bug in SR10.2 tar such that overwritten files are not necessarily truncated to the proper size. Before you untar the file under SR10.2, execute the following commands: rm README etc/APOLLO etc/MACHINES info/dir lisp/cl-indent.el* lisp/info.el* rm lisp/lisp-mode.el* lisp/paths.el* lisp/rmail.el* lisp/rnews.el* rm lisp/server.el* lisp/shell.el* lisp/startup.el* src/Makefile src/crt0.c rm src/dired.c src/dispnew.c src/emacs.c src/fileio.c src/fns.c src/keyboard.c rm src/m-apollo.h src/process.c src/sysdep.c src/x11fns.c src/x11term.c rm src/xdisp.c src/ymakefile Leonard N. Zubkoff Lucid, Incorporated Also, if you want a multi-window X version of emacs, check out epoch, available from cs.uiuc.edu. - Jim Rees Question: Gnu Emacs 18.55 (with Leonard N. Zubkoff's patches for sr 10.2) seems to have a problem with shell subprocesses. At times the 0x0 character (displayed as ^@ by emacs) appears in buffers running a shell. While this is only a nuisance running an inferior shell, it is a problem when running the M-x compile command: The C-x ` (next-error) function is unable to process the compiler output. Has anybody found out what causes this problem and how to fix it? Any hints will be appreciated! -- mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at (Michael K. Gschwind) Answer: This should probably go in some kind of FAQ list (sigh)... Emacs talks to its subsprocesses using pseudo ttys (ptys among friends). On Apollos, ptys occasionally get corrupted, and the problem you describe results. Rebuilding the ptys helps, but it can have funny side effects to any users logged in on those ptys. We rebuild ours once per week. That seems to avoid the problem most of the time, but of course your mileage may vary. Here is the relevant line from our /usr/lib/crontab (running the shell script at 04:00 every Sunday morning): 0 4 * * 7 root /usr/local/lib/fix_ptys and here is /usr/local/lib/fix_ptys: #!/bin/csh -f /bin/rm -f /dev/[pt]ty[pq][0-9a-f] /etc/crpty 32 -- Harald Hanche-Olsen Question: Does anybody know where I can get proxy ARP? Answer: Proxy ARP is a bad idea. Apollo has wisely decided not to support it. Use subnets instead. Question: Are there third-party vendors of ethernet boards? Answer: The ethernet board used in the Otter (dn3000 series) is a 3Com 505. You can buy your own and perhaps save some money. If you buy the board from Apollo, it comes with a special PROM, which you won't have if you buy direct from 3Com. That means you won't be able to boot diskless over the ethernet, or make remote dumps over the ether. But you'll still be able to boot from disk, or over the ring if you have one. And once the node is booted, everything else will work fine. The 505 is more expensive than some boards, because it has quite a bit of on-board smarts and buffering. No other ethernet board will work in the Otter, unless you want to write your own driver, and even then you will lose the ability to run domain protocols and TCP over the ether, which makes it pretty useless. Switch settings for the 505 are given in the file ether-switches. -- Jim Rees Question: How do I enable IP name service? Answer: Uncomment the 'nmconfig' lines in /etc/rc.local. Create the empty file /etc/daemons/nmconfig. Create the file /etc/resolv.conf. It should look like this: domain domain-name nameserver server1 nameserver server2 nameserver server3 where domain-name is your domain name, and server1..n are the numeric IP addresses of your name servers. You can have as many as you want, it tries them in the order listed. Here's a sample file for dabo.ifs.umich.edu (IP addresses are fictional): domain ifs.umich.edu nameserver 10.3.27.4 nameserver 10.1.27.4 nameserver 10.1.33.2 -- Jim Rees Question: Why can't I log in as root anywhere except a DM pad? Answer: All you need is to configure /etc/ttys to allow root login via psudo-ttys (if you really want to): pty0 none dumb on secure pty1 none dumb on secure . . . ptyf none dumb on secure -- chen@digital.sps.mot.com (Jinfu Chen) Question: How can I determine the load average without /dev/kmem? Answer: getla() { long avenrun[3]; proc1_$get_loadav(avenrun); } -- Jim Rees