[rescue] Dome Imaging MD2SUN2

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
" 
" On 03/03/2016 02:41 PM, CLIFFORD HAIGHT wrote:
" > []
" > Running console only has
" > more appeal to with SunOS 4 as OpenWindows isn't very stable.
" 
"   Nobody really used OpenWindows under SunOS4 in the real world anyway.
" ;)  Common practice was to run something like twm or fvwm as a window
" manager, sometimes installing X11R4 or X11R5 underneath that.  That
" stuff is rock solid.

i was sysadm at a high-end network gear co [not cisco] in the mid
'90s; we ran nothing but sunos4 and openwin for our chip-design sw and
i managed 100-200 desktops.  i don't recall any stability problems
with either sunos4 or openwin.  i do recall that while 4.1.4 was
released with the ross patch for multi-cpu hypersparcs, it worked just
fine with dual-proc supersparcs too [90+ day uptime on 2 different
machines under heavy chip design/sim when i left], and the clever way
i figured out to distribute patches, skeleton fs trees with just the
patch files in place.  i only had to untar and move a patch into place
once, for the whole facility.  i could then rdist the tree, and all
patches not already installed would be copied over in a single
command.  loop the cmd through a list of machines...

i ended up with 3 trees: kernel, which i could rdist any time;
openwin, which i could do if the user logged out; and all the rest,
which had to be followed by a reboot.  the only patch that ever gave
me problems was rdist itself, which caused the rdist patch process to
crash.  i handled that with rcp.

it's possible unpatched openwin was unstable, but patches were freely
avaiable back then and we used them, and they were already at 4.1.3
when i got there.

anyone else ever do anything like this?

that's also the place where i came up with the sunos4 kernel tuner i
posted recently, from a sun performance overview newsletter i read
there.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought