SUMMARY: SPARCprinter hangs IPC

From: Mark Ferraretto (mferrare@physics.adelaide.edu.au)
Date: Wed May 22 1991 - 13:27:53 CDT


My original question

> Configuration:
> SPARC IPC 12 Mb RAM, 207Mb Disk, SunOS 4.1.1 RevB
> SPARCprinter and NewsPrint 2.1
> Problem:
> Whenever files are sent to the printer the workstation hangs. Pinging
> it from another machine says that the machine is alive but all users'
> shells (& root) hang. Rsh is not possible. This happens after the
> first one or two files have been printed if the files are text files.
> If the file is a postscript file it won't print at all - just hang.
>
> The installation of the SBus card, SBus driver and NewsPrint was all
> done according to the manual and the kernel alteration was done as well
> and the kernel reconfigured as stated in the manuals. No error
> messages during installation or reboot.

And the correct answers:
------
From: beard@spam.ua.oz.au (David Beard)

I remember seeing something like this in sun-managers before.

There are two things that might help ...

  a) make sure you've got plenty of space in your spool directory. The raster
     files generated by newsprint are quite large (several Mb's).

  b) there is a patch to NeWSprint for SunOS 4.1.1, which fixes a mmap bug.
     This is a shell script located in .../np/4.1.1patch/install_4.1.1patch
     which replaces ufs_vnodeops.o in /usr/kvm/sys/sun4c/OBJ/ufs_vnodeops.o,
     so you'll need to do a rebuild of the kernel.

Hope this helps.

-----

>From quinn@EE-CF.Stanford.EDU Wed May 22 12:01:19 1991

Similar problems on this end. If you read the RTF (READ THIS FIRST)
that came with the Sparcprinter, there was a small patch that
needed to be installed after you did all of the kernel hacking.
The claim was that if the patch wasn't installed the machine
would hang (hence your symptoms). The patch came either on
the sbus tape or the newsprint tape (sorry, I forget).

Good luck, I've had a heck of a time with the printer, myself.

-chris quinn

------

Thankyou to everyone else who replied.

The problem was that I hadn't installed the patch. Everything works OK now.

-- 
       _             Name  : Mark Ferraretto	   Title: Computing Officer
      \  \           Place : Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics
 ||     \  \                 University of Adelaide
==========>==>==--   Aarnet: mferrare@physics.adelaide.edu.au
 ||      /  /        Phone : +61 8 228 5428
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