[_CDCSL_93-16_]<1>Cedar>release>CedarDoc>UnixAtParc.tioga

UnixAtParc.tioga

Brent Welch, June 10, 1991 9:52 am PDT

Christian Jacobi, May 14, 1992 12:41 pm PDT

This document has been replaced and handed off to CSNS.

This version therefore is probably outdated.

Unix at PARC

CEDAR 10.1 %

Unix at PARC

Getting started

Brent Welch

Abstract: This document describes the basics of how UNIX is used here at PARC. This includes basic shell concepts, the choices for window systems, the choices for mailers, and the structure of the file system.

Created by: Brent Welch (w/ some excerpts from LifeOnSparcStations.tioga)

Maintained by: Brent Welch <Welch>

Filed in: /Cedar10.1/CedarDoc/UnixAtParc.tioga
(/project/cedar10.1/release/cedardoc/unixatparc.tioga.~*~)

Keywords: UNIX, X windows, shell, mail

Lasted Changed Unix stuff: June 9, 1991 2:35:17 pm PDT

Lasted Changed Cedar stuff: May 14, 1992 11:58:23 am PDT

XEROX Xerox Corporation
Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, California 94304

Executive Summary

If you want to get started using your UNIX account right away, utter the following commands:

hostname % /import/import-support/bin/fix-my-login-files
hostname % source .cshrc
hostname % source .login
hostname % runx

Introduction

This document is a starting point for new users at PARC. It gives you directions to set up your account in the "one true way", it has pointers to other useful documents, and it gives a brief overview of some of the tools that are available here at PARC. If you have followed the directions in the Executive Summary then you'll have an OpenLook environment through which you can explore the UNIX environment here at PARC.

If you are viewing this document on-line with Cedar and Tioga, use the levels feature to see an outline of the paper. Click on the Levels button to get another row of buttons. Then click on the FirstLevelOnly button. Click on AllLevels to see everything again. Scroll through the document using the scrollbar that appears on the left edge of the viewer when you move the mouse there.

There are a number of examples given in the document, and you should try things out as you read. The examples are in fixed width font, with user input in bold, and variables (i.e. the hostname) in italic.

Commands given to a UNIX shell are prefixed with:

hostname %

Related Documents

Here are some pointers to other things you might want to read. You can read them online or print them out. See the section below on Printing for instructions on printing files in Interpress and Postscript formats.

Sun Manuals

Sun has an extensive manual set, including some oriented towards beginners. "Getting Started with SunOS: Beginner's Guide" has good background information on the UNIX file system and using the UNIX shell programs (command interpreters). Unfortunately, it also describes vi and sunview, which are an old visual editor and window system, respectively. Another good guide is the "Sun System Introduction", which expands on the topics covered in "Getting Started..." plus it discusses Sun network services and system administration. Ask someone (e.g., Brent Welch) for a copy of these manuals, which are among the softcover (not loose-leaf) Sun manuals.

CedarPrimer

This is a get-started document for the Cedar environment, about 60 pages long.

An interpress or postscript version of this document is filed in /project/cedar10.1/doc/* . We do however propose to look at the tioga version if you are already familiar enough with Cedar to do so; the Tioga version more likely has the latest editions.

Online from within Cedar, you can utter "openr CedarPrimer" to view the document with the Tioga editor.

/import documentation

Most of the important software packages are stored under /import. The organization of the software and the proper way to set yourself up to use it is described in /import/import-support/doc/living-with-import.txt. This is a plain ascii file that you can view with any editor.

X documentation

See /import/Xmisc/top/README, which also has some pointers to additional files. The document you are reading now will help you get X up for the first time. See the UNIX man page on runx for a detailed explaination on all the ways you can run X here.

Setting up your UNIX account

Signing up

You've probably already filled out a form that specifies your account names and passwords. You have three accounts: UNIX account you need to log into your workstation, an XNS (Xerox Network Services) account you need for XNS mail and GlobalView, and another UNIX account on Arisia, the host that is connected directly to the Internet. You should definitly make the Arisia password different than the others. The Arisia password is especially important (although you may use it infrequently) because Arisia is our only connection to the outside world. Choose a complex password so it is harder to break in to Arisia, and never set up your regular account to trust your account on Arisia. Permissions and trusted accounts are already set up so that Arisia trusts PARC workstations but doesn't trust anything on the Internet. This means you can rlogin to Arisia from a PARC workstation and do not have to type a password.

If you want to change your internal UNIX password, run the yppasswd program. This changes your password in the network database. It may take a short while for the change to propagate back to your workstation, so your old password may remain in effect for a bit. If you want to change your external password, then rlogin to arisia and run the passwd program there. In order to change your XNS password you need to use the Clearinghouse program. Access to Clearinghouse is described below under the Mailing Lists section.

Your Workstation

Your SPARCstation should be delivered to you completely configured and in working condition. Your SPARCstation consists of a keyboard, which looks like a cross between the IBM PC and Apple Mac keyboards, a three-button mouse and mouse pad, a pizza box, and a display. The pizza box contains the entire workstation: power supply, processor, memory (probably 16-32 MBytes), I/O interfaces, and two 100-200 MByte hard disc drives. Sandwiched between the pizza box and the display may be a piece of plywood. The plywood provides sufficient structural strength to allow Sony color monitors to reside on top of the pizza box. The plywood is not decorative nor is it someone's idea of proper monitor height. It is structural. Don't remove it.

The Sun mouse not only feels awful and points with its hind-feet, but is orientation sensitive. In other words, it doesn't work well unless it is kept mostly aligned with the edges of the underlying mouse pad. In addition, you have to orient the mouse pad as well; the usual orientation has the long edge of the mouse pad parallel to long edge of the keyboard. For best results, replace the stock Sun mouse with a compatible opto-electronic LOGITECH three-button mouse (model M-CD9-SUN-8MD).

Your SPARCstation should have the latest version of the Sun operating system installed, which is currently SunOS 4.1.1 with a PARC←STANDARD configuration name. Watch the system boot messages as they roll by for the SunOS version on your machine. The file /etc/motd should also indicate the SunOS version (type "cat /etc/motd" to a Unix shell).

Logging in

The login prompt will indicate the machine's hostname. Type your login name to the "login:" prompt, and type your password to the "password" prompt. Your password won't echo on the screen. You can use backspace (or CTRL-H) to correct mistakes, and CTRL-U to erase the line and start over. This works for both the login and password.

hostname login: your←login

password: your←password

SunOS Release 4.1.1 (PARC←STANDARD) #1: Mon Mar 25 14:09:47 PST 1991

hostname %

The "hostname %" prompt comes from the shell, a commander interpreter program. Now configure your account a bit so you can easily run the X window system. Type the following command to your shell in order to get an initial version of your .login and .cshrc configuration files.

hostname % /import/import-support/bin/fix-my-login-files

At this point you have a slew of configuration files used to run various configurations of the X window system. You should log out and log in again so the changes in your UNIX environment take effect. Start up the window system with the runx command:

hostname % runx

This will give your the default X environment, which is Sun's OpenLook environment. Runx supports several variations of window managers and windowing tools. If you are familiar with the twm, the window manager from MIT, then use the following:

hostname % runx twm

The PARC file system structure

(See also /import/import-support/doc/living-with-import.txt)

It helps to know how the file systems are organized so you can poke around and discover what's available on our network. We use an "automounter" facility that will dynamically mount filesystems upon demand into the file system as viewed by your workstation. Ideally this shouldn't matter to you, except that the top-level automounted directories behave in a unintuitive way. For example, type:

hostname % ls /import

You'll see a few directories listed: import-support, X11R4, Xmisc, openwin, andrew, and perhaps some others. However, there are potentially tens of other subdirectories of /import. The catch is that you have to reach out and touch them (i.e., list a directory of which you may not know the name) before they are "automounted" and appear under /import. The program ximportbrowser helps overcome this a bit. It consults the network database that defines what can be automounted under /import, and it lets you browse the list. Under /import you can find FrameMaker (a document preparation system), Saber-C (an interactive C debugging environment), gcc, and a host of other software packages. ximportbrowser is stored in /import/import-support/bin.

A common problem with UNIX software packages is that they require a certain amount of customization of your environment before they work properly. It order to hide the details of the configuration, the following convention has been established. Each directory under /import should have a top subdirectory that contains an enable and a bringover script. The bringover script (if it exists) should be run once to get default copies of any configuration files required by the package. The fix-my-login-files has executed a few bringover's to get your initial X environment set up. Two commands, enable and bringover, are defined so you can easily execute the enable and bringover scripts of the packages under /import.

hostname % bringover packagename

hostname % enable packagename

Remember, do the bringovers once, by hand, when you decide to use a software package. Then update your .login file to do the enable command each time you log in. The .login file supplied by fix-my-login-files has a few enable commands already that you can use as examples.

There are a few other important automount directories: /project, /tilde, and /sunos. /project is similar in spirit to /import, except it is for local projects that are more likely to be in a state of flux. The software packages should be organized under /project in a similar manner as things under /import, but there is no guarantee of this. /tilde contains all the users' home directories. Of course they are not all located together, but the automounter is used to create the illusion of one big user directory. My home can be referenced as /tilde/welch, for example. While csh also makes it possible to refernece my home as ~welch, there are some environments (like the sh shell and the Cedar commander ) that don't implement this. Finally, /sunos has a bunch of UNIX-related stuff. Ordinarily you shouldn't care much about it, execpt in the rare case when its server crashes.

X Windows

X windows is really a collection of programs that work together. The server controls the display, the window manager controls placement of windows and provides "look and feel", and clients (or tools) are regular programs that display themselves in a window. There are a number of choices for almost every component, and most, but not all, pieces can work together. (Note, the author is not an expert in all variations, either.) The runx program is a front end to the various combinations. Your first exercise is to read the man page on runx. You could type the following to a shell:

hostname % man runx

Or, if you are already running X, you can use the xman program to view the man pages in a nicer format. Start xman like this: (The trailing & puts the command into the "background" so you can type other commands at the shell while xman runs.)

hostname % xman &

xman either starts up as a small window with three buttons, Help, Quit, and Manual Page, or it starts up the man page window directly. Click Manual Page to bring up the man page window, if needed. It has two buttons in its upper left hand corner, Options and Sections. To find the runx man page, use the Sections button to select the "Local" section. This gives a listing of available man pages. Click on "runx" to get the runx man page. Unfortunately, the man pages for user commands are distributed among section 1 (User Commands), section l (Local Commands), and section n (New Commands). Many of the X commands are under New Commands.

The default X configuration provides an OpenLook environment. Primarily this means that the OpenLook window manager (olwm) is running and providing the look and feel (title bars, window frames, etc) for the other clients that you run. It also means that the OpenLook display server (xnews) is running. This is less important for look and feel, but xnews does have the feature that it understands postscript as well as X. There is a pageview program that can display postscript output of various text formatters, for example. There are some other cute things that xnews can do. Try:

hostname % /import/openwin/bin/psh /import/openwin/demo/wink

Another X configuration that you may be familiar with uses the MIT tools, in particular the twm window manager. Twm has the feature (or distraction) that it is very customizable. twm consults a file named ".twmrc" in your home directory for parameters, menu definitions, etc. You have been given a copy of one, and you may want to fiddle with it to futher customize menus, color, and other features described in the man page for twm. The programmer in you can spend (waste?) a fair amount of time making your window system look Just So. To get started on this, consult the twm man page, which is in the New Commands section.

Customizing X

If you are interested in customizing your X environment, you'll find the following explaintions useful. If you have little interest, then just use OpenLook by running runx with no options.

A word about how X starts up and terminates. The runx program is a front end to the xinit program. After runx figures out what server and window manager you want, it invokes xinit to start up the window system. The xinit program starts up the X server and the first client. The client is a shell (/bin/sh) that reads your ~/.xinitrc script for commands. When the script terminates, which causes the shell to terminate, xinit will kill the server process. Therefore the .xinitrc script has to be organized so it doesn't exit right away, or your window system will just disappear! The last program run by the script is distinquished because when it terminates the script terminates and then xinit kills the server. (Still with me?) This is a rather indirect way to clean things up, and it means you have to know what process to kill in order to tear down your window system. runx uses the xtools program for this purpose, which is just a small window with a Quit button. Other common arrangments are to have the window manager be the distinquished program, which means that selecting the "kill twm manager" item from the menu will tear down the window system, or to have a particular shell window be the distinquished program, which means that exiting this shell exits the window system.

If you look at your .xinitrc, perhaps because you want customize your initial startup, you'll see that it is quite complex. Fortuneately, it has two hooks for customization so you shouldn't need to modify it directly. The first hook is a file named .xinit-personal, and the second hook is a file named .xinit-tools. These files are optional, and you don't have either one initially. The .xinit-personal script is executed before the window manager is started up, and the .xinit-tools script is executed afterwards. You can take complete control of the situation by putting an "exit" command at the end of .xinit-personal. In this case you have to start up the window manager yourself. Here is an example to give you the idea.

# .xinit-personal
#
# Version that does everything. It should start a window manager,
# run one long-running application as the special termination process,
# and then exit at the end.

# Run the window manager
twm &

# Set a nice color or a gray background, depending on screen depth
if xwininfo -root | grep -s 'Depth: 8'
then xsetroot -solid '#9ca5ba'
else xsetroot -gray
fi

# Start up an xterm that grabs kernel error messages (-C option)
xterm -geometry =80x25+0+0 -sb -title /dev/console -C &

# Start up another xterm
xterm -geometry =80x25+500+0 -sb -title Shell &

# Run Xlogo (not in the background!) as the last application.
xlogo
exit 0 # now kill X
# eof

Alternative environments

SunView

SunView is described in the SunOS manuals, although it is being phased out by Sun in favor of X11/OpenLook.

GlobalView

GlobalView is an office automation environment offered by Xerox. If you want to use a window system from the folks that invented icons, just ask. GlobalView can be installed on your Sun workstation. Note, however, that GlobalView is still pretty much a closed system. It provides its own window system - it doesn't run under X. It does provide an X emulation window, however, in which you can run X applications.

Cedar

Cedar is both, a programming language and a programming environment. Consult CedarPrimer regarding Cedar.

You can run Cedar as RawViewersWorld, which is a custom window system that comes with it:
hostname % enable cedar10.1
hostname % RawViewersWorld

Or you can run Cedar from within a X window, called X11Viewers.
hostname % enable cedar10.1
hostname % X11ViewersWorld

Reading Mail

There are two camps regarding mail, XNS and SMTP. XNS mail is used throughout the corporate network, while SMTP is the standard UNIX mail system. They interoperate fully, so it is no problem sending mail to folks inside or outside the corporate network from either system. However, you have to choose which system is the one to which your mail is delivered, and this influences your choice of mail reader programs. If you are already an XNS mail user, or if you plan on using PCedar as your primary environment (as opposed to UNIX) then XNS is the obvious choice. If you are used to UNIX mail tools, you'll probably prefer an SMTP mailbox so you can easily use the UNIX mail tools. Note that even if you have an XNS mail box you can fetch messages from it into your UNIX mail box using the xnsgetmail or xnsgetzmail programs.

XNS mail

XNS provides two mail servers for each user, primary and backup. To read mail, the mail reader programs first fetch new mail from the servers and then present it to you. Mail that you've read is kept in a log of one format or another, depending on which mail reader you use. User names with XNS mail have three colon-separated fields, User, Domain, and Organization. The local domain is PARC, and the organization is Xerox. If you leave off the Domain and/or Organization, they default to these values. Your user name is typically your full name, including spaces. (e.g., "John Doe"). This makes it pretty easy to send mail to people because you don't have to know their UNIX login, which is limited to 8 characters. You do have to know how to correctly spell their name, however! Users also have shorter aliases, and these are typically your last name.

Within PCedar, you can use the Maintain program to browse the XNS database that contains user names and mail distribution lists (DLs). Type Maintain in a PCedar world to start it up, and refer to MaintainDoc.tioga for more information. Most of the DLs are set up to be "user controlled" so that you can add or remove yourself from DLs yourself.

There are three mail readers in PCedar: Blackcherry, Peanut, and Walnut.

Blackcherry keeps a single log of old messages - it does not provide separated message sets. It has a reasonably easy-to-use interface. Use the right mouse button to click on messages you want to read. Right clicking on the Display button takes you to the next message. Right clicking on Delete marks as deleted the current message and advances you to the next. The ShowUndelOnly button hides messages that have been marked as deleted. The Ops button provides a "pop up" menu of other operations. Click and release on the button to get the menu. The Expunge operation cleans all the deleted messages out of your log.

Walnut is the most sophosticated mail reader. It keeps separate databases for different message sets, and it provides querying operations over the message sets. It has been recently resurrected from the old Dorado-based Cedar system, however, and you need to take some special actions to initialize your logs. Consult with Doug Terry about how to get started with Walnut.

Peanut provides separate message sets. It implements message sets by using a single tioga file for each set. However, the hierachical node structure of tioga makes it possible to view only the top-level nodes that list the subject and sender of the message. You use the Levels button to control what view you have, or you can use keyboard accellerators in conjuction with scrolling to see more or less of the node structure. Mail is initially retrieved into the Active set, and you can create new message sets and shuffle messages among message sets. Read PeanutDoc.tioga for more details.

SMTP Mail

SMTP is the standard UNIX mail delivery system. Mail is delivered to a spool file somewhere in the UNIX directory structure, typically on a file server. You'll want to know where exactly so you can set your MAIL environment variable to the name of the spool file. The MAIL environment variable is used by programs like xbiff or the Andrew console that indicate when new mail has arrived. Edit your .login to initialize the MAIL environment variable. The initialization looks something like this:

setenv MAIL /net/palain/var/spool/mail/welch

There are a number of UNIX mail reading programs. The simplest is just "mail", which you run in a shell window. Read the mail man page for details. It is possible to save mail to message sets, which are called "folders". mail consults the .mailrc file in your home directory for customization parameters.

emacs has a mail reading subsystem.

xmh is a window based mail reader. Ask Chris Kent about it.

messages is the Andrew-based (or "ATK") mail reader. It has a number of nice features, including pre-sorting of messages into different message sets, and multi-font/multi-media capability. To get started, you'll want to get a copy of the ATK user preferences file (e.g., ~nichols/preferences or ~welch/preferences). You need a .mailrc file that contains "unset hold". You should also have, of course, an "enable andrew" into your .login file. The first time you run messages it'll give you an introductory mail message which includes some nifty animated graphics. The Andrew tools also have a help facility. Run "help messages" to learn in gory detail about the system. The pre-sorting feature works off a file named .AMS.flames in your home directory. Copy one from ~nichols or ~welch to get started, and run "help flames" to learn more about it.

The SunOS documentation describes mailtool, which is both an OpenLook and SunView application.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are maintained in the XNS Clearinghouse database, and they are called "DLs", which stands for Distribution Lists. GlobalView and PCedar have maintain programs that let you query the DL database. From UNIX you can telnet to a Clearinghouse service and get a simple command line interface. Here is an example session. You have to login and then run the Clearinghouse program, which can be abbreviated "cle". You can type ? in order to get hints about what you can do at that point.

hostname % xnstelnet "PARC CHS"

Series 8000 Network Services Executive. [Version 11.0 of 17-May-88 15:08:34
Copyright (C) 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988
by Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved.
Server Name: Parc CHS:PARC:xerox
> Log
User name: goldberg
Password: *******
>cle
CHS>?
Add, Change, Delete, List, Show
Enable, List, Logoff, Quit, Rest, Show, Test
CHS> List ?
List Aliases, Boot Services, Communication Interface Units, Communications Monitoring Services, Data Base Services, Domains, External Communication Services, File Services, Fujitsu 6650 Hosts, Gateway Services, Groups, Hitachi 560 Hosts, IBM 3270 Hosts, Interactive Terminal Services, Internetwork Routing Services, Mail Services, Members, Nec 6300 Hosts, Organizations, Output Services, PassThru Print Services, Print Services, Remote Batch Services, RS232C Ports, Servers, Siemens 9750 Hosts, Teletex Gateway Services, Univac 50 Hosts, Users, Workstations
CHS> List Members
Group: Modula3
Abdul Chaudri:sbd-e:rx
Tim Hutchinson:sbd-e:rx
..........

CHS> Show user
User Name: welch
Full Name: Brent B. Welch:PARC:xerox
Description: CSL, created 1/1/90, exp 12/31/90
Home File Service: Alcatraz:Parc:Xerox
Alias: Brent Welch:Parc:Xerox
Alias: Welch:Parc:Xerox
Alias: Welch Brent:Parc:Xerox
Alias: Welch Brent B:Parc:Xerox

CSH> Change password
Name: welch
Changing User: Brent B. Welch.
Password: *******
Confirm new password? (Y/N): y
CHS>quit Quit Connection
Executive disconnected.

Editting Documents

There are a number of editors available here at PARC. UNIX-based editors include emacs, mx, and framemaker, as well as vi, ex, and edittool. PCedar has an integrated editor called tioga. It is ubiquitous within PCedar, meaning that it is available to all PCedar tools. It features a hierarchical node structure and WYSIWYG interface.

We have the GNU emacs here at parc. Put "enable emacs" into your .login so the right directories are put onto your search path. Emacs has an online tutorial that you get by typing CTRL-H T. If you find yourself in emacs and can't get out, type CTRL-X CTRL-C at the window to make it go away. Pavel Curtis is one of the emacs gurus in CSL.

Mx is a mouse-based editor for X (hence the name, mx). It features pull down menus, scroll bars, and it can have multiple windows open simultaneously. If you run mx with no arguments it displays a tutorial file that explains how to use it. There is also a man page in the Local man page section. Mx interoperates with tx, a terminal emulator. Unfortunately, the xterm uses the old-fashioned cut and paste system so you can't cut and paste between mx windows and xterm windows. Use tx instead of xterm. Brent Welch is the PARC-wide mx guru - lobby him to fix xterm/tx/mx cut and paste interoperability.

Framemaker is a desktop publishing system. It probably isn't suitable for creating C programs, but it can be used for papers. Lawrence Butcher is the CSL expert on frame, and there are many frame users in SSL.

The best way to learn about tioga is to read TiogaDoc within PCedar. There is also a one-page crib sheet on tioga that is handed out along with the PCedarPrimer. All the Cedar code is editted using tioga, as is all the documentation on PCedar (and this document as well).

OpenLook has an edittool that is also mouse based. Frankly, I've found it to be a little clunky to use, but there are some happy users out there.

Printing

There are three classes of printers around here, Interpress printers (older Xerox printers), Postscript printers (Apple laserwriters), and printers that handle both (the latest Xerox printers). Both Interpress and Postscript are page description languages, by the way. The file name suffix ".ip" is used to indicate Interpress, while ".ps" means Postscript.

The best printer to use in CSL is named "twinkie". It is a Xerox model 4050 that understands both Interpress and Postscript. It prints about 50 pages/minute (ppm). Other printers in use in CSL are BerkeleyBarb, a laserwriter, and Pilot, an older Xerox printer (Interpress only). There will be a number of 4050 printers installed throughout PARC in 1991, so consult the person next door to find out the best printer nearby.

The top-of-the-line Xerox printers are called "DocuTechs", and there are two of them here at PARC, IPPaper and EBEddy. They are Interpress only, but they are very fast, up to 135 ppm, and they have 600 spots-per-inch (spi) resolution as opposed to the 300 spi resolution of a Laserwriter or the 4050. They are fully digital, with a 26 page/minute gray-scale scanner. Ask someone to show you where they are.

The basic UNIX print command is lpr. Lpr actually is just a "spooler" for things destinted for the printer. It will copy its input to a safe place and figure out the network connections required to get the bits to the specified printer. You can consult the UNIX man page for lpr for the full story. Here are some examples.

hostname % lpr -P twinkie postscriptfile.ps

hostname % pr plainfile | lpr -P berkeleybarb

If you generally use one printer, you can define the PRINTER environment variable and eliminate the need to specify the -P argument to lpr. Put a definition like this into your .login file.

setenv PRINTER twinkie

If you are used to sending plain files to Laserwriters, you should be aware that twinkie doesn't accept plain ascii. Instead, use pr or enscript to convert the file to postscript first. The following is a hairy example that uses enscript to layout plain files 2-up on each page and a special variation on lpr that tells twinkie to print 2 sided (duplex). The net result is 4 pages on one piece of paper. (Thanks to John Zweig for this paper-saving example.) This example assumes you've set the PRINTER environment variable to twinkie so you don't have to specify it to lpr. The -C "(duplex)" is a special print class flag understood by the 4050 printers.

hostname % enscript -2rGgh -bbanner←string -p files | lpr -C "(duplex)"

From PCedar, use "sendip -h twinkie filename.ip" to send interpres files to twinkie. Duplex is the default with sendip, as long as the printer is cabable of it.

Managing your workstation

This material has been lifted from LifeOnSparcstations by Ken Pier.

Location and Use of Power Switches

Sun recommends that the pizza box be the first thing powered on and the last thing powered off as you bring the hardware up and down. The power switch for the box is inconveniently located on the back face of the box, to the right as you reach back for it. It is small, smooth, rocker switch just above the power cord. If possible, look at the back face of the box. The power switch is in the upper left corner of that face. If you are blocked from looking at the back face of the box, try the following: hold the three middle fingers of your right hand together, then place them on the rear right corner of the upper face of the box with the rightmost finger placed on that corner. Slide your fingertips over the rear edge and down the rear face. One of the other two fingers will contact the power switch about one inch below the rear edge. Try turning the power on; if you succeed the discs will spin up and the processor will beep at you.

CAUTION: Always allow 10 seconds between turning off the power and turning it back on. This pause prevents possible damage to power supply components in your system.

To power on the display, locate the somewhat larger rocker type switches on the display housing. For the Sony color monitors, the power switch is mounted just below the front face of the monitor. Isn't that nice! For the Sun color and monochrome monitors, the power switch is located at the bottom of the rear face of the housing near the centerline. Try rotating the housing for a better look and feel of the switch.

To power down your SPARCstation, follow the directions found below for cleanly halting the system. Failing to do so may result in a damaged file system. Then, turn off first the display power and then the pizza box power. Always allow 10 seconds between turning off the power and turning it back on. This pause prevents possible damage to power supply components in your system.

Managing your Monitor Screen

Always power off your monitor when not in use. Monitors should never be left on with a static image, because it burns in. To turn the screen black helps, to turn it white is bad because the circuitry and CRT are running at full power. A black screen is less effective than turning the monitor off. Even with a black screen, there always is a current that leaks to the CRT. Because blue phosphors are less effective, a higher current circulates in the blue filament of the CRT, hence the monitor will turn yellow with time.

Modern monitors have circuitry that raises the current very slowly. High end monitors can be power cycled as often as you like without affecting performance or lifetime. However, it takes 15 minutes to stabilize the monitor after powering on, so it should not be powered off for periods shorter than 15 minutes.

Automatic Power-On Booting

Your system automatically boots every time you turn on the power. It displays several screenfulls of system status data as it grinds through the booting process. If your system doesn't boot at power-on time, try User Initiated Booting (below). If the system doesn't respond in a few seconds, turn the power off, wait at least ten seconds, and turn the power on. If the boot still fails to take place, at PARC, notify CMS, the computer maintenance center, at extension 2670 (4SUN. Get it?).

Halting

To halt a system in preparation for rebooting or power-off, first be certain you have finished your work, completed your edits, packed your bags, etc.

Normal Halting

Normal halting and rebooting is done with the sync command followed by the fastboot command in a UNIX shell. The commands halt, fasthalt, reboot, fastboot, and shutdown, have been made "setuid root" so you can execute these ordinarily restricted commands from your normal account. However, these commands also require that you be directly logged into the console - you cannot run these from an rlogin connection or a window as a normal user. Exit your window system first, then run these commands.

Shutdown Halting

The shutdown command is a nice front end to halting or rebooting your workstation. To get a UNIX shell in RawViewers, use the Plumb command to a PCedar CommandTool. Shutdown broadcasts a warning message on its machine and any machine that is remote mounting from its machine, schedules a shutdown, forbids further logins when the shutdown time is near, and logs the reason for the shutdown.

The format of the command is:

hostname % /usr/etc/shutdown [ -fhknr ] time [ warning-message ... ]

time is normally the string now or +number indicating that many minutes in the future or HH:MM indicating an actual 24-hour time. HH:MM only allows you to bring the system down between now and 23:59.

-f means fast reboot, i.e. don't do file system checking when the system is rebooted.

-k means simulate a shutdown (ignore this).

-h means do a halt.

-n means don't do "syncs" of the file system (don't do this unless you have to).

-r means do a reboot.

If no switches are given, the machine is brought to single-user mode. You can bring the machine back to multi-user by typing exit to the # prompt, or you can halt or reboot.

If you have the opportunity, it is a good idea to find out if you are the only user of your SPARCStation (remember that this is a multi-user machine). You can do this by typing the following line to a Unix shell:

hostname % who

In some occasions, the system may be so wedged that you might not be able to use the shutdown command. In those occasions, you might want to use the keyboard sequence to reboot.

Crash Halting

Simultaneously depress the STOP key (also called the L1 key) and the letter A key. This truely yanks the rug out from under UNIX and therefore endangers any data you have sitting in the file system buffer cache. It is a means of last resort. After you do it you'll see this message:

Type b (boot), c (continue) or n (new command mode)

When you press STOP-A you are interrupting UNIX and giving control to a PROM monitor program. You can continue UNIX with the 'c' command, reboot UNIX with 'b', or enter a FORTH command interpreter with 'n'. The FORTH interpreter gives a different prompt, "ok". So STOP-A is a powerful tool, but you need to use it carefully because interrupting UNIX at arbitrary points can leave its file system in an inconsisent state. To avoid that:

Type the letter n, followed by RETURN.

The system will display the characters "ok" as a prompt. Type sync, followed by RETURN. The sync command really just panics the UNIX kernel, which causes it to sync the file system, display some messages, and begin a core dump. After the machine begins the memory dump (you'll know) simultaneously depress the STOP key and the letter A key to abort the dump. Proceed to power-off, as above, or type boot followed by RETURN to boot the system.

If you boot by the procedure above and subsequently depress the STOP key and the letter A key, you may end up already in the dialog with the "ok" prompt. Proceed to sync and boot. Don't try other options unless you know what you are doing, although you might try printenv to see what defaults are stored in the EEPROM.

Conclusion

That's it. If you have some useful tips you'd like to contribute, please send mail to welch.