Subject: Re: PROM Pass: ?
To: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>
List: port-sparc
Date: 11/24/1998 18:41:36
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Matthew Jacob wrote:
: > If there's doc to be had, it's probably not available from Sun.
:
: Not true. It'll be in Documentation Control if it has a part #.
Then someone needs to tell the Sun techs.
I "had it up to there" the last time I dealt with Sun techs--on an official
basis with Lucent's Sun contract. In one instance, they wouldn't believe
that Solaris/x86 2.5.1 had a bug that would hang the system with a simple
socket()/fcntl(O_NONBLOCK)/select() chain. They finally fixed it, long
after I gave up, in 2.6, but I don't believe a patch was ever issued for
2.5.1.
And as to Sun3 patches, `grrrr!'. The unofficial patch site is missing two
patch revisions needed to fix some bugs... and unfortunately, the company
didn't want to go to NetBSD unless as a last resort (which they
did...although I hear the app in question is now migrated to a SPARC, after
several years on a sun3 and a decade on a 3B2).
Sun's support, as of 6 months ago (the last time I had to deal with them) is
outright hostile on a Microsoft scale to non-contract people, and stuffy at
best to contract people. I've yet to find a really friendly voice in the
mess.
Fortunately, the machinery (not necessarily the software) is as reliable as
a Volvo, so I don't have to deal with support often.
--
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)