AU/X as a mail/news machine?

[Richard Todd]

In article <514 at cpdaux.UUCP> cpdaux!steve at apple.com (Steve Lemke) writes:
>In article <10555 at claris.com> peirce at claris.com (Michael Peirce) writes:
>}I've been contemplating selling my old home Mail/News machine (an ATT Unix-PC)
>}and running AU/X on my Mac IIcx instead.
>
>}Are people successfully running usenet (UUCP & News) on AU/X?
Well, since I'm posting this from my IIx running C News, I think we
can all take the answer to that question to be "yes". :-)

>Because A/UX is based on the same SVR2 as the Unix-PC, I was able to
>bring up much of the same software with little or no mods in A/UX.
 Ditto.  The only problem I had with bringing up C News is that the
Spencer/Collyer fast stdio library doesn't work with A/UX (or, 
apparently, any SVR2).  Using the standard stdio library works fine.
Other than that all you have to do is answer all the questions the
"build" program asks you.  

>Although the Unix PC only has a 68010, it did quite well supporting him at
>the console, me at 19,200 baud direct link, and another roommate on a 9600
>terminal (simultaneously).  The Mac was not originally designed to do this
>sort of stuff, and I wonder if (even with the theoretically better perfor-
>mance) the A/UX machine would be much faster - we never did try this, due
>to the different locations of the machines and the cabling complexities of
>our apartment.
 Hmm.. I should think the Mac would be somewhat faster, due to having a 
680[23]0 running at 16MHz instead of a 68010 at 10MHz.  I wasn't aware that
the Unix PC had any special features that made it particularly suited for
Unix per se; as I recall, the Unix PC drives weren't overwhelmingly fast
,not as good as the 28ms Quantum 80M drives Apple ships Unix on.  Alas,
since I'm the only person who uses this machine, I can't really do the
kind of experiment you're talking about.  I have noted some serious 
performance degradation when doing file transfers on both serial ports
(2400bps on one, 9600bps on the other), but file transfer bashes the 
serial driver more than interactive use.  


>}I figure I can get enough from selling the Unix-PC to buy an extra 80MEG disk
>}for the Mac where AU/X can live.  I have a few questions -
>}
>}Is there enough disk for this?  (I've only got a 40 Meg disk on the Unix-PC
>}and this isn't even full all the time).  I wouldn't mind removing parts
>}of the distribution (like GNU Emacs, etc).
 If you're just now getting Unix, don't worry about removing GNU Emacs--
they've already done it for you in v1.1.  Sigh.  

>Ugg.  Does that mean you're only going to have 80mb?  I'm the only one using
>my machine (currently), but I find 80 to be a bit snug.  I receive only a
>partial news feed, due to the fact that it takes so long to transfer news,
>even at 2400 baud (9600 baud is coming soon!), as well as the unpacking time

  Yes, anyone who tries to run a full feed on the 80M disk is out of his mind.
I run a partial feed (around 30 newsgroups), and run roughly 6-7 day expire
(adjusted based on how much news is flowing), and /usr/spool/news takes
up ~3-4M, the binaries and other control files about another 1.5M.  I suggest
you get yourself a copy of the monthly traffic reports by Brian Reid,
showing how much traffic is in each newsgroup, and decide how much disk
space your favorite collection of groups will need.  
  Oh, how much have I got free?  About 3 Meg, but I have a *lot* of other
stuff on my system besides news (like GNU Emacs, GCC, various pieces of 
MacOS software, etc.)
  Besides, if you temporarily need space for something big, you can 
always cut back on the expiration time of your news articles.  

>You don't really get 80mb of storage with A/UX on the Apple 80mb drive.
>You really get more like 54mb (there is a 2mb Mac boot partition, two 3mb
>autorecovery partitions, and 14mb of swap space).  It really is snug.

  Yeah, but you can fiddle with the standard partition layout.  
You can nuke one or both of the autorecovery partitions and add the space
to your root partition.  Also, you can cut down the size of the swap 
partition (I'm running 10 Meg).  This helps the space situation somewhat.

>So, I switch back and forth.  In fact, currently, I run mostly Mac OS, and I
>boot A/UX in the evening simply to get mail/news, read and reply, and then
>shut the thing off.  That's why I want to set it up full-time at work.

 Funny, I work almost the reverse.  I run A/UX most of the time, and boot
MacOS only to run terminal-emulation programs to dial out to BBSes and
download files.  (If anyone's gotten Pcomm or some other Unix-based 
terminal emulation program to work on A/UX, I wanna hear about it!)

>A/UX works part time, but prefers full-time!

Actually, as long as your machine is up enough to download the queued
news batches, and is up at the time you've scheduled "expire" for
in crontab, that's all that matters.  Nothing will break if you switch
back and forth between A/UX and MacOS.  (It probably is a good idea
to make sure you're not shutting the machine down while it's in the middle
of unbatching incoming news or doing an expire, though.)
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd at uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd at chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd at servalan.uucp