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**** The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ****
**** Computation Center ****
News Bulletin #24
25-November-1991
Today's topics:
- GNU utilities: GNUPLOT, GCC (to come soon: G++, GROFF.)
- Data compression on TA90 cassetes.
- InterNet links update.
- Printed guides.
- How to write long lines...
- LISTSERV new command to retrieve information about nodes.
- 8mm and 4mm tape service.
- News feed.
o GNU utilities: GNU is a collection of software packages that run on
most Unix, VMS and sometimes PC systems. There is a wide collection
of software written by that group and we install from time to time
packages from there that appear to be usefull here. Note that these
packages are freely available and are given with no support and no
guarantee. The new packages we installed recently:
GNUPLOT - This is a new version of the one we had before. The new
version supports parametric functions, surface plotting and more.
An updated guide has been placed at the user's room, but a
description of all commands is available also inside GNUPLOT by
hitting the command HELP.
GCC - This is a C compiler. The advantage of it over the VMS native
compiler is that it is a full ANSI compliant, while its disadvantage
is that it is slower. If you compile with it use the following
command to link:
$ LINK program,GNU_CC:[000000]GCCLIB/LIBR,UTIL$:C/OPT
Soon we'll install the GNU CC compiler and GROFF which is GNU's
NROFF/TROFF implementation.
o Data compression on TA90 cassetes: A compressing hardware has been
installed at the TA90 cassetes drive (also called 3480). The data
compression (called IDRC) ratio is usually 2-3 times. If you want
to take advantage of it add the following switches to your commands:
TREQUEST - add /COMPACTION
BACKUP - add /MEDIA_FORMAT=COMPACTION
o InterNet links updates - A new InterNet link has been installed in
addition to the existing one to U.S.A.; this link connects us to
Europe via the CERN laboratory. Users who work on European systems
should notice an improvment in the response time. When one of the
links is down the other one is used automatically to transfer all
our traffic to abroad.
o Printed guides: You can order our printed guides using Email.
Please send mail to INFO@VMS specifying what guides you want.
The guides will be printed within a week and mailed back via the
university's mail. The available guides are: Introduction to VMS,
Email, News, Internet (not ready yet), DISSPLA, GNUplot, PCA,
Debugger, Tex.
o Long lines: Some users had an odd problem while typing their
messages inside MAIL or BMAIL: only short messages can be sent.
Larger messages get truncated; the same holds for some files moved
from word processors.
The problem is as follows: When you type something and get to the
end of the line the terminal wraps to the next line. Hoewever, what
is seem to be another line is really the continuation of the
previous line. This continues so until you get to the maximum line
size (about 255 characters) and then the line is truncated.
In order to avoid it, hit whenever you get to the end of the
line. Even if the cursor already moved to the next line hit at
the end of the word you are typing. This way your lines will be
short, readable, and you won't have any problems typing as many
lines as you want.
o LISTSERV new commands: LISTSERV at Tel-Aviv has been upgraded and
the new version supports new command which helps locating node
administrators for BITnet nodes. Suppose you found a BITnet node in
GUIDES$:BITNET.TXT and you want now to query the postmaster there;
how do you find his/her Email address? using the new LISTSERV you
can issue the following command:
$ SEND/MESSAGE LISTSERV@TAUNIVM SHOW ADMIN nodename
And as a reply you'll get a message listing the administrators of
that node.
o Reading and writing 8mm and 4mm tapes: A new service of reading and
writing 4mm and 8mm tapes is now available. However, since the
processing is done off-line the actual read and write might happen a
few days later. In order to use these drives you have first to give
the tape to Maggie as you do with the other kinds of tapes. Second,
prepare a command file to do the work (using TREQUEST, BACKUP, etc.)
and submit it to the queue SCSI_TAPE. when few jobs accumulate
there we'll service these requestst. The same queue can be used
also to WRITE TK50 cassetes (in order to read them use the old TAPE
queue).
Note: Since this work is done manually on another system please
keep the numbr of files and their amount to a minimum. No more than
100mb can be read or written at once.
Another note: The tape drive used for 4mm tapes is DEC's TLZ-04
with no compression. The tape drives used to write the 8mm tapes is
Exabyte-8500. It can read also tapes written on the 8200 model, but
tapes written on it can be read on 8500 unit only.
o News feed: The news feed we receive (via ANUNEWS) has been
increased a few days ago. We now receive all news items that arrive
to Israel. In the coming days a lot of new lists will be added to
your news reader and after that things will calm down. Note that
since we get much more news items now the retention period of news
items has been decreased to 7 days. If we run out of disk space the
retention period of rec*, alt.*, talk.* and other highly verbose
lists will be reduced to 3-4 days.
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