On patches, old instruments, and how I solved my vnmr_accounting problem.
The problem was that an Ultra-10 running Solaris 8 is attached to a VXR.
There is no VXR patch cluster and my vnmr_accounting was not able to read
the logins file of Solaris 8, wtmpx.
Thanks especially to Rolf Kyburz and Sara Kunz for sending /vnmr/adm code
and Dave Scott for sending an impressive script for accounting, but I
decided to solve my problem the brute force way.
The workaround on Varian's patch web pages involves using fwtmp to make a
text file, transferring the text file to a Solaris 7 machine, using its
fwtmp to make a binary, and transferring the binary back to the Solaris 8
box for vnmr_accounting to work on.
I decided that the Solaris 7 fwtmp would probably run fine under Solaris 8,
so I copied a 7-fwtmp onto a "root utility" directory in the 8-box and made
the following script. (Rolf had a more elegant one, but I was unsure about
spaces in the syntax, so I stuck with my original plan.)
#!/bin/sh
vnmrsystem=/vnmr
export vnmrsystem
/usr/lib/acct/fwtmp < /var/adm/wtmpx > /var/adm/wtmpx.tmp
/export/home/root/fwtmp -ic < /var/adm/wtmpx.tmp > /var/adm/wtmp
rm /var/adm/wtmpx.tmp
touch /var/adm/wtmpx
/vnmr/bin/vnmr_accounting
I am not sure that all is necessary, but it works so I'm leaving it at
that. There was some commentary wishing that the software team was
supporting patches for the VXR. I can understand why they don't. My VXR is
really not that different from an XL, actually, and I wonder how many are
still out there. (For the record, my VXR-500 was a pain in the butt because
it was one of the first ones. The VXR-300 has been heroic.)
That said, if there are VXRs still out there needing support, and if no one
wants to make a patch cluster available, it would've been nice to be able
to get hold of just the vnmr_accounting patches but they seemed not to be
available singly.
The way things are going, in two years I'm going to have an NMR instrument
that's older than the incoming students!
Bill
William C. Stevens, Ph.D. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
Director Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-4405
618-453-6498 voice
618-453-6408 fax wstevens_at_siu.edu
http://opie.nmr.siu.edu
Received on Thu Sep 18 2003 - 11:47:52 MST