-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SunFlash October 1990 Table Of Contents SunFLASH Vol 22 #toc October 1990 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the October TOC for SunFlash. If there are any items that you missed and really want to see, please send email directly to me at flash@sunvice.East.Sun.com. If the demand for back issues justifies the effort, I will install a program to service such requests automatically. For more information about SunFlash, send mail to info-sunflash thus: $ mail info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM Subject: info info ^D $ John J. McLaughlin SunFlash Editor -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary Of Octobers's Messages Line Count Vol.# Title 99 22.01 Sun Awards Grants 201 22.02 E-Pubs Vendors Choose Open Look 218 22.03 Summary Of Network Backup Tools 540 22.04 Third Party Product Announcements 105 22.05 Sun Offers COBOL 134 22.06 Faster filesystem checker & 6Mb/s Disks 136 22.07 SPARC In Education 139 22.08 Customer Warning System (update) 865 22.09 Metadisk Driver Technical Description 157 22.10 SunOS/SVR4 Development And Test Platform 71 22.11 New Sun Director: A. Michael Spence 63 22.12 FY Q1 Results for Sun Microsystems 91 22.13 Backup Tool 61 22.14 Public Access Sun Systems 947 22.15 1990 SUG Conference 3978 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary of Messages Sent This Month -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22.01 Sun Awards Grants MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 1, 1990-- Sun Microsystems today announced that it has awarded $256,909 in new community development grants to non-profit organizations in the San Francisco and Boston areas, two regions in which Sun has major facilities. In addition, Sun has made a grant of approximately $7,600 to a non-profit organization in Scotland, where it recently opened a new manufacturing facility. 22.02 E-Pubs Vendors Choose Open Look SAN JOSE, Calif. --October 3, 1990-- Many leading vendors of electronic publishing applications, including Altsys, Harris and Kodak, are porting their products to the easy to use 3-D OPEN LOOK(R) graphical user interface, Sun Microsystems reported today at the Seybold Computer Publishing Show in San Jose, Calif. As a result, OPEN LOOK has become the leading UNIX(R) graphical user interface in the electronic publishing marketplace. 22.03 Summary Of Network Backup Tools This is an article from the newsgroup info.sun-nets. Please understand that it was created by Joe Van Andel after asking for comments from info.sun-nets subscribers and as such it does not claim to be a complete description of all network backup packages. I am sending this summary to SunFlash assuming that there is a lot of interest in backing up Suns over the network. Consider this to be a useful starting point for people considering network backup software. Please send corrections or additions to Joe and forwarding of this information does not imply an endorsement by Sun Microsystems - johnj 22.04 Third Party Product Announcements The feedback that I received after sending out the last list of third party software announcements was very favorable, so here are some more! As you would expect, this article does not imply an endorsement by Sun Microsystems. If you would like me to include a product announcement from your company, please email it to flash@sunvice.east.sun.com. -johnj 1. GRAFIT - graphics development system 2. SLIC - the SBus/LocalTalk Interface Card 3. IDE's C Development Environment 4. Emerson Computer Power LAN Interface Kit 5. S-PLUS Version 2.3 release announcement 22.05 Sun Offers COBOL MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 10, 1990-- Sun Microsystems today expanded its offerings for the business and commercial UNIX(R) market by introducing Sun COBOL, a distributed version of the popular business programming language. Based on the de facto standard for UNIX-based COBOL, Micro Focus COBOL/2 from Micro Focus, Sun COBOL allows customers with an installed base of COBOL applications and developers of new business applications to take advantage of client/server computing and the superior price/performance of Sun's SPARC(R)-based systems. 22.06 Faster filesystem checker & 6Mb/s Disks MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 10, 1990-- Sun Microsystems today introduced the latest in a series of sophisticated server software products, strengthening its position as the leading vendor of UNIX(R) servers for workgroup computing environments. Called Sun QuickCheck, this new unbundled software product greatly improves the availability of data residing on Sun SPARCservers(TM) and SPARCstations(TM), allowing users to get back on-line faster after an interruption. In addition, Sun announced that its popular 6-megabyte/second Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI) hard disk drive is now available for the SPARCserver 470 and that it has reduced the drive's price by 21 percent. 22.07 SPARC In Education ATLANTA --October 14, 1990-- At EDUCOM '90, Sun Microsystems announced today that four top U.S. educational institutions, the University of Southern California, University of California at Los Angeles, Michigan Technological University and the Ohio State University, have recently made significant purchases of Sun SPARC(R)-based workstations and servers. The total value exceeds $7 million. Sun's leadership as a major vendor in the education marketplace. Sun systems are now installed in more than 1,000 educational and research institutions worldwide. With the built-in networking, ease of use and competitive price/performance of Sun systems, leading educational institutions are moving to the Sun platform, reaffirming Sun's leadership as a major vendor in the education marketplace. 22.08 Customer Warning System (update) This is an updated article. Note that phone number for reporting security problems has changed. Please work with your Sun Sales Rep to register a "Security Contact" for your site. - johnj Announcing Sun Microsystem's Customer Warning System for Security Incident Handling In order to best serve our customers' service needs, Sun has established a Customer Warning System (CWS) for handling security incidents. This is a formal process which includes: - Having a well advertised point of contact in Sun for reporting security problems. - Pro-actively alerting customers of worms, viruses or other security holes that could affect their systems. - Distributing the patch (and/or work-around) to our customers as quickly as possible. 22.09 Metadisk Driver Technical Description This document provides a technical description of the MetaDisk (TM) Driver software. The MetaDisk, which is unbundled Sun software, allows physical partitions to be grouped into larger logical partitions. By creating virtual devices that conform to standard UNIX device semantics, the MetaDisk operates transparently to the operating system and applications software. The MetaDisk allows mirroring (or shadowing) of data across physical partitions controlled by a single CPU. It also allows "meta-partitions" to span physical devices, so that files can be larger than a single disk. The MetaDisk comprises kernel code, a daemon, several utilities, a configuration data file, and a status database. This document describes the concepts and features of these modules as of July 1990 (version 1 FCS). 22.10 SunOS/SVR4 Development And Test Platform MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 18, 1990-- Sun Microsystems today introduced the SunOS/SVR4 Development and Test Platform for software developers, the next phase in Sun's UNIX(R) System V Release 4 (SVR4) migration program. The objective of the migration program is to provide a complete end user environment for Sun systems based on SVR4, to be shipped in late 1991. SVR4, co-developed by AT&T and Sun, is the next-generation operating system standard for UNIX. The SunOS/SVR4 Development and Test Platform is a suite of products that enables developers to create new SVR4-based applications and ensure compatibility with existing applications. Included is a range of system software, tools, documentation and support. 22.11 New Sun Director: A. Michael Spence MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 18, 1990-- Sun Microsystems, Inc., (SUNW) announced today that A. Michael Spence has been appointed to its board of directors. Spence is the dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford in July 1990, Spence served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, where he was chartered with overseeing Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Division of Continuing Education. 22.12 FY Q1 Results for Sun Microsystems MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --October 23, 1990-- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUNW) today reported results for its first quarter ended September 28, 1990. Revenues for the first quarter were $677.0 million, a 26% increase over the $538.5 million reported in the same period a year ago. Net income for the quarter was up 403%, to $26.1 million, or $0.26 per share, from the $5.2 million, or $0.07 per share, in the corresponding period of fiscal 1990. The company shipped 38,600 units, up 36% over the first quarter of last year. During the first quarter 50% of Sun's revenues were derived from outside the U.S. The strength of foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar contributed to both revenue and net income. 22.13 Backup Tool A recent SunFlash article which described network backup tools did not include a description of this tool from Sun's own Consulting Group. -johnj General Description CONSULT-AUTODUMP is a distributed SunView-based tool for plan- ning, and performing at a given hour, a back-up of diskfull workstations on a heterogenous network. These diskfull worksta- tions may be Suns of different architectures running different releases of SunOS or may be third-party UNIX/TCP/IP machines from other constructors. A daemon runs on each of these machines. 22.14 Public Access Sun Systems This article lists 4 Sun-based Public Access UNIX systems described in an article posted to USENET. -johnj 22.15 1990 SUG Conference This is a detailed description of the Agenda for the 1990 SUG. It is about 950 lines long. The first part lists the schedule for each day. The second part consists of descriptions for the tutorials: 1. THE INTERNET AND ITS PROTOCOLS 2. XVIEW 3. TOPICS IN SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION 4. UNIX DEVICE DRIVER DESIGN 5. INTRODUCTION TO C++ 6. OPEN WINDOWS FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPERS 7. SUNOS 4.X BASIC SYSTEM SECURITY 8. SUNOS RELEASE 4.1 UPDATE SEMINAR The last part is a form for registering. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sunflash is an electronic mail news service from Sun Microsystems, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. It is targeted at Sun Users and Customers. For additional information about SunFlash send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM SunFlash is distributed via a hierarchy of aliases. Try to address change requests to the owner of the alias that you belong to. If you want to be added to the SunFlash alias, please contact the systems engineers at your local Sun office and/or send mail to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Address comments to the SunFlash editor (John McLaughlin) at sun!sunvice!flash or flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.