---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash Third Party Product/Service Announcements SunFLASH Vol 28 #16 April 1991 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- As usual, inclusion of an article here does not imply an endorsement by Sun Microsystems. -johnj ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- POSIX Programming Manual LAN Dialup Connection Service eXamine Graphical Interface X based system performance monitor Xylogics introduces Annex Three Communications Server ydb - a symbolic debugger for yacc grammars and parsers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: POSIX Programming Manual From: ambar@ora.ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Reply-To: nuts@ora.com Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge, MA POSIX Programming Manual By Donald Lewine, available May 30, 1991 660 pages (estimated), ISBN 0-937175-73-0, $34.95 (You can order from O'Reilly & Associates, 800-338-6887) If you're a programmer or programming manager, you probably know that it can be difficult to port a program from one system to another. If you have computers from many different vendors, running multiple operating systems, you know how much you like to see code that compiles easily on all the machines. In practice, it is rare that code can be ported easily--it is surprising just how much variation there is among machines running the UNIX Operating System. Recognizing this problem led to the development of the IEEE standard known as POSIX (pronounced "PAH-six" and derived from Portable Operating System based on UNIX.) The first specification to be formally approved was POSIX.1 (IEEE 1003.1-1990), the application's interface to the operating system. It describes a set of standard functions for applications to use to obtain basic services provided by the operating system. POSIX provides for portability at the source-code level. If you write a POSIX-compliant program, then the program can be compiled to execute on any POSIX-conforming system. The POSIX.1 standard has also been approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It is a Federal Information Processing standard (FIPS 151). POSIX is also perhaps the only thing that the Open Software Foundation and UNIX International can agree upon. Most UNIX vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, IBM, Data General and Cray Research have announced support for POSIX. Even more noteworthy is that vendors of several non-UNIX operating systems have announced plans to support POSIX: Digital Equipment has said that VMS will be POSIX-compliant and Microsoft has said that OS/2 will also. This sounds like all good news for programmers doing commercial or in-house program development. But it can be difficult to find out exactly how to use POSIX. For one thing, the POSIX standard documents are difficult to use for this purpose. They are written as legal documents in which the primary aim is to be unambiguous. The POSIX standard is written for the system programmer, not the application programmer. It is not organized for a programmer who wants to consult it while writing programs. Another problem is that most programmers must rely upon the manufacturer's documentation to tell them how to use POSIX. Each manufacturer is required to supply a POSIX conformance document that describes the language bindings and any implementation-specific details. However, it does not tell the programmer how to use the POSIX library. Also, what is strictly POSIX-conforming and what is added-value specific to the manufacturer's system is seldom clear from the manufacturer's documentation. Even though the computer system is POSIX-compliant, you can write non-conforming applications by making use of the system-specific features. Application programmers need documentation on POSIX that they can use no matter what operating system or machine they are using to write the program. In fact, having a team of programmers use the same documentation is a good way to ensure that portability is achieved during design and implementation of a program, and not afterwards. The POSIX Programmer's Guide answers the need of a complete guide to writing portable, POSIX-compliant applications. It is made up of two separate guides: a programming guide and a reference guide. The programming guide presents an overview of developing POSIX applications. Many chapters have a section called Pitfalls that points out common problems in achieving portability. The programming guide can also be used by developers who are new to UNIX and need to learn the application interface to UNIX. The reference guide is intended for everyday use by programmers. All POSIX library functions are listed in alphabetical order and clearly and simply documented. Chapters include: Introduction to POSIX Writing a POSIX-compliant program, the basics Input/Output facilities of the Standard C library The file system as defined by POSIX Operations of POSIX Input/Output system, pipes, FIFOs Creating and terminating processes and signals Obtaining information about the environment Communication line settings and a cu-like utility POSIX and Standard C, including features and portability pitfalls Internationalization Reference sections include: Complete list of library functions in alphabetic order Complete list of data structures and their members All error codes Standard headers and the information that they define Glossary List of related publications. About the Author Donald Lewine has been writing computer programs for fun and profit since 1960. He has been teaching Computer Science in the State-of-the-Art (evening) program at Northeastern University for the past eight years. He has taught courses on Assembler, VAX/VMS, PASCAL, C and UNIX. This book was written and tested over the last two years at Northeastern University. Mr. Lewine spent 13 years with the Digital Equipment Corporation developing operating systems and central processing units. He was Technical Director for the MicroVAX Program when he left. For the past seven years, Mr. Lewine has been with Data General Corporation, currently as Director of Engineering. In this role he has been developing the AViiON family of open systems. He is a founder and a member of the Board of Directors of 88open, a member of the Board of Directors of UNIX International, and Data General's representative to the Open Software Foundation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: PSI Announces New Service: LAN Dialup Connection Service From: brown@uu.psi.com (Kimberly Brown) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Organization: Performance Systems International, Inc. Simple, Inexpensive LAN Integration is Now Only a Phone Call Away. April 8, 1991 - Reston, VA - John T. Eldredge, Director of Sales and Marketing, Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSI) today announced a new service useful to organizations interested in entry level LAN integration into PSINet and the global Internet: LAN Dialup Connection Service, or LAN-DCS. LAN-DCS will be available in May and supports V.32 modem technology that, with standard modem compression techniques, can provide 19.2Kbps throughput. LAN-DCS uses the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and is fully compatible with Telebit's Netblazer(TM) product and the public domain KA9Q software that can make any PC a full-fledged internetworking router. Martin L. Schoffstall, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of PSI stated, "Dialup/Switched internetworking is the next wave for the Internet (and PSINet). Through these technologies, we believe that there will be much broader acceptance and revolutionary impact on everything from K-12 education, to software providers, to the Fortune 500." Initially, LAN-DCS will be available through local dialups in the following PSINet Points-of-Presence (POPs): Albany, NY Boston, MA Mountain View, CA New York, NY Reston, VA Santa Clara, CA As an introductory offer to all new organizations participating in this new service, PSI will extend a 20% discount off the regular price of $300/month for LAN-DCS when they sign up by July 1, 1991. PSI, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, is a value-added internetworking services provider with a wide spectrum of services for the individual and corporate user of electronic information, ranging from electronic mail products to turnkey integration of local area networks into the PSINet wide area network system and the Internet. Through the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), which PSI co-founded, all commercial US internetworking service providers are interconnected, providing commercial companies on PSINet with no government restrictions on usage to other commercial companies participating in the CIX. CONTACT: John T. Eldredge Performance Systems International, Inc. 11800 Sunrise Valley Drive Suite 1100 Reston, VA 22091 Phone: 1 800.82PSI82 +1 703.620.6651 Fax: +1 703.620.4586 Email: info@psi.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: eXamine Graphical Interface From: j2@mvuxi.att.com (J W Sherman) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories The AT&T Advanced Software Products group is announcing an X11 based graphical user interface for the dbx and sdb debuggers. The eXamine Graphical Interface communicates with the underlying debugger and provides a sophisticated window interface for the user. Features allow users to: - View source code within a window. - Graphically represent breakpoints, current stop point and call frames within the source code. - Create trace windows which display the results of debugger scripts whenever a breakpoint is encountered. - Edit and recompile source files without leaving the debugger. - Create and use command buttons to add new actions. - Access a breakpoint list for finding or deleting breakpoints. - Access any UNIX system command from the interface. - Toggle between two interface configurations. - Customize the interface including all of the pull down menus, command buttons, and physical display information. - Add note windows for capturing screen information. The eXamine Graphical Interface currently supports dbx and extended dbx for C++ on Sun 3 and Sun 4 platforms; it also supports sdb and sdb++ for the 386 and AT&T 3B2 platforms. The eXamine Graphical Interface will run with the X11 Window System Release 3 or 4 (including OpenWindows), and will operate with any ICCCM-compliant window manager. The eXamine Graphical Interface is priced at $795/copy. An introductory price of $695/copy is available until April 1, 1991. Discounts are available for multiple copies. For more information about the eXamine Graphical Interface, or for a free demonstration copy, call 1-508-960-1997, or send electronic mail to examine@mvuxi.att.com. Orders may be placed by calling The AT&T Customer Information Center (CIC) at 1-800-432-6600. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: X based system performance monitor From: wrv@balr.com (Bill Vogel) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Organization: BALR Corporation *** BALR Corporation announces SYSMON Version 2.0 *** SYSMON(tm) is a system performance monitor for SUN based computer system networks. Utilizing an Open Look(tm) graphical user interface, SYSMON is able to display system and network performance data in real time. In addition, SYSMON can gather and store performance data daily, which can then be viewed and printed in 3 graphical formats over several different time periods. Up to 8 performance parameters can be displayed simultaneously when viewing historical data. SYSMON can gather data from many machines on a network, and any machine can view and print data from any other machine or set of machines. The system is entirely flexible, and can be configured in any manner. Only a small, efficient process needs to be resident on the machines you wish to monitor, and data collection and display can be relegated to other machines, or perhaps even a dedicated workstation. SYSMON can monitor many types of performance data, including data on: * CPU performance, including user time, system time, idle time and load averages (1, 5 and 15 minute). * Network traffic, at both the physical device level as well as the TCP/IP level. Device level information includes packets sent and received as well as collision and error rates. * Disk drive activity including number of blocks and I/O requests per second. * Paging, swapping, fault and trap rates. * System calls, forks, vforks, context switches and device interrupts per second. * Instantaneous size of the disk-wait, page-wait and run queues. * NFS activity, both client and server, down to the specific call level if desired. * Memory and swap space utilization. * Filesystem free space statistics. * MMU cache flushing rates. * Dynamic process activity, which displays in real time instantaneous CPU and memory utilization. * Block I/O cache hit ratio. * Paging daemon activity. * Critical resource utilization, including file table entries, shared memory segments, semaphores, message queues and streams. * TTY I/O activity. * Active uucp/cu sessions. * Who is logged into the system. * A special package that allows you to "zoom" in on a specific set of processes (by process name or by user name) and observe cpu time; % memory; message activity; process growth; faults, reads, writes, signals and context switches per second. The following requirements must be fulfilled to display data with SYSMON: 1. You must have a SUN workstation, preferably with color. 2. You must be running SunOS 4.1 or later. You can, however, monitor SunOS version 4.0 systems with SYSMON, you just can't view the data on those machines. 3. You must have Sun's OpenWindows version 2.0 or later. SYSMON will NOT work with a pure MIT X-server. 4. For output, you must have a postscript printer if you wish to print reports. Free 30 day demo diskettes are available. Pricing includes source code, which comes STANDARD when you purchase SYSMON. Site and corporate licenses are available. Most of SYSMON is written in C++. Because of the open architecture of SYSMON, future development plans include the ability to collect data from other different computer hardware platforms, although the display base platform will remain SUN. In addition, SYSMON will be able to monitor the database engines of several commercially available database products. For further information, please contact: BALR Corporation 600 Enterprise Drive Oak Brook, Illinois 60521 phone: (708)575-8200 fax: (708)575-8205 email: sysmon@balr.com ------------ SYSMON is a registered trademark of BALR Corporation. Open Look is a trademark of AT&T. OpenWindows is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Xylogics introduces Annex Three Communications Server From: wieder@Xylogics.COM (Scott Wieder) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Organization: Xylogics, Inc., Burlington MA The following text is from Annex Three press release. Technical questions should be directed to annex-support@xylogics.com XYLOGICS INTRODUCES NEW GENERATION UNIX COMMUNICATIONS SERVER New Annex Three Features Extensive Network Management Software, Lowest Price Per Port And Unprecedented Security Features BURLINGTON, Mass., -- Xylogics, Inc. (NASDAQ/XLGX) made connecting users to computer networks more functional, secure and economical with a new multiprotocol UNIX communications server. Called the Annex Three, it features the industry's best software, security and price per port. The Annex Three provides an unbeatable package of comprehensive features and the lowest price per port. It offers from eight to 64 serial ports for just over $100 per port. Until now, the lowest priced terminal server cost $134 per port for an equivalent configuration. The Annex Three provides all the capabilities of a terminal server and more. It reduces the difficulty and expense of hardwiring terminals, modems, printers and remote PCs directly to UNIX and Digital VAX/VMS host computers by packaging multiple serial ports in a single "intelligent" box. With the Annex, any terminal can access any TCP/IP or LAT host. Users can connect to multiple hosts and toggle between sessions easily with a "hot key." Printers, including Postscript, and modems can be shared. The Annex Three includes an additional parallel port for connecting Centronics or Dataproducts printers. MADE FOR UNIX Annex is the only communications server family developed specifically for UNIX systems. Annex ports behave like local UNIX ports. Where the Annex Three is tightly integrated with UNIX, all other competitive terminals servers are either proprietary or based on Digital VAX/VMS environments. They also typically manage and load software from VAX host computers. UNIX users feel familiar with the Annex right from the start because Annex commands are identical to their UNIX equivalents whenever possible, The Annex Three also gives users the ability to create custom menus and macro commands, or hide the interface completely. COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM Where earlier terminal servers were built as closed boxes, the Annex Three architecture is designed as a modular communications platform. This enables users to add I/O ports as needed, as well as plug in future communications technologies as Xylogics develops them. Other modular terminal servers use backplanes in which cards are installed. Xylogics designed the Annex Three with a main logic board with two slots for line cards. This design provides the benefits of a modular architecture without the cost burden of expensive backplane architectures. By using 32-bit microprocessors on the main logic board and line cards, the Annex achieves unprecedented performance: 38.4 Kbps on all ports. Performance is critical for applications that use high speed modems, printers, or TCP/IP over asynchronous lines. NETWORK SECURITY Because a communications server is a primary point of entry into a network, the Annex offers several security features to protect your network, including the ability to: * Identify users before granting network access * Produce audit trails that monitor users and activities * Automatically disconnect inactive sessions * Restrict commands and access to sensitive hosts and * Encrypt data ANNEX SOFTWARE AND NETWORK MANAGEMENT Although based on a new hardware architecture, the Annex Three is fully compatible with the proven software and network management features of earlier Annex models. These include: * UNIX host-originated connections * Modem pools and connections to hosts without network interfaces * Full TELNET and rlogin implementations * Multiple name servers and routing * Compressed SLIP * Network configuration and software downloading from UNIX/Xenix systems * SNMP MIB-II with extensions SIZE, PRICING AND AVAILABILITY The Annex Three features a compact 3.5" high design that can either be rack mounted or used in a standard office environment. Annex Three communications servers are available immediately with prices ranging from $3,995 for an 8-port server to $6,995 for a 64-port Annex. A special trade-in program is available for owners of the Annex I. Trade-in an Annex I when buying an Annex Three and reduce your Annex Three price $500 for 64 port units, $350 for 32 port units and $250 for 16 port units. This is a limited time offer. Contact Xylogics for additional information. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Xylogics, Inc. is a leading supplier of computer I/O and networking products used primarily in the UNIX market. Information on the company and its products can be obtained through its toll-free number: 1-800-225-3317. ### Annex is a trademark of Xylogics, Inc. All other products and services mentioned in this document are represented by the trademarks of their respective companies. CONTACT: Kevin Murphy Xylogics Inc 53 Third Avenue Burlington, MA 01803 1-800-225-3317, extension 362 kmurphy@xylogics.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: ydb - a symbolic debugger for yacc grammars and parsers From: pg@bsg.com (Peter Garst) Newsgroups: comp.newprod Organization: Bloomsbury Software Group Introducing ydb - A SYMBOLIC DEBUGGER FOR YACC GRAMMARS AND PARSERS A COMPLETE GRAMMAR DEVELOPMENT TOOL ydb is a powerful new symbolic debugger for yacc grammars and parsers. It provides an extensive set of tools for producing correct, conflict-free grammars at translate time, and for providing complete debugging control of an operating parser at run time. ydb also provides crucial extensions to yacc, and frees the user from yacc's most serious limitations. FEATURES ******** ydb consists of two debuggers. One is for translate time, when your grammar is translated into a C language parser; the other is for run time, when you are using a program with a ydb parser compiled in. Both come with windowed interfaces, using X and SunView, and terminal interfaces. At translate time: - ydb shows you how a parse would proceed if the parser chose one branch or the other of a conflict. - ydb automatically generates a new precedence system to implement your decisions about conflicts, and writes it into your grammar file. - ydb allows you to explore your grammar; for example, one command shows you typical strings derived from a nonterminal. - ydb provides significant extensions to yacc. For example, you can compile more than one parser into a program. We built a C interpreter using two ydb parsers - one for the preprocessor feeding another for the main language. At run time: - ydb allows you to trace rule reductions, input tokens, the stack and other items of interest in your running parser. - ydb allows you to break at particular rule reductions, at all rule reductions, at particular input tokens, or at other significant points. - ydb can display the parse tree, grammar states, rules and other parser information. ydb is thoroughly documented, and comes with an indexed user's manual, a tutorial, a reference manual, a quick reference and extensive on line help. APPLICATIONS ************ - for developers and maintainers of parsers, command interpreters and front ends, ydb provides greatly enhanced productivity and ease of use, plus freedom from yacc's most serious limitations. - for educators, ydb is an ideal tool for demonstrating parsers. Your students can watch the stack grow and shrink, trace the rules as they are reduced, and in general get a window into a running parser. - for researchers, ydb provides all the tools you need to take an interactive, exploratory approach to your grammars. FOR MORE INFORMATION ******************** Bloomsbury Software Group P.O. Box 390018 Mountain View, CA 94039 (415) 964-3486 ydb@bsg.com or ...uunet!bsg!ydb ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu and paris.cs.miami.edu. 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. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.