GRASS on NeXT. Anyone?

[Michael Shapiro]

|At present we are stalled in our effort to run GRASS 4.0 on the NeXt
|due to a bug in the maknod function.  This funtion is used, among other
|things, for creating the 'named pipes' by means of which GRASS
|communicates with X-windows (via inter-process communication - IPC).
|In many UNIX's, including Sun OS, maknod is available as a command. In
|the case of MACH it's available only as a procedure, which isn't the
|problem.
|
|The problem is that once the pipes are created MACH does not properly
|initialize the data structures between uses.  NeXt has said they may
|fix it in the forthcoming release of MACH, maybe not.
|
|Clearly there are several ways to work around this problem, but we
|haven't had the time or inclination to develop one.

    Can you mention what these work arounds are?

|This concerns the NeXt as a server, but what about when it's just a
|client?  You could run GRASS on a system that didn't have the maknod
|problem and perhaps still use the NeXt as the display/control station.
|We plan to try this out in the next few weeks.
|

    Two points for clarification: 
    (1) the fifos (named pipes) must be on the same machine as the
    client and GRASS driver. NFS mounting fifos doesn't solve anything.
    Ask NeXt if there is a ioctl() call or some kind of software fix
    for intializing the fifos that could be added to the GRASS open
    connection code.

    (2) If you run GRASS on a non-NeXt machine where the fifos work,
    the use the GRASS XDRIVER and use the NeXt Xserver, that will work,
    but the GRASS machine would require the existence of X-based
    libraries for compiling the XDRIVER.



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Michael Shapiro
U.S. Army CERL                  email:   shapiro at zorro.cecer.army.mil
Environmental Division          phone:   (217) 352-6511  ext 526
P.O. Box 9005                   fax:     (217) 373-7222
Champaign, Ill. 61826-9005
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