path: root/doc/ports/notes.mips

# MIPS/IRAF alpha port.
# System arrived on thursday 17 May.

-----------------
Configure UNIX (RISC/os 4.10)

/etc/passwd
/etc/hosts
/etc/group
/etc/fstab
/etc/local_hostname
/tucana/	+
/u2		+
	1. Usual local configuration of passwd,hosts,group,fstab.  NFS
	mounted a number of tucana disks.
	2. local_hostname is a MIPS special, used to set hostname (columba
	in this case) and network parameters (netmask, broadcast).  (4/17)

	[didn't do anything more with the system for several days...]

/usr/adm/periodic/daily/10.makehosts.system
/usr/hosts
	Sometime later I discovered that /usr was 99% full and the directory
	/usr/hosts contained over 8000 files totalling about 9 Mb.  There
	turned out to be a crontab file which makes a link to rsh in /usr/hosts
	for every node alias in /etc/hosts.  We like to keep a very large
	hosts file around for reference, so this would end up producing an
	enormous /usr/hosts.  It is not clear if /usr/hosts is needed; the
	node name entries can be executed to rsh to the node so perhaps that
	is what it is for.  Rather than disable the facility entirely, I
	edited the makehosts script to make entries only for the local hosts.
	(4/26)

login customization
	The MIPS is a nearly pure SysV UNIX machine with the default login,
	which provides the SysV ls, ps, etc., the old unix kill, erase, etc.
	characters for the terminal driver, and so on.  A bit of hunting
	turned up the following interesting items.

	/bds43/bin
	/usr/ucb
	    Contains 200 or so BSD commands which are no where else to be
	    found, e.g., nroff, troff, lpr, head, etc., as well as BSD
	    versions of popular commands like ls, stty (in some cases there
	    are merely front ends to the SysV versions, like stty).

	/usr/new
	    Contains some interesting utilities, including LESS and PATCH,
	    and a couple of things I hadn't seen before, VSAR (a screen
	    oriented version of the SysV SAR) and VMSBACKUP (claims to be
	    able to read VMS BACKUP tapes).

	man pages
	    PAGER can be defined as "less -cqm" to use less to page man
	    pages.  There are two man programs, /bsd43/bin/man or /usr/ucb/man,
	    which prints the BSD man pages, and /usr/bin/man, which prints
	    the SysV man pages followed by other entries for the named topic,
	    prompting each time the pager is exited.  Given the default search
	    path, you have to type /usr/bin/man explicitly to get the SysV
	    version.  

	If the SysV STTY is used one needs to use "winsize" to set the
	screen size for programs like LESS and VI.  (4/26)

/usr/lib/cmplrs
	This directory contains the runtime files for the compilers.  It
	appears that the system as delivered by MIPS does not have the
	latest (2.10) versions of the compilers installed.  The installed
	versions are all 2.0.  I sent mail off to MIPS to see if we can
	get the 2.10 compiler tape (we already have the 2.10 Fortran tape,
	but this is useless on the MIPS without the 2.10 compiler backend
	programs).  (4/26)

/etc/printcap		+
/usr/spool/*		+
/etc/rc2.d/S01noao	+
	Configured LPR for the noao devices.  (4/26)

/usr/lib/tmac/tmac.s
/usr/local/bin/itroff*	+
/usr/local/bin/vpr	+
/usr/local/bin/qdplot	+
	Configured nroff/troff and the local noao troff and printer queues.
	(4/26)

/usr/lib/aliases
	Installed the noao mail aliases file.  (4/26)

------------------------
Begin IRAF port to the MIPS.
Start with DECstation/IRAF sources, since these are already set up to
use the MIPS compilers.
Using MIPS BSD43 programming environment.  (5/27)

local/.login
unix/hlib/cl.csh
unix/hlib/irafuser.csh
unix/hlib/libc/iraf.h
unix/hlib/mach.h
unix/hlib/mkpkg.inc
	1. Set new iraf root.
	2. In mach.h, change the byte swap parameters to NO.
	3. Checked size of setjmp buffer; DECstation value is larger
	than needed for MIPS, so leave it as is.  (5/27)

bin.mips			+
noao/bin.mips			+
mkpkg
unix/hlib/mkpkg.inc
unix/hlib/mkpkg.sf.MIPS		+
noao/mkpkg
noao/lib/mkpkg.inc
noao/lib/mkpkg.sf.MIPS		+
unix/mkpkg.sh
unix/setarch.sh			+
unix/bin.mips			+
unix/as.mips			+
	Add support for architecture "mips".  (5/27)

unix/os/irafpath.c
unix/os/zgcmdl.c
unix/os/zxwhen.c
	1. irafpath.c and zgcmdl.c modified to discriminate between Ultrix
	and RISC/os operating systems: #ifdef mips is true for both systems.
	On a DECstation the architecture is known as "dsux", on a MIPS it
	is "mips".
	2. Modified zxwhen for the MIPS hardware exception codes.  (5/27)

unix/boot/bootlib/osputenv.c
	The MIPS does not have putenv, but it has setenv.  (5/27)

unix/boot/mkpkg/host.c
	The MIPS has COFF libraries, so disabled ranlib.  (5/27)

unix/hlib/install
	It turns out that when using the BSD version of CC, the include
	files in /bsd43/usr/include are used rather than /usr/include.
	Modified INSTALL to make an <iraf.h> link in both places (and
	manually created the link in order to complete the bootstrap).  (5/27)

-------------------
Bootstrap successfully completed, except for alloc.c which failed to
link.  Will take a look at that later.  (5/27)

unix/boot/spp/xc.c
	The MIPS is unusual in that it has two sets of compilers (or at
	least compiler front-ends) and two sets of programming environments
	for BSD and SysV.  For our purposes it is simplest to use the BSD
	environment.  This necessitated a change to XC since we want to
	use the versions of CC and F77 in /bsd43/bin rather than the SysV
	versions in /usr/bin.

	1. Modified "run" in XC to search /bsd43/bin before /usr/bin (we
	should, of course, be using PATH instead).
	2. Modified XC to link with F77 instead of CC.  Using CC is awkward
	since the F77 libraries are hidden away in /bds43/usr/lib/cmplrs/...
	(5/27)

-------------------
Begin sysgen.

	The initial sysgen went well except for some problems with the F77
	compiler, which was not installed properly when the system was set
	up.  First I had to modify XC to use the /bsd43/bin versions of the
	compilers (see above).  Even when this was done links would still
	fail, due to the compiler being only partially installed.  I was
	able to continue by faking a BSD F77 compiler by combining the 2.10
	F77 front end and libraries with the cc2.0 back end.  The full compile
	sysgen will have to be redone when the new compilers are properly
	installed, and there is little point in pursuing any bugs until
	this is done.  (5/27)

math/deboor/mkpkg
math/deboor/setdat.f		-
math/deboor/setdat2.f		-
math/deboor/setdat3.f		-
	The DEBOORT math package turned out to have a set of files setdat.f,
	setdat2.f, setdat3.f, all of which defined the same routine "setdat"
	and which were being redundantly loaded into the library.  It turns
	out that these routines are not part of the math library anyhow, and
	are only used to generate test data for the test programs.  I moved
	them to deboor/progs (the test programs source library) and deleted
	the entries in the mkpkg file.  (5/27)

sys/gio/gks/gcas.x
	The MIPS librarian found another duplicate library entry here.  The
	GKS emulation library has two files gca.x and gcas.x, both of which
	define the same routine "gca".  Changed the gcas.x version to define
	a subroutine "gcas" instead.  (These are integer and short versions
	of the cell array routine - GCAS is a nonstandard IRAF extension to
	GKS, which is not used anywhere to my knowledge).  (5/27)

-------------------
Sysgen complete.
	
	With these changes the first sysgen completed, except for x_images.e
	which failed to link, probably due to the F77 compiler problems
	discussed above.  Other than that the sysgen went remarkably well.
	None of the problems we had with the MIPS compilers on the DECstation
	were present on this system.  IRAF is up and running, minus IMAGES,
	although from browsing the MIPS manuals I see that there are still
	some subtle items to take care of.  (5/28)

dev/hosts
	Added an entry for node columba and tested iraf networking.  (5/28)

unix/os/zmaloc.c
	RISC/os uses the BSD 4.3 memory allocator, which allocates storage in
	units that are a power of 2.  This can be very wasteful of space for
	large buffers, so we don't want to use the default memory allocator.
	MIPS provides a couple of other allocators as options, but I had
	trouble using these with the BSD43 environment due to unresolved
	symbols resulting from the SysV libraries not being searched.
	The solution was to replace zmaloc.c by the version used on BSD 4.3
	and Ultrix, which includes an older, simpler, and better behaved
	memory allocator.  (5/28)

unix/hlib/libc/iraf.h
unix/os/zzstrt.c
unix/os/zxwhen.c
unix/os/zgcmdl.c
unix/os/irafpath.c
	Added a #define MIPS and a commented out #define DSUX.  This is more
	direct than trying to use #ifdef mips (which is defined by the system)
	since this is defined for both the MIPS and DECstation (at least) and
	doesn't really tell us what system we are compiling for.  (5/28)

MIPS bug
	Running NM on a library with the output redirected causes a
	segmentation fault when the process exits.  (cd /lib; nm *.a | ...).

unix/os/zzstrt.c
unix/os/zxwhen.c
	Enabled the IEEE exceptions (overflow, divide by zero, and invalid
	operand) for MIPS/IRAF processes.  Modified ZXWHEN to detect and
	decode the floating point exceptions (this required doing bit tests
	on the floating point control and status register).

	To figure out how to do this I first did a "man -k ieee".  This
	turned up a man page for fp[get|set][round|mask|sticky], which
	looked like it would do the trick, except that evidently this routine
	doesn't exist anywhere in the system (maybe it is a standard SysV
	feature which MIPS doesn't support; the man page mentions the default
	behavior on 3B systems).  By doing an "nm *.a | grep fp" on the system
	libraries I eventually turned up set_fpc_csr/get_fpc_csr which is
	what is actually implemented on the MIPS.  This seems to do the
	trick; thus far, setting a nondefault FPCSR doesn't seem to introduce
	any new problems.  (5/28)

/etc/init.d/netdaemons
/etc/rc2.d/S01noao
/usr/local/bin/ntp		+
/usr/spool/cron/crontabs/root
	1. Had to add a command "route add default gateway 1" to allow network
	access to the outside world.
	2. Commented out the gated/routed daemons, which we don't need.
	3. Installed a copy of NTP in local/bin, and set up cron to run it
	once a day.  This sets the system clock from atomic clock at another
	site, by requesting the time via the internet from a network time
	daemon running on the remote node.  (Forgot to log it, but the timezone
	had to be changed to MST a while back too).  (5/31)

-----------------------
New compilers (V2.10) installed and the system bootstrapped and fully
recompiled from scratch.  Lacking a tape drive on the system, the compilers
had to be installed manually from the raw distribution tape: I think I set
up all the necessary links etc., but the installation was complex enough
that it is difficult to be sure.  (6/19)

Perusing the output of the sysgen, it appears that there were a number of
problems with the V2.10 compile, whereas the sysgen with the V2.0 compilers
went almost flawlessly.  At this point, from the nature of the errors I think
they are real and not something induced by errors in the installation of the
compilers.  Another problem was that the disk filled up during the sysgen,
a dangerous problem which can cause errors such as zero length objects being
inserted into libraries.

At least one compiler bug was observed, this one harmless.  Some of the old
NCAR and math library Fortran code contains statement functions.  The dummy
variables in such statements functions result in "local variable X never used"
warning messages.  (6/20)

unix/hlib/mkpkg.inc
	Added -Olimit 1024 to the default sysgen flags.  This sets the max
	size in blocks of a procedure to be optimized.  With the default
	value of 500 the compiler issued warnings for 7 files during the full
	sysgen, and failed to optimize 9 procedures.  (6/20)

math/deboor/core
sys/gio/ncarutil/autograph/core
sys/vops/core
pkg/dataio/cardimage/core
pkg/images/tv/cv/core
pkg/images/geometry/core
pkg/plot/core
pkg/xtools/ranges/core
pkg/xtools/core
noao/imred/ccdred/src/generic/core
noao/imred/vtel/core
noao/onedspec/dispcor/core
noao/twodspec/multispec/core
	Discovered why the sysgen ran out of disk space - 12 Mb of core
	files from compiler optimizer (uopt) crashes!   Deleted.  (6/20)

----------------
I tried recompiling a couple of the files that were associated with
optimizer core dumps in the first sysgen, but could not duplicate the
problem.  Started an incremental sysgen to compile the files skipped
in the first sysgen, and this completed without any errors.  The system
comes up and runs, ready for runtime testing.  (6/20)

----------------
/usr/local/bin/saoimage
	Installed saoimage.  7.6 Mb left in /usr.  As there was so little
	disk space, the RISC/os source for saoimage is currently in 
	/tucana/tmp3/rooke/sao/riscos.  (6/21 SRo)

/usr/man/manl/saoimage.man
	Created /usr/man/manl, and placed saoimage manpage in it.  (6/21 SRo)

----------------
Resume testing on alpha port, 16 July 90.

sys/vops/amov.gx
	This routine could fail, corrupting the data array, in some cases
	when the input and output arrays overlap.  The same problem exists
	in standard V2.9 iraf except that in most iraf implementations,
	a host optimized version of AMOV is used, hence the bug has not
	been seen.  (7/16)

unix/hlib/mkpkg.sf.MIPS
	I added entries for the host optimized versions of AMOV, ACLR, etc.,
	using the C versions in AS that use bcopy/bzero.  Unfortunately
	it turned out that the MIPS version of bcopy also cannot be used
	when the input and output arrays overlap in a certain way, hence
	I had to copy out the entries for the AMOV and BYTMOV routines.
	The optimized versions of the ACLR routines are still used.  (7/16)

unix/as.mips/zsvjmp.o
	I tried setting the address of MEM to zero and it worked on the MIPS.
	The same code failed on the DECstation with a linker error.  (7/16)

unix/os/zmain.c
unix/os/zzsetk.c
unix/os/zfiopr.c
	Added a new facility to UNIX/IRAF for debugging interprocess
	communication (IPC).  This feature will also be useful for debugging
	tasks standalone, particularly in cases where a bug seen when the
	task is run from the CL is difficult to reproduce when the task
	is run standalone.  If LOGIPC is defined in the host environment,
	the input and output IPC streams of each connected process with
	process id PID are logged to the files PID.in and PID.out.  (7/18)

unix/hlib/mkpkg.sf.MIPS
	Added system/help/lroff/textout.x to the list of files requiring
	compilation without optimization (actually it is the first such file
	for this system).  Evidently the use of multiple entry points in
	this procedure is running into an optimizer bug.  The argument "out",
	which should be the address of "putline" was being transformed to
	the address of "getline" somewhere in this routine, causing output
	via textout to be discarded.  (7/18)

sys/imfort/tasks/pcube.f
	This file contained a subroutine containing the following sequence of
	statements (irrelevant statements ommitted):

		subroutine pcuber (pix, nx,ny,nz, i1,i2, j1,j2, k1,k2)
		real	pix(nx,ny,nz)
		integer	nx, ny, nz

	On the MIPS, this produced a warning about nx/ny/nz already having
	been declared.  Probably when the compiler processes the REAL
	statement it assumes the parameters are type integer.  This seems
	reasonable, so I moved the INTEGER card up before the REAL and the
	warning went away.  (7/19)

unix/os/zxwhen.c
	While looking into a problem of a task aborting on a floating point
	exception, I noticed that the IEEE exception being reported was
	"floating inexact", which iraf does not enable.  It turned out that
	both inexact and overflow were being signalled, but due to the way
	the zxwhen code was written only the inexact was being reported.
	Since we are not very interested in those exceptions which are not
	enabled, I changed the code to check the exception bits for the
	enabled exceptions before checking the others.

	In this case the exception of interest was floating overflow, which
	is occuring in the routine DET called by SPLOT.  It appears that
	the matrix being input to this routine is garbage.  Since only the
	one application is affected I will leave it to someone else to check
	into it further.  (7/19)

-------------
Full system testing has been in progress for the past week or so.  Things
looks pretty good.  One task is dying with an out of memory error; after
hunting around a bit, I determined that the MIPS/SysV command used to
monitor swap space usage is "swap l", which gives the free space in 512
byte blocks.  (7/30).