[736] in Zephyr_Bugs
Catch-22?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian McEntire)
Fri Dec 29 15:49:38 1995
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 15:49:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian McEntire <mcentire@sdd.comsat.com>
To: bug-zephyr@MIT.EDU
Hello,
I have used the zwrite/znol utilities as a student at UMBC college. I
grew very fond of the ability to quickly and obvioulsy send a short
message to another user who was currently logged on.
Now I am working as a co-op at a large corporation. My department does
a lot of software developement in HP-UX/DEC-ULTRIX UNIX environments.
Currently we have about 20-30 employees who actively write and compile
source code (mostly C++) on our 2 HP workstations and new HP server. We
also have a couple of Dec workstations.
Problem: We often run tight on resources and need to send messages to
users to log out or close apps or ttys; while there are other methods to
do this in UNIX, I like zwrite because it pops a window up on the users'
screens.
But then I found a mention in the file OPERATING, included in the zephyr
distribution, (quoted below) which says zephyr will take up substancial
resources on the server... can you be more specific about what a "fair
amount of CPU..." is? Would my attempt to install zephyr to notify users
really just compound the limited resources problem?
I was thinking of installing the package on a new HP9000/800, with 256 MB
of memory... however this computer currently only has 2 processors (of 4)
and might at times be compiling 2 C++ applications with several MB source
codes concurrently and supporting 5 to 15 users. Is this a definate no?
Thanks for any advice... you guys do great work at MIT!
- Brian
P.S.- Has anyone run it on LINUX with XFree yet? Possibly I could
dedicate an old 486 to being a Zephyr server.
copied from the file "OPERATING":
To set up a Zephyr service, follow these steps:
1. Choose the machines you wish to have act as Zephyr servers at your
site. A Zephyr server may require a fair amount of CPU and network
bandwidth, and should be configured with enough memory so that the
server process swaps rarely if at all.
...
