| PVI -and- Wave under OpenWindows [message #105] |
Tue, 07 May 1991 18:57 |
rob
Messages: 10
Registered: July 1991
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Junior Member |
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PROBLEM SPECIFIC
----------------
> ...
> If you want to talk to somebody in person about this, you can call our
> customer service number: (303) 530-5200. Or feel free to send me email with
> more details about your configuration, etc. and I'll try to help you over
> this hurdle.
>
> Greg Holling
> Precision Visuals, Inc.
> boulder!pvi!greg
Thanks for your letter! I wrote to this group *after* talking
with people at the customer support number. I was told to get Sun patch
number 100192-01 if running OpenWindows and SunOS 4.1.1. We currently
run 4.1 though, and I was told to use "sunview -i" or contact Sun to
see if they had a patch for that OS. Yes, let's communicate about
this problem -- there is probably some simple solution!
GENERAL
-------
So far I have been plagued with problems getting PV~WAVE and Point
and Click here and up. Some of the problems may be our fault, however
I have also been given the impression that PVI is understaffed and
overworked in some important areas that interact with the public
(nothing new in the real world, huh? ;^). Have other people been
having problems? Much of this may represent an isolated case.
At this point I have to laugh at the sequence of events.
- We ordered PV~WAVE and Point and Click for our Suns and SGIs, with
a one-seat floating license.
- I received one box with a tape and some documentation.
- There was no packing list or anything similar, so never knew what
was actually missing. (The Ohio Supercomputer Center sends a very
nice list with their apE 2.1 package, for example.)
- There were no installation instructions with the documentation.
I thus hoped I could simply tar off the files and find further
documentation there.
- I tried to read the tape on our Suns, where our license managers
were going to run. I kept getting checksum errors. I tried to
read the tape on an SGI and was successful.
- That was my clue that not all of the software I needed was on that
one tape. I called CS (Customer Support) and was told by one person
that we needed 4 tapes, and by another that we needed 3 (3 turned out
to be right). CS also had documentation sent (unfortunately I then
received a VMS Installation Guide rather than Unix). Also, I had not
received softkeys, and found out they had not been generated yet,
so they did so.
- I then got a second tape in the mail, but no third. I called again
to ask where the third tape was. I was told to find a demo tape
previously sent to another person in my division months ago.
- I tried to follow the installation notes to install for both the
Suns and SGIs. Unfortunately, they didn't tell how to properly
install for multiple architectures under a one-seat floating license.
I called CS and was told to make a subdirectory in our Sun hierarchy
and put some of the files from the SGI tape there.
- Our softkeys were based on a primary server and a backup one.
I found out that if both servers weren't up and both running the
license manager, nothing would work. I called CS, who called CA
and got back to me that a "quorum" of the servers have to be up
for anything to work, i.e., over 50% of them. Thus having two
servers is ridiculous, but three may be better than one.
Anyway, I have been given new softkeys that use three license manager
servers. I will try again. My intent here is not to flame PVI or
their software, but I've been given a negative impression. It appears
that things aren't as organized and coordinated as they could be at
PVI, that there is a lack of communication between departments, that
the Customer Support Engineers are too busy answering the phones
to learn all they should to better field questions (a common problem
for that type of position), and that documentation and other information
sent to users needs improvement. I'm sure things will get better over
time. :-)
-Rob
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