🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <HARDY.92Oct22110843@golem.ps.uci.edu>, hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) writes...
# ...... 
#2. The new tools are definitely NOT better -- in fact Hostconfig (or
#SimpleNetworkStarter) were responsible for messing up my netinfo
#databases. 
#I had to niload new things by hand (took me endless hours), before I
#could get my NeXT back up. 
#The problem seems to be that the "TOOLS" cannot handle unorthodox
#hostnames, such as 714-725-3170.nts.uci.edu (required by our SLIP
#server on campus) or even a hostname starting with a capital letter. 
#Once netinfo started up en0, routed, etc, and did not find an active
#ethernet (I use dialupip) it dies on you, so that even ls -al does
#not work. 
#
#There should be an option to run standalone NeXT-en like ordinary
#machines without all the inaccessible netinfo databases. 

Thanks, Hardy.  MY complaint along these lines is simpler but related--
I couldn't get the PrintManager tool to set up the secretary's Fax Modem
so that the other NeXT people could use it from their machines.  Even
following the User's Manual (which is, for us, no longer a will-o-the-wisp, 
since a copy arrived with a new TurboStation the other day).  It kept
saying, after clicking public, that I couldn't choose "/" as a domain
(or something like that).  Eventually I realized that the problem was
that our network is NOT a NetInfo network, so none of this domain stuff
and "public" applies.

Of course by the time I realized this I had already done the work (which I
couldn't find described anywhere) of setting up the NXFax as a part of my
printcap using the NetInfoManager.  Note that I said 'printcap' here, even 
though the NetInfoManager has directories labeled 'fax-modems' and
'printers'.  (The latter appears identical with what nidump/niload calls
'printcap'.  The dissonance between NetInfoManager and nidump/niload is,
I strongly feel, a very ugly feature.

For that matter, why does NeXT Inc. seem to assume that its machines are
ONLY used on NeXT-homogeneous networks?  Based on my experience, I would
guess that 95% of all non-standalone NeXTs are on a MIXED network!

   Dick Silbar