Some user problems with SCS pages

Mike Kelsey ([email protected])
Mon, 23 Aug 1993 21:32:34 +0000 (GMT)


After a recent announcement from Les Cottrell re: China networking info
in the SLAC SCS page, I've been exploring the information available there.
I've run into a few problems or annoyances.

1) SCS not accessible offsite. As Les has explained to me, the SCS stuff
contains some SLAC-proprietary information, so the SCS page is been made
inaccessible to non-SLAC nodes. Unfortunately, it also contains a lot of
extremely _useful_ general information. Also, SLAC has a huge community
of offsite users, and I for one would rather run WWW locally than have to
log on to a SLAC machine every time. Perhaps the SCS top level page could
contain links to "proprietary" and "non-proprietary" pages, and only the
former could be disabled?

2) Giant PostScript. The item "SLAC Networking Maps" is a graphical
PostScript file which I guess shows the structure of the SLAC Ethernet.
Unfortunately, xmosaic thinks the file is too big, and puts it through the
"Document Structure" processor, which displays the PostScript source as a
two-part TEXT file :-(

3) Intermittent access. This morning, when I tried to get to the SCS
home page at all, I got an error message that xmosaic was unable to access
the information server "heplibw3". When I FINGER'ed this node from Jupiter,
I discovered that it was in fact SLACVM, and was perfectly accessible.

I know these are probably minor problems, but since I haven't been able
to get past them, I don't know if there are any major ones out there :-)

-- Mike Kelsey

--
[  My opinions are not endorsed by SLAC, Caltech, or the US government  ]
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attack ships on fire off
the shoulder  of Orion.   I've watched  C-beams glitter in  the darkness
near the Tannhauser Gate.  All these memories will be lost in time, like
tears in the rain."  -- Roy Batty