Sic transit gloria mundi

[Mladen Gogala]

http://www.osnews.com/story/26376/HP_CEO_we_have_to_offer_a_smartphone

HP sees cell phones as its saving grace. From the hindsight, it seems
that Scott McNeally was right when he was talking about HP as a wonderful
printer company. They have absolutely messed up the high end computer
business they were in. I had an opportunity to work on HP-UX 11.31 on
Itanic, quite recently and it's a mess.
It looks like the old idea of getting back to profitability by cutting
down on work force and services is still alive. I bet that their next big
move will involve HP music store.

--
Mladen Gogala
The Oracle Whisperer
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

[John Hurley]

Mladen:

# I had an opportunity to work on HP-UX 11.31 on Itanic, quite

recently and it's a mess.

What specifically did you find "messy" about 11.31? Maybe you have
not been working much on hpux recently?

It of course still has a combination of old tools like sam and glance
( like all hpux systems do ) and now top. Most of the basic
diagnostics tools still work pretty much the same. I don't touch it
much but our apps are still running on it.

[ddf]

HP-UX, on the whole, isn't that bad but it certainly doesn't compare favorably to Tru64 and ultrix, both much better and cleaner to administer. We're running HP-UX on some systems and the issues we're having with performance caused the ERP system to be migrated to Linux (granted that's on an Exadata quarter rack, but it's Linux nontheless). Filesystem mount options don't always work as expected creating performance issues and bottlenecks for filesystems used by Oracle databases for data/temp/index files and the ability to reconfigure HBAs 'on the fly' is, well, disappointing. Maybe part of the problem is the SuperDome ERP is currently running on (those haven't been the most robust of machines, either) -- the performance has been less than stellar for that combination which is why Oracle could step in and take the business from HP with the Exadata machine. [Exadata is a different animal, to be sure, but it's getting better as I understand more of how the integrated pieces work together. It is, to say the least, a very fast platform.]

I've worked on various HP O/S offerings over the years and HP-UX, in its most recent incarnation, is nothing to write home about.


David Fitzjarrell

[Mladen Gogala]

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:44:51 -0700, John Hurley wrote:


> What specifically did you find "messy" about 11.31? Maybe you have not
> been working much on hpux recently?

1) No "screen" utility which I came to depend upon.
2) No truss/strace/ltrace utilities
3) The original "vi" instead of "vim".
4) Very slow fsadm -e -d on larger file systems.

I believe it's time for HP to get into cell phones.

[Noons]

Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 17/09/2012 8:44 AM:

>
> I believe it's time for HP to get into cell phones.

Well, HP invested heavily on ex-GSA management around 10 years ago.
The kind of management that used to hire 27 dbas and 2 developers for a new
development.
Of course, said dbas came at a premium price from the recruiter that was married
to said management. But heck, those are details, details! Let's abstract that!

Why am I not surprised to see them branch out into cell phones?
I believe selling bridges - quite cheap - is the next step...

[Mladen Gogala]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:58:42 +1000, Noons wrote:

> Why am I not surprised to see them branch out into cell phones?
> I believe selling bridges - quite cheap - is the next step...

Brooklyn Bridge is quite old, they can sell it with a discount.

[ddf]

There is tusc (sometimes softlinked to truss) in HP-UX and it can be difficult to find as it may not be in your PATH.


David Fitzjarrell

[joel garry]

On Sep 16, 11:14 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.osnews.com/story/26376/HP_CEO_we_have_to_offer_a_smartphone
>
> HP sees cell phones as its saving grace. From the hindsight, it seems
> that Scott McNeally was right when he was talking about HP as a wonderful
> printer company. They have absolutely messed up the high end computer

Hows that Sun thing working out for him?

> business they were in. I had an opportunity to work on HP-UX 11.31 on
> Itanic, quite recently and it's a mess.
> It looks like the old idea of getting back to profitability by cutting
> down on work force and services is still alive. I bet that their next big
> move will involve HP music store.

Quote from his wikipedia page: ""There’s a pendulum thing where stuff
is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it
belongs. The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it
went back into the network. Your iPod is like your home answering
machine. I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven
years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music
library wherever you are." That was in 2006. The Register's comment
was "Well, sure. Unless your iPod is your cell phone."

I always loved his speechifying at OOW. I wonder what the British
royals think about his privacy stance?

My unix lifecycle went something like this: Duplix (eh?), SunOS
(BSD), SunOS 2.x, VMS ("posix is more unix than unix"), DEC unix/
Ultrix, AIX, hp-ux, Solaris, linux (a few dozen early varieties), hp-
ux Itanium. And a sprinkling of Xenix and some other more obscure
things. And you know what? All of those and the hardware
manufacturers associated with them have gone through life cycles,
sometimes at an unexpectedly rapid pace. It is really difficult
strategically to continue a mature computer business. What's-her-name
has a pretty easy job, fix what's already messed up, get loads of
money whether you do or do not.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
https://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/Press-Releases/Oracle-Issues-Statement-301c.aspx

[Matthias Hoys]

True. And software out-of-support status arrives too quickly. Oracle 10g is still working great for us. Do *we* REALLY need 11g? Nope. But we're forced to upgrade otherwise we lose support and we'll probably have compatibility problems with other software sooner or later. Oh, and my Windows XP at home is still running great also ;-)

Matthias

[Gunter Herrmann]

Hi!

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> 2) No truss/strace/ltrace utilities

You should be able to compile and use GNU strace for that.

We use some gnu tools (e.g. bash) on Solaris.

Gunter in Orlando, Fl

[joel garry]

On Sep 17, 1:53 pm, Matthias Hoys <matthias.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
Oh, and my Windows XP at home is still running great also ;-)

Same here. The wife's Vista, not so much ;-)

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-to-continue-itanium-support-for-hp-after-court-ruling-7000003743/

[John Hurley]

Mladen:

# 1) No "screen" utility which I came to depend upon.

Pretty sure GNU screen is available ... are you saying you have a
problem specific to it in 11.31?

# 2) No truss/strace/ltrace utilities

Various alternatives ( already listed below in this thread ).

# 3) The original "vi" instead of "vim".

So go old school ... did you look around for vim on hpux ... thought
there were some available ports/etc or maybe you have to compile it?

# 4) Very slow fsadm -e -d on larger file systems.

Ahhh ... so use ASM!

[Noons]

joel garry wrote,on my timestamp of 18/09/2012 9:59 AM:
> On Sep 17, 1:53 pm, Matthias Hoys <matthias.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, and my Windows XP at home is still running great also ;-)
>
> Same here. The wife's Vista, not so much ;-)

will be a cold day in hell when XP Pro leaves my home desktop...

[joel garry]

Dang, search couldn't find an online Bill Gates in snow image, but I'm
sure you have the tools on there to show him being eaten by a snow
leopard :-D

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.

OpenVMS on x86? Wouldn't that be like sleeping with Sophia Loren on
her 78th birthday? http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/news/2240163429/Oracle-on-Itanium-customers-breathe-sigh-of-relief

[Gerard H. Pille]

I can't wait to see the first smartphone with a built-in printer.

[joel garry]

On Sep 18, 11:58 am, "Gerard H. Pille" <g...@skynet.be> wrote:
> I can't wait to see the first smartphone with a built-in printer.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Mobile-Phone-with-a-Built-In-Printer-47082.shtml

But more seriously, ubiquitous network printers already just make it
an app issue.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-may-show-gains-in-cloudy-market-2012-09-18

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:55:21 +1000, Noons wrote:

>
> will be a cold day in hell when XP Pro leaves my home desktop...

What is "XP"? I have Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop, Fedora 17 on
my desktop and CentOS 6.3 on my storage/mail server. I haven't
heard of the distribution called "XP". Is it Debian based or Red
Hat based? Is it something similar to this:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/reactos-opensource-windows-clone-software/


--
Mladen Gogala
http://mgogala.freehostia.com

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:58:58 +0200, Gerard H. Pille wrote:

> I can't wait to see the first smartphone with a built-in printer.

They can already be used as scanners, just look for Document Scanner on the Google Play.
So, now I will have a scanner/printer that I can make phone calls on? My little
Canon PIXMA MG3120 which I normally use for scanning and printing definitely cannot be used
to make a phone call. I never thought of making phone calls on my printer, to be quite
honest. I am sure that this will make a big splash. How will I feed the paper into the
phone? If HP comes up with 8.5" x 11" phone (dimensions of the letter paper), that might
be a long sought gadget that would kill iPhone. After all, who wouldn't want to be seen
walking down the street, talking to a printer?

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:49:02 -0700, joel garry wrote:

> Dang, search couldn't find an online Bill Gates in snow image, but I'm
> sure you have the tools on there to show him being eaten by a snow
> leopard :-D

Both will be eaten by penguins.

[Noons]

Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 19/09/2012 9:14 AM:

>>
>> will be a cold day in hell when XP Pro leaves my home desktop...
>
> What is "XP"? I have Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop, Fedora 17 on
> my desktop and CentOS 6.3 on my storage/mail server. I haven't
> heard of the distribution called "XP". Is it Debian based or Red
> Hat based? Is it something similar to this:
> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/reactos-opensource-windows-clone-software/

NAzrh, just dinossaur software.
You know, the kind that lasts for 100 million years!
;-)

[Gerard H. Pille]

A4 will do nicely over here in Belgicaca. And you could hide underneath for the rain, and
behind it against the wind.