Different UNIX pro's and con's.
Thomas Lester
could, but I decided to include vendor specific groups as well. I
appologize to anyone who thinks this post in inapropriate.
I am a UNIX admin for a large bank. We are primarly a Sun shop and I
personaly prefer to work on the Solaris OS, although I enjoy working on
just about any variety of UNIX. Here is the issue... My bosses are
talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
vendor.
I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
Please try to e-mail me directly if you can. I don't have access to the
USENET at work.
Thanks,
Thomas
--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+==+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Thomas Lester UNIX Systems Administrator
tle...@iakom.com http://www.iakom.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"God wouldn't be up this late!" - The Plague, Hackers
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+==+=+=+=+=+=
Rev. Don Kool
> I wanted to post this question to as "flavor neutral" a group as I
> could, but I decided to include vendor specific groups as well. I
> appologize to anyone who thinks this post in inapropriate.
>
> I am a UNIX admin for a large bank. We are primarly a Sun shop
My condolences :-)
> and I
> personaly prefer to work on the Solaris OS, although I enjoy working on
> just about any variety of UNIX. Here is the issue... My bosses are
> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
> shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
> which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
> of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
> vendor.
>
> I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
> about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
> following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
> you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
> more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
> performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
>
> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX),
Pros:
True 64 bit. Runs on the worlds fastest chip. Comes configured by
default with security in mind (e.g. no open accounts, "no plus"
feature in "/etc/hosts.equiv", no remote logins by root, etc...)
Few propriatary quirks (unless I'm just really used to them by
now!). Extremely simple to set up by typing "setup" and going down
the menu of functions (e.g., tcp/ip, bind, nfs, ntp, etc...). No 2GB
file size limit or file system size limit. AdvFS file system and
LSM to create huge logical volumes (striped, mirrored, whatever).
AdvFS file system is simple to set up and administer and almost
anything can be done to it on the fly without even unmounting it.
Supports quotas even over NFS. One command, "doconfig", rebuilds
the kernel if you add devices. You can always load Windows NT or
OpenVMS on the machine if you get a bug up your butt.
Cons:
Not much commercial software written for it as yet.
> Sun (Solaris),
Pros:
Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
software.
Cons:
Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
manager. Put out by SUN.
> HP (HP/UX),
Version 9.x:
Pros:
Runs really fast. SAM
Cons:
SAM. "Unique" layout of configuration files that isn't BSD or
System V.
Version 10.x:
Pros:
Runs really fast. SAM. System is much more System V compliant and
thus easier to maintain without a lot of specialized, HP-specific
knowledge.
Cons:
SAM.
> SGI (IRIX)
Pros:
The graphics. Easiest to work with. Very user friendly even for
the novice. Has graphical tools to do just about everything
although it is System V compliant enough that hand editing of
configuration files isn't the nightmare it is on AIX. No file or
file system size limitations. 64-bit. Runs on some of the world's
fastest supercomputers as well as some very affordable ones. Up to
date with current technologies (e.g. ATM, fibre channel, etc...).
Lots of commercial software. Coolest looking hardware design.
Cons:
Up until version 6.5 came out, a plethora of versions specific to
the different hardware. Comes configured apparently for a
"collegeate" atmosphere (e.g. open "guest" account, can TELNET in as
"root") so it takes some doing to ratchet up the security although
this has improved in later versions of the OS.
> Please try to e-mail me directly if you can. I don't have access to the
> USENET at work.
Done.
Hope this helps,
Don
--
********************** You a bounty hunter?
* Rev. Don McDonald * Man's gotta earn a living.
* Baltimore, MD * Dying ain't much of a living, boy.
********************** "Outlaw Josey Wales"
http://members.home.net/oldno7
Peter Koch
Thomas Lester wrote:
> My bosses are
> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
> shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
> which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
> of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
> vendor.
Don't make the mistake to go to a heterogenous environment.
If you have Sun, keep Sun!
Price/performance is bullshit. What's about reliability and service?
It does have a reason, why MANY banks are still marriaged with IBM!!!
Not to stress the "april fools word 1998": TCO.
> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
for $1000000 with the same OS.
None of the others have such a broad range.
But i'm missing IBM in your list!!!
>Think about scalability, performance, stability, ...
Another aspect: DEC has been sold to Compaq. It has become very quiet
about SGI the last months. There are rumours, that IBM will buy Sun!
Think about this too!
Bye
Peter
Doug Hughes
In article <35F7AED0...@home.com>, "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
>
> > Sun (Solaris),
>
> Pros:
>
> Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
> software.
>
> Cons:
>
> Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
> uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
> root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
> know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
> config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
> larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
> change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
> backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
> manager. Put out by SUN.
>
2.6 has CDE, where the mailtool does to MIME. You haven't been able
to telnet in as root for quite some time (I don't remember the last
time you could by default..) as for system-administration and setup,
just run sys-unconfig and reboot. It asks you for all the information.
Optical mice are gone; all machines shipped for the last year or so
have been mechanical mouse.
And, the server addition comes with SDS which will let you grow
and rearrange filesystems on the fly. (see Intranet extentions CD)
Backspace/delete? Sounds like a really sort of petty nit. The other
arguments were at least substantive (not-so-much current though..)
I can't argue with 'Put out by SUN'. That is entirely correct.. ;)
--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin Auburn University
do...@eng.auburn.edu
Timothy J. Lee
|Thomas Lester wrote:
|> My bosses are
|> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
|> shop.
|
|If you have Sun, keep Sun!
Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
Sometimes, bringing in few different computers is less work
than trying to force-fit a solution to computers just like
the existing ones.
Also, as OSes change, the homogeneous environment won't be
all that homogeneous as new computers with new versions of
the OS show up.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Lee timlee@
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome. netcom.com
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.
void
while.
--
Ben
"You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Rev. Don Kool
> history and other OS stuff deleted. Focussing on factual errors.
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> > > Sun (Solaris),
> >
> > Pros:
> >
> > Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
> > software.
> >
> > Cons:
> >
> > Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
> > uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
> > root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
> > know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
> > config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
> > larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
> > change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
> > backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
> > manager. Put out by SUN.
> >
> 2.6 has CDE,
We have to make sure all the applications, including the home-grown
ones, work with 2.6 before we can upgrade. OPENWINDOWS users don't
like CDE (more accurately, don't like change of any kind). With Y2K
the change is coming but we will most likely have to pry SunOS 4.x
and OPENWINDOWS from their cold, dead hands before it does.
> where the mailtool does to MIME.
"dtmail" does MIME. I mentioned SUN "mailtool" which does not
(although I've heard there is a MIME compliant version out there, it
remains about as real to me as Bigfoot).
> You haven't been able
> to telnet in as root for quite some time (I don't remember the last
> time you could by default..) as for system-administration and setup,
> just run sys-unconfig and reboot. It asks you for all the information.
I haven't done that although I have installed both SunOS and
SOLARIS but not recently (I tend to stick to the other OS's as we
have lots of SUN SAs but very few for "everything else"). I'll have
to try it and see but somehow I doubt it asks you about automount
options (i.e., wheather you want to use "automount" or "autofs" and
what command line options you want to start it with), default
router, which directories to export, NIS domain, DNS domain,
nsswitch.conf setup (i.e., resolver order), multiple NIC card IP
addresses or names, etc...
> Optical mice are gone;
Hmmm... none of the hundreds we have seem to magically have grown
balls :-)
> all machines shipped for the last year or so
> have been mechanical mouse.
Must me nice to be in a shop where all the machines are new :-) We
don't have the luxury of abandoning SunOS for SOLARIS just yet, much
less trashing all of our SPARC workstations for ULTRAs.
> And, the server addition comes with SDS which will let you grow
> and rearrange filesystems on the fly. (see Intranet extentions CD)
I'll have to look into that.
> Backspace/delete? Sounds like a really sort of petty nit.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on that. We run an extremely
multivendor environment and SUNs are the only workstations that
can't seem to get it right. On a SUN running OPENWINDOWS, there are
all kinds of problems with when to use the backspace key and when to
use the delete key. Log into the system and you have to use delete
instead of backspace. Start OPENWINDOWS and you're back to using
backspace. SUNs don't even work right when jumping from system to
system. You can be backspacing fine and then "rlogin" to another
SUN (with TERM set correctly) and all of a sudden you have to use
delete instead of backspace (or do an "stty"). While it would be a
"petty nit" to a user, it is a royal pain in the ass to a System
Administrator who is constantly jumping from workstation to
workstation and working both in and out of the window manager. What
makes it even more annoying is that SUN has never has the
wherewithall to address such a basic error.
BTW; some have noted that it is a simple matter to configure the
dot files to fix this. My answer;
1. I shouldn't have to (I don't have to on any other OS).
2. Easy for a user who logs in and stays there. More difficult
for a SysAdmin
to do on every workstation they use/fix/build.
As always, this thread is all opinion anyway.
Rev. Don Kool
>
> You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> while.
That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
climb back into my good graces :-)
Rev. Don Kool
> |> My bosses are
> |> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
> |> shop.
> |
> |Don't make the mistake to go to a heterogenous environment.
> |If you have Sun, keep Sun!
>
> Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
> Sometimes, bringing in few different computers is less work
> than trying to force-fit a solution to computers just like
> the existing ones.
Also, it is always best not to put all your eggs in one basket. I
work for the Federal Government and our Agency had standardized on
SUN. The next time the contract was let, it went to IBM. I've
always worked multivendor (PC, OpenVMS, almost every major UNIX
variant) and I've always thought poorly of the SUNs so I was very
pleased to see the end of them. I was in the distinct minority.
The switch in vendor showed me quite clearly how resistant people
are to change. (What ever happened to all those peoples' resumes
that started with "Looking for a challenging position"?) If we had
been diversified from the start, there would not have been such
inertia just because it is a different OS (and AIX was about as
different from SunOS as they could get) and there would have been
some existing expertise on administering the new machines.
Second point about multivendor environments... What happens when
a vendor does something you don't like? If you whole shop is one
vendor and that vendor is all your Admins know and all your users
know, where's your leverage? If you are multivendor, you can tell
them, 'Well VendorX doesn't treat us like that. Perhaps we'll buy
more of his new workstations.'. Tell them that when they know going
non-SUN will cause major upheaval in your organization. Why is PC
pricing so cutthroat; because they're a commodity and the vendors
know you can go anywhere, get the same thing and use the same people
to administer it. Switching vendors causes no pain to the
organization.
> Also, as OSes change, the homogeneous environment won't be
> all that homogeneous as new computers with new versions of
> the OS show up.
Very true. We had SunOS SysAdmins ready to fall on the sword just
when they had to start learning SOLARIS. Many literally changed
jobs rather than learn this "new" OS.
Timothy J. Lee
| We have to make sure all the applications, including the home-grown
|ones, work with 2.6 before we can upgrade. OPENWINDOWS users don't
|like CDE (more accurately, don't like change of any kind). With Y2K
|the change is coming but we will most likely have to pry SunOS 4.x
|and OPENWINDOWS from their cold, dead hands before it does.
Don't recent versions of Solaris/SunOS support OpenWindows as well as
CDE? Just tell the die-hard OpenWindows users to select "OpenWindows
Login" at the CDE login screen.
Lone_Wolf
#void wrote:
#>
#> You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
#> while.
# That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
#admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
#mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
#climb back into my good graces :-)
Most of our optical mice have been replaced with ball mice, usually when
we call up support and say 'our mouse doesn't work anymore' or 'our mouse
has a frayed cable'. Course, Gold service agreements are expensive :-)
James
# Hope this helps,
# Don
#--
#********************** You a bounty hunter?
#* Rev. Don McDonald * Man's gotta earn a living.
#* Baltimore, MD * Dying ain't much of a living, boy.
#********************** "Outlaw Josey Wales"
#http://members.home.net/oldno7
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> #void wrote:
> #>
> #> You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> #> while.
>
> # That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
> #admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
> #mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
> #climb back into my good graces :-)
> Most of our optical mice have been replaced with ball mice, usually when
> we call up support and say 'our mouse doesn't work anymore' or 'our mouse
> has a frayed cable'. Course, Gold service agreements are expensive :-)
Our service people only replace with the same thing. :-( Ball
mice are available in our supply system though and I usually try to
keep a few dozen on hand for when the optical ones give out. Alas,
most of our optical mice will only leave the building when the
systems they are attached to are retired. :-(
Then again, that's the users' problem. I've got a DEC Alphastation
600 on my desk so I don't have to worry about it :-)
Hope this helps,
Don
--
********************** You a bounty hunter?
* Rev. Don McDonald * Man's gotta earn a living.
* Baltimore, MD * Dying ain't much of a living, boy.
Serguei Patchkovskii
: > Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX),
[...]
: Cons:
: Not much commercial software written for it as yet.
Also: Digital's documentation on systems administration is totally out of
sync with the operating systems itself. The documentation mostly deals
with DUNIX 4.0b; the currently shipping version (4.0d) is sufficiently
different from it in some respects to make some of the administration
tasks a nightmare. Several vital configuration files are either not
documented anywhere, or are "documented" by a two-line note in the
two-inch-thick release notes. The manual pages are simply horrible,
frequently going to great lengths describing the action of unimplemented
(yikes!) switches and omitting the really useful ones altogether.
Many of the basic services are outright buggy - I had all of syslogd/
rpc.lockd/rpc.statd/portmap/mountd and even vi (!) dumping core during
normal operation (syslogd and vi dump core in reproducible, but not
always avoidable situations. Others drop core in an apparently random
way.) I also had login starting to randomly refuse letting the users in,
local and remote alike, for no good reason - only to revert to the
normal behaviour two days later (no reboot, no configuration changes,
no nothing).
Mind you, Alphas running DU are still great computational workhorses,
but I do wish they spent a little more time on their QA - both for
the software and hardware.
Cheers,
/Serge.P
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> | We have to make sure all the applications, including the home-grown
> |ones, work with 2.6 before we can upgrade. OPENWINDOWS users don't
> |like CDE (more accurately, don't like change of any kind). With Y2K
> |the change is coming but we will most likely have to pry SunOS 4.x
> |and OPENWINDOWS from their cold, dead hands before it does.
>
> Don't recent versions of Solaris/SunOS support OpenWindows as well as
> CDE? Just tell the die-hard OpenWindows users to select "OpenWindows
> Login" at the CDE login screen.
Yes, but you're replying out of context. The previous poster
pointed out that the CDE mail client (dtmail) is MIME compliant.
Many of our users are indeed running SUN's archaic OPENWINDOWS
instead of CDE which means that they aren't taking advantage of the
MIME compliant mail client, "dtmail". They're stuck with SUNs
"mailtool". Of course they could probably bring up
"/usr/dt/bin/dtmail" under OPENWINDOWS but it would be "different"
than "mailtool" and we can't have "different" now can we. (But we
can have 10 users a day dragging into the office asking what to do
with this gobbledegook "base64" attachment...)
Speaking of "mailtool" and "MIME"... we did get a program from the
Internet that can allow "mailtool" users to decode "MIME"
attachments. I forget the exact name of it but I can check it out
at work tomorrow if anyone's interested. The program is only a
couple hundred kilobytes (that's KILObytes). Once it's installed,
you can add a pick to the users' OPENWINDOWS text extras menu for
it. Then they only have to highlight the message and pick "MIME"
off the text extras menu to decode the attachment. If the "mailcap"
file is set up correctly, it will even start the proper
application. If not, it will store the decoded file in "/tmp".
UUDECODE can also be easily added to the text extras menu for
similar operation. Training the users is the only hard part. After
all it does involve a triple click and a menu pick. :-)
Paul E.Lehmann
Gates has gotten where he is today. UNIX is a tremendous operating system
BUT UNIX vendors dont't seem to understand that most people do not want
quite so much diversity in (ONE??) OS. I think it is time for UNIX to join
the 20th century. Of course all these differences if "Flavors" of UNIX are
good job security for nerds.
Rev. Don Kool wrote in message <35F7AED0...@home.com>...
>Thomas Lester wrote:
>
>> I wanted to post this question to as "flavor neutral" a group as I
>> could, but I decided to include vendor specific groups as well. I
>> appologize to anyone who thinks this post in inapropriate.
>>
>> I am a UNIX admin for a large bank. We are primarly a Sun shop
>
> My condolences :-)
>
>> and I
>> personaly prefer to work on the Solaris OS, although I enjoy working on
>> just about any variety of UNIX. Here is the issue... My bosses are
>> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
>> shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
>> which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
>> of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
>> vendor.
>>
>> I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
>> about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
>> following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
>> you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
>> more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
>> performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
>>
>> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX),
>
> Pros:
>
> True 64 bit. Runs on the worlds fastest chip. Comes configured by
>default with security in mind (e.g. no open accounts, "no plus"
>feature in "/etc/hosts.equiv", no remote logins by root, etc...)
>Few propriatary quirks (unless I'm just really used to them by
>now!). Extremely simple to set up by typing "setup" and going down
>the menu of functions (e.g., tcp/ip, bind, nfs, ntp, etc...). No 2GB
>file size limit or file system size limit. AdvFS file system and
>LSM to create huge logical volumes (striped, mirrored, whatever).
>AdvFS file system is simple to set up and administer and almost
>anything can be done to it on the fly without even unmounting it.
>Supports quotas even over NFS. One command, "doconfig", rebuilds
>the kernel if you add devices. You can always load Windows NT or
>OpenVMS on the machine if you get a bug up your butt.
>
> Cons:
>
> Not much commercial software written for it as yet.
>
>
>> Sun (Solaris),
>
> Pros:
>
> Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
>software.
>
> Cons:
>
> Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
>uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
>root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
>know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
>config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
>larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
>change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
>backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
>manager. Put out by SUN.
>
Richard...@hotmail.com
Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
> Don't make the mistake to go to a heterogenous environment.
> If you have Sun, keep Sun!
>
> Price/performance is bullshit. What's about reliability and service?
> It does have a reason, why MANY banks are still marriaged with IBM!!!
>
> Not to stress the "april fools word 1998": TCO.
>
> > Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
>
> Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
> in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
> for $1000000 with the same OS.
> None of the others have such a broad range.
This is total crap.
SGIs are more scalable by any measure than Sun. Addmittedly, an Ultra 5
is cheaper than an O2, but an 5 is a Tiawanese built PC that happens to
have a UltraSparc CPU. IDE disks, PCI bus (which although being slow and
shitty, is still faster than sbus :) etc.
For scalability lets compare a UE 10000 to an Origin 2000:
(prices are in Australian dollars, as that's what I have access to)
SGI Origin 2000
Entry level: 2 CPU deskside model costing ~$40,000
Max std config: 128 CPU supercomputer
Maximum: Biggest sold is 1024 CPU, could go bigger, NOT a cluster
Sun UE10k
Entry level: 16 CPU full size costing ~$1.5 million
Max std config: 64 CPU supercomputer
Maximum: 4 x 64 CPU cluster
MIPS and USparc chips are roughly comparible in performance. Whoever
had the last speed upgrade tends to be faster. The Sun also has a lower
maximum memory latency, but SGI has much lower minimum, your milage will
vary as to which is best.
UE 10k (Starfire) can be clustered up to 4 way, giving about double the
performance of maxed out O2000 (according to Sun). However as at June 18th
of this year NONE had been sold! (Source "Top500 Supercomputers") If
clustering works so well, why is the only 256 CPU cluster at Sun?
Thirty six 128 CPU Origin 2000s are listed in the same list. Even if some
256 CPU UE10ks have been sold but not reported to "Top500" the largest
Origin 2000 sold (that I know about) had 1024 CPUs. This is not a typo,
and not a Cray. It also isn't a cluster, but a proper single system image
cc-NUMA machine owned by the US government for nuke bomb and power sims.
This machine is NOT listed in "Top500" as it is very classified, and they
have better things to do with it than run benchmarks.
SGI rule the top end: out of the top 500 computers in the world:
8 of the top 10 are SGI
200 of the top 500 are SGI
more the 50% of the total MFlops are SGI.
Sun are next (first entry is 43rd of 500, next is 141st)
Most of the computers above this are SGI
Sun have 111 in top 500, SGI have 200, but add the MFlops and SGI have
about FIVE TIMES the CPU grunt.
Much of SGIs really high end is Cray, so you have to recompile your apps.
This is NOT an issue for those who need that much horsepower.
Last tidbit: "John West Rejects"
When SGI and Cray merged the Starfire was dumped, as it didn't make the
cut, and Sun bought it. Suns best machine wasn't good enough to be included
in SGIs product line (which does include CPUs other than MIPS: their fastest
supercomputers use over 1000 Alpha chips. No Sparcs though :)
The whole supercomputer thing is meaningless for a bank in any case! They
don't require CPU grunt, they need IO bandwith and throughput. SGI hold
every significant record for TPc, $/TPc, database backups, etc, etc, etc.
Genereally with far smaller and cheaper machines than their competitors.
Many "maximum ever" business benchmarks are held by 8 CPU Origin 2000s,
which are substatially cheaper than the equivalent Suns, and give better
BUSINESS performance (IO, TPc, backup, etc).
> >Think about scalability, performance, stability, ...
That would be SGI or DEC then, not Sun.
> Another aspect: DEC has been sold to Compaq.
That's right. And having just spent more on a compuer company merger than
ever before, to obtain Digital's technology and service arms, Compaq are
going to throw it all away :)
Or perhaps they might build on the brilliant service and technology base
they just spent X billion on. You pick the one you think most likely.
> It has become very quiet about SGI the last months.
Crap. SGI still make the computers with:
The best high-end graphics in the world. Full stop.
The most scalable architecture in the world. 2 - 1024 CPU, same binaries.
The best business price/performance according to third party benchmarks.
The coolest looking cases :)
> There are rumours, that IBM will buy Sun!
IBM are just stupid enough to do this, but god knows why they would.
Sun have a good point: They make cheap workstations. But their product
line does NOT scale. Every time you want to double your CPUs you have to
buy a new box until you finally hit the UE10k.
Enough ranting, Sun do have their good points: Service & support, reliability
of hardware and software, the dirt cheap Ultra 5s, a solid series of mid-range
servers and workstations (Ultra 450 is a lovely peice of work, even if it
does only scale from 1 - 4 CPUs). They also have probably the best application
support of any Unix vendor. For a first attempt at the high end, the UE10k is
a good start, which is unsurprising as it was designed by Cray. This is also
the reasong it has such a high entry cost: it was designed by Cray.
SGI also have their bad points: a bad rep for security, which is possibly
somewhat deserved, but I assume your main banking servers follow the same
security we do for military stuff: not connected to public networks AT ALL.
Their software support is not as good as Suns, but this is unlikely to be a
problem, they have all the major stuff. They also don't do clustering, but
then again, what do you need more that 1,000 CPUs for :) They do do failsafe
style clustering for high availablity.
I only use Suns and SGIs, I can't comment on HP, DEC, IBM etc. I'd suggest
contacting some vendors and looking at some business benchmarks that match
what you're doing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Lane, Infrastructure Analyst #include <disclaimer.h>
EDS Australia - Midrange Systems (like Sun UE10k ;)
was CSC Australia - Major Defense Projects - Network Engineering
Internet email: <Richard...@hotmail.com>
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Rev. Don Kool
> Rev. Don Kool (old...@home.com) wrote:
> : > Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX),
>
> [...]
>
> : Cons:
>
> : Not much commercial software written for it as yet.
>
> Also: Digital's documentation on systems administration is totally out of
> sync with the operating systems itself. The documentation mostly deals
> with DUNIX 4.0b; the currently shipping version (4.0d) is sufficiently
> different from it in some respects to make some of the administration
> tasks a nightmare. Several vital configuration files are either not
> documented anywhere, or are "documented" by a two-line note in the
> two-inch-thick release notes. The manual pages are simply horrible,
> frequently going to great lengths describing the action of unimplemented
> (yikes!) switches and omitting the really useful ones altogether.
>
> Many of the basic services are outright buggy - I had all of syslogd/
> rpc.lockd/rpc.statd/portmap/mountd and even vi (!) dumping core during
> normal operation (syslogd and vi dump core in reproducible, but not
> always avoidable situations. Others drop core in an apparently random
> way.) I also had login starting to randomly refuse letting the users in,
> local and remote alike, for no good reason - only to revert to the
> normal behaviour two days later (no reboot, no configuration changes,
> no nothing).
>
> Mind you, Alphas running DU are still great computational workhorses,
> but I do wish they spent a little more time on their QA - both for
> the software and hardware.
We have literally dozens of ALPHA servers and hundreds of
workstations running Digital UNIX and I have never seen any of this
behavior on any of them. You may have a hardware problem. We just
got 4 new 4100s in and one of them was getting "ld" errors when it
tried to build the custom kernel after the OS was installed (i.e.,
last thing in the OS install before the reboot). It looked for all
the world like a software error ("undefined symbol") but it turned
out to be a bad PCI bus. Had it not been during the base install on
a system who's three identical brothers had built perfectly, I would
never have called it hardware.
brima...@em.agr.ca
service and add new services! You and you're bosses need to be focused on
building and maintaining the team: system administrator, data base manager,
data base developer, internet developer, network guy.
Just as a guess, I'd say that you should stick with Sun, use your expertise
as a system administrator to provide a stable platform on which others can
learn and develop!
I have worked with HP-UX for five years, I can't compare it directly with Sun
Solaris.
In article <35F71814...@iakom.com>,
Thomas Lester <tle...@iakom.com> wrote:
> I wanted to post this question to as "flavor neutral" a group as I
> could, but I decided to include vendor specific groups as well. I
> appologize to anyone who thinks this post in inapropriate.
>
> I am a UNIX admin for a large bank. We are primarly a Sun shop and I
> personaly prefer to work on the Solaris OS, although I enjoy working on
> just about any variety of UNIX. Here is the issue... My bosses are
> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
> shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
> which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
> of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
> vendor.
>
> I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
> about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
> following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
> you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
> more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
> performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
>
> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
>
> Please try to e-mail me directly if you can. I don't have access to the
> USENET at work.
>
> Thanks,
> Thomas
> --
>
> =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+==+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
> Thomas Lester UNIX Systems Administrator
> tle...@iakom.com http://www.iakom.com
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> "God wouldn't be up this late!" - The Plague, Hackers
> =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+==+=+=+=+=+=
>
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
Peter da Silva
void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
>You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
replace them annually (or even more often).
--
In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
`-_-' "If Microsoft don't think you need it, it's not there and there's no
'U` way to include it yourself." -- Geoff Lane, a.s.r.
Peter da Silva
> That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
I could do with another Sun optical mouse or two. Trade?
Peter da Silva
Serguei Patchkovskii <patc...@acs1.acs.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>Many of the basic services are outright buggy - I had all of syslogd/
>rpc.lockd/rpc.statd/portmap/mountd and even vi (!) dumping core during
>normal operation (syslogd and vi dump core in reproducible, but not
>always avoidable situations. Others drop core in an apparently random
>way.) I also had login starting to randomly refuse letting the users in,
>local and remote alike, for no good reason - only to revert to the
>normal behaviour two days later (no reboot, no configuration changes,
>no nothing).
You MUST be doing something horrible to them. My experience (once ditching
AdvFS, mind) is that you pretty much have to bury themn at the crossroads
with a stake through the heart and a holy wafer in the mouth to get them to
fall over.
Rev. Don Kool
>
> With all this diverse opinion on UNIX systems is it any wonder why Bill
> Gates has gotten where he is today. UNIX is a tremendous operating system
> BUT UNIX vendors dont't seem to understand that most people do not want
> quite so much diversity in (ONE??) OS. I think it is time for UNIX to join
> the 20th century. Of course all these differences if "Flavors" of UNIX are
> good job security for nerds.
Amen to that! We were installing a program today for configuration
control and just the licensing procedure was torturous. I realize
that the vendors of low quantity, high cost software have to take
steps to protect themselves but it is really a pain in the ass to
have to license something to system ID. If you want to move it to
another system, you have to call the vendor and procure a new
license. Those of us without Internet access at work are forced to
use the 'FAX back' services and then type in an un-Godly string of
numbers, letters and odd characters by hand just to get the thing to
work. Say what you will about windows, there is certainly an
advantage to double clicking on "setup" and seeing the familiar
'install wizard' kick off for virtually every software package. We
do UNIX, we're used to the quirks but they sure don't win over a lot
of converts from the NT camp.
Rev. Don Kool
> > Don't make the mistake to go to a heterogenous environment.
> > If you have Sun, keep Sun!
> >
> > Price/performance is bullshit. What's about reliability and service?
> > It does have a reason, why MANY banks are still marriaged with IBM!!!
> >
> > Not to stress the "april fools word 1998": TCO.
> >
> > > Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
> >
> > Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
> > in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
> > for $1000000 with the same OS.
> > None of the others have such a broad range.
>
> This is total crap.
> SGIs are more scalable by any measure than Sun. Addmittedly, an Ultra 5
> is cheaper than an O2, but an 5 is a Tiawanese built PC that happens to
> have a UltraSparc CPU. IDE disks, PCI bus (which although being slow and
> shitty, is still faster than sbus :) etc.
[...snip...]
Now here is someone that is preaching to the choir when it comes to
SUNs. My feeling on them is that someone in management decided to
buy them, they work and we're stuck with them.
Rev. Don Kool
> void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
> >You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> >while.
>
> Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
> replace them annually (or even more often).
And SUN does a booming business in propriatary mouse "pads" that
seem to disappear. :-)
Doug Siebert
>don't require CPU grunt, they need IO bandwith and throughput. SGI hold
>every significant record for TPc, $/TPc, database backups, etc, etc, etc.
>Genereally with far smaller and cheaper machines than their competitors.
>Many "maximum ever" business benchmarks are held by 8 CPU Origin 2000s,
>which are substatially cheaper than the equivalent Suns, and give better
>BUSINESS performance (IO, TPc, backup, etc).
Top ten TPC-C results are at http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttperf.idc.
I don't see SGI there AT ALL. Number one is Compaq (with a DEC Alpha
cluster with a total of 96 CPUs) then IBM (an SP/2 cluster with a total
of 96 CPUs) then HP (a single V2250 with 16 CPUs, which was also the
best $/TPC of these top four, and not a fake unlike some results because
it actually uses RAID arrays rather than JBOD that most use for TPC-C to
keep down the cost) In fourth is Sun with a 44 CPU E6000. SGI has only
two TPC-C results listed, the best is for a 28 CPU Origin 2000 that
scored less than half what that 4th place Sun system did. You couldn't
have meant TPC-D, SGI is well down the list there as well. You couldn't
have meant $/TPC, those records are all held by PCs.
Now I believe SGI does hold some I/O related records, but not on the
industry standard big-business benchmarks like TPC. Every vendor can
come up with a benchmark that plays to their platform's strengths and
beats everyone else. The trick is to do well in benchmarks that others
have chosen to have some basis in reality for their choice. TPC may
not be the best, but it is better than a limited purpose benchmark like
total filesystem throughput -- that's useful in a very small number of
cases (more scientific computing or video processing than business
computing which is all random I/O)
--
Douglas Siebert Director of Computing Facilities
douglas...@uiowa.edu Division of Mathematical Sciences, U of Iowa
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Timothy J. Lee
|control and just the licensing procedure was torturous. I realize
|that the vendors of low quantity, high cost software have to take
|steps to protect themselves but it is really a pain in the ass to
|have to license something to system ID.
That's one huge advantage that I find with free software -- no counting
licenses (for "honor system" commercial licenses), no license manager
hassles (for commerical licenses that try to enforce themselves.
|Say what you will about windows, there is certainly an
|advantage to double clicking on "setup" and seeing the familiar
|'install wizard' kick off for virtually every software package.
But just try to automate the install of a dozen new computers,
especially when the desired application does not like to be run
from a file server. What usually happens is that people only bother
to install what is immediately needed (both to avoid taking time and
to avoid having to buy more licenses), with the result being that
every Windows computer is uniquely configured -- a real nightmare to
manage when the number of computers gets large.
With Unix, it is usually possible to install just once (or once per
OS), then use NFS, rsync, or rdist to share the installation with
every other computer (assuming you have the license issues done or
the software is free software). And new computers can be handled
by putting any necessary additional things in an install or postinstall
script.
Eugene Krainov
> I am a UNIX admin for a large bank. We are primarly a Sun shop and I
> personaly prefer to work on the Solaris OS, although I enjoy working on
> just about any variety of UNIX. Here is the issue... My bosses are
> talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
> shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
> which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
> of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
> vendor.
> I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
> about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
> following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
> you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
> more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
> performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
I'd worked in a big bank ( Central Bank of Russia ;)) where
I managed both HP and Sun platforms. I have strong experience with SGI
as well. So, what can I say?
Sun brought a lot at tech world and I respect them, since they
are only a company that is trying to stop M$ expancy. They do a lot of
good hardware. Ultra 2 servers can be put in one perfomance class with
HP's D series (even with the best of the range) and are quite cheaper
and easier to maintain. 450 server - is small enterprise case - the
best solution in it's class. 4500 server - the same line as HP K series,
is more scialable faster and have a lot of other advantages compared to HP.
Since HP is strategic M$ partner, it is stagnating it's 9000 line, planning
to walk with Merced on wintel land. Farewell, HP. The high-end class looks
strange. HP compares it's newest V servers with Sun's 6500, which is the top
of middle enterprise class. Sun has UE 10000 which I had not seen by my
own eys, but it looks great in technical reports. But on the other hand,
Sun lacks of software. It may sound incredible, but look, Sun does not have
even truly 64-bit unix by now. HP looks solid in this area. It's OpenView
solutions are very good to maintain a large production environment with
hundreds of servers and thousands of workstations, even if they are very
buggy and their development is either stagnating or moving to NT area.
Clustering is good, may be the best with HP. But, as I had said, HP prefers
to make printers for wintel. What about workstations? They are bad and
overpriced with both platforms. HP's - more. They are pushing wintel Kayaks
instead of unix workstations. Sun does some cheap workstations such as Ultra 5
and 10 with PCI bus. It is a good sign, but their performance - sucks. They
are neither office manager's workplaces (Oh, Gods, where are the old good
xterms?), nor graphic stations. Support? Support is bad in both cases.
What about SGI? SGI does the best hardware in the world, but it
is collapsing under wintel pressure. Their graphic workstations are the best
(even lowend O2 for less then $6000 with monitor for UMA 2.1Gb/sec bus
and hardware OpenGL) but software developers are moving towards wintel NT.
SGI developed more supercomputers in the world than any other vendor.
In the lowend - it's Origin 200 server with CrayLink is a good choise for
building a small distributed supercomputer system. Origin2000 showed a
a best results on TPC-D on medium data volumes not long ago. I have not
checked the most recent results, so, this may not be true for now. SGI
software is very good, a bit buggy, but it depends... ;) But... SGI is
collapsing. What a pity.
DEC? I think, DEC's dead.
IBM? I have no experience with IBM.
> Please try to e-mail me directly if you can. I don't have access to the
> USENET at work.
Maybe some other people would be interested in this posting too.
--
dake
Randolph J. Herber
|From: Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
|Subject: Re: Different UNIX pro's and con's.
|Date: 11 Sep 1998 00:28:30 GMT
|To: info-ir...@arl.mil
|In article <slrn6vgja4...@interport.net>,
|void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
|>You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
|>while.
|Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
|replace them annually (or even more often).
|In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
| `-_-' "If Microsoft don't think you need it, it's not there and there's no
| 'U` way to include it yourself." -- Geoff Lane, a.s.r.
I prefer a trackball instead of a mouse. It is much less a pain in the wrist.
Usually, they are also much less ``touchy.'' Change the multiple click time
from SGI default 200ms (which is difficult to do) to a more reasonable 600ms.
That is one of the reasons that it took years for me to learn what ``double
click'' of ``just lasso and drag them to it, drop with a double click''
meant. I am still working on ``lasso'', ``drag'' and ``drop'' and to what
``them'' and ``it'' refer. When I ask the point-and-ugh crowd (they remind
me of pre-verbal toddlers) for explanations of how to do something that is
about the only explanation they are able to give and they seem to be unable to
conceive of anyone not being born with such knowlege being already in place.
That combined with very limited capacities and continual searches through
lengthy twisty mazes of all alike menu options is why I prefer UNIX over
MS Windows or Apple MacOS (no CDE, please).
Randolph J. Herber, her...@dcdrjh.fnal.gov, +1 630 840 2966,
CD/OSS/CDF CDF-PK-149F Mail Stop 318
Fermilab, Kirk & Pine Rds., P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510-0500, USA.
(Speaking for myself and not for US, US DOE, FNAL nor URA.)
(Product, trade, or service marks herein belong to their respective owners.)
N 41 50 26.3 W 88 14 54.4 and altitude 700' approximately, WGS84 datum.
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.''-Chaucer-Parliament of Fowls
Dennis Handly
: The whole supercomputer thing is meaningless for a bank in any case! They
: don't require CPU grunt
Whereas Wall Street does use supercomputes.
Maximilien Lincourt
But WallStreet is not a bank, I assume they use Supers to do some
financial calculation that are really advanced ...
M.
--
Maximilien Lincourt, B. info., Software developer
"2d or not 2d"
ToonBoom Technologies Inc. phone 514 278 86 66
7, Laurier East fax 514 278 26 66
Montreal, Canada mailto:m...@toonboom.com
H2T 1E4 http://www.toonboom.com
Bill Vermillion
> ... My bosses are
>talking alot about bringing in different platforms (hardware) to the
>shop. As with most managers price/performance is the leading issue,
>which I can understand. The problem is they look at numbers and specs
>of the manufactures which are usually written in the favor of the
>vendor.
>I know the Sun world, but I would like to hear some pro's and con's
>about different platforms. If you are intimately familiar with the
>following OS's, please send me comments about the pro's and con's. If
>you are intimately familiar with more than one include what you like
>more about one of the other if you do. Think about scalability,
>performance, stability, administrative time/costs, servicability,etc.
>Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
You left out one of the more important aspects.
What applications are you running. If commercial you should be
able to find out which HW platform that ap runs on. If in house
you need to see it's compliant with others. Machines that are used
for such things a video processing and image won't typically be
the same as you use for heavy database access.
See if you can convince the vendors you have in mind to loan you a
machine for 30 days to test the performance. What works for
someone else might not be correct choice for you.
Define the goals first and then choose the best HW fit.
--
Bill Vermillion bv @ wjv.com
Peter Koch
Timothy J. Lee wrote:
> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> writes:
> >If you have Sun, keep Sun!
>
> Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
Because each new brand of computers brings its own
problems. And such problems do not add up, they
multiplicate!
If you have 50 Suns, 50 HPs and 50 IBMs, you need
more manpower to mainatin these as if you have
150 Suns, 150 HPs or 150 IBMs.
Ciao!
Peter
void
>void wrote:
>>
>> You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
>> while.
This is a lie; upon rereading the post I responded to, I discovered that
in fact the poster did mention this. My apologies to him.
> That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
>admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
>mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
>climb back into my good graces :-)
Whatever. I expect that to happen around the time Microsoft ships free
replacements for all the broken software they've sold.
--
Ben
"You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Peter Koch
Rev. Don Kool wrote:
> void wrote:
> > You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite >
> That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
> admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
> mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
> climb back into my good graces :-)
Most of my female mice (those with a hole, which glooms red) are
still working. They ARE better than male mice (these with balls).
I suppose, this depends on personal taste somehow ;-)
Ciao!
Peter
Peter da Silva
I find a few trackballs acceptable. Most of them, especially the Logitech
ones that require you do the fine control (moving the ball) with the thumb(!)
and pressing the buttons with the fingers, are just too clumsy for me.
I have an old old Microspeed with huge buttons (that I can hit with my thumb
and pinky) that I use on the PC next to my Sun. It's OK. The latest Logitech
look worth investigating.
Martin Leese - OMG
mentioned the politics of buying. If you are a Sun shop, say, and
your company policy is to buy only Suns then the salesperson will jack
up the price. (More correctly, they will lower it less.) I use Sun
in my example only because I have had such a bad experience with them.
I would be amazed, however, if the others were any better.
Of course, you can cut a good deal at the beginning, but then you are
locked in. There is a very strong financial argument for heterogenous
networks. Business is war and salespeople are not stupid.
Regards,
Martin
E-mail: mle...@omg.unb.ca
WWW: http://www.omg.unb.ca/~mleese/
______________________________________________________________________
Want to know how Ambisonics can improve the sound of your LPs and CDs?
Read the Ambisonic Surround Sound FAQ. Version 2.8 now on my WWW page.
Tom Ballinger
HA!! What fantastic humor. Thanks
FWIW, I prefer (I am afraid to let this one rip)... the male mice.
Timothy J. Lee
|Timothy J. Lee wrote:
|> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> writes:
|> >If you have Sun, keep Sun!
|>
|> Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
|
|Because each new brand of computers brings its own
|problems. And such problems do not add up, they
|multiplicate!
However, new computers from the same vendor, and new versions of OSes
from the same vendor, bring their own new bugs.
|If you have 50 Suns, 50 HPs and 50 IBMs, you need
|more manpower to mainatin these as if you have
|150 Suns, 150 HPs or 150 IBMs.
Only slightly more. And sometimes trying to force fit something
onto an OS that it really doesn't like can be a bigger pain.
Besides, if an administrator is comfortable with multiple platforms,
his/her options become greater (e.g. Need a print server? That old,
unwanted 486 PC and BSD or Linux would be a fine solution that does not
require bothering the accounting / finance people.).
Also, an all-Sun environment may end up heterogeneous (SunOS 4
and SunOS 5), as can an all-HP environment (HP-UX 9 and HP-UX 10).
An all-IBM environment might have some issues between AIX 3 AIXwindows
and AIX 4 CDE.
Peter da Silva
> And SUN does a booming business in propriatary mouse "pads" that
>seem to disappear. :-)
I currently have more optical mice pads than optical mice. Yes, we've had
a couple of mice fail, but we haven't lost any pads. I've also got at least
a dozen PC optical mice in a drawer (my users are superstitious about female
mice (nice term, thanks) or something) and as many mouse pads.
Now losing those silly Sun Microphones... that I'll believe. And I can't
understand what posessed tham to put batteries in them and have almost no
feedback indicating that they're on (a one square millimeter patch of green
paint on the SIDE of the unit!).
--
Douglas Freyburger
>With all this diverse opinion on UNIX systems is it any wonder why Bill
>Gates has gotten where he is today. UNIX is a tremendous operating system
>BUT UNIX vendors dont't seem to understand that most people do not want
>quite so much diversity in (ONE??) OS. I think it is time for UNIX to join
>the 20th century. Of course all these differences if "Flavors" of UNIX are
>good job security for nerds.
In general, this is nonsense foisted upon us by the Bill himself.
There are several brands of CARs with differences, why not computers?
There are many varieties of trucks, planes, breakfast cereals, shoes,
and pretty much everything else we use.
There is strength in diversity. Standards are good and usefull, but
one size DOESN'T fit all, especially if the one size is built to
terrible quality standards.
The "right tool for the job". With Unix, we don't need to settle
for a pair of vice-grips because that is the only tool available.
Modularity: Sun, Performance: HP, Turn-key: IBM, CAD and other
graphics: SGI, lowest price: Linux, highest performance fileservers:
Auspex or NetApp, and so on. They all share many standards and they
all have their own sets of strengths, just like different brands of
cars, breakfast cereals, and so on. Like cars, once you've learned
to drive one, you can learn to drive the next in a very short
period of time.
Unix public standards give us as many advantages as the difference
among brands as well: cross-platform portibility of some executible
formats (scripts, perl, etc), and the multi-user advantage can't be
beat:
Timothy Lee posted:
> With Unix, it is usually possible to install just once (or once per
> OS), then use NFS, rsync, or rdist to share the installation with
> every other computer (assuming you have the license issues done or
> the software is free software). And new computers can be handled
> by putting any necessary additional things in an install or postinstall
> script.
With "rdist", all things are possible. I maintain a LAN with machines
from over five vendors, with several major releases of each at most
times, to keep a bunch of developers busy. We use "rdist" to launch
makefiles and all sorts of magic stuff to keep the general environment
of these machines common. ...And it is amazing to be able to install
a large CAD package like Unigraphics on one machine, type "rdist" and
have it automagically installed on all the other machines of that
vendor, and then loop for each vendor.
Doug Freyburger
Serguei Patchkovskii
: > Many of the basic services are outright buggy - I had all of syslogd/
: > rpc.lockd/rpc.statd/portmap/mountd and even vi (!) dumping core during
: > normal operation (syslogd and vi dump core in reproducible, but not
: > always avoidable situations. Others drop core in an apparently random
: We have literally dozens of ALPHA servers and hundreds of
: workstations running Digital UNIX and I have never seen any of this
: behavior on any of them. You may have a hardware problem. We just
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I do not think so. vi core dump is (relatively) easily reproducible: open
a biggish file, then suspend vi using '^Z' (or thatever your stty susp is
set to) and press '^C' (likewise, stty intr) after pressinv '^Z' but before
the shell prompt appears. You may want to do it on a fairly heavily loaded
machine - the window of opportunity is quite short. Causing syslogd to dump
core is equally easy, but does depend on /etc/syslog.conf being configured
in a certain way (i.e., if ALL syslog output goes to regular files located
on on local file systems, you are fine. If you send at least some of it down
terminals or over the network (including NFS), it may be possible to core
dump the syslogd.) I will not give the recipe due to the obvious security
implications.
Finally, the various rpc.* core dumps are relatively infrequent - about once
a week on all forty alphas running DU we have here together. This translates
to may be one core dump per year on a single machine - which may easily go
unnoticed, especially if the affected machine does not depend on NFS too much.
In our setup, the NFS and portmapper get stressed quite significantly (we have
a remote boot farm, and cross-mount everything using automounter), so that
I notice any of these services going away withing minutes.
Anyways, this is the usual chore of system administration - Digital unix is
no worse (but no better, either) is this respect than unices from other
major players.
Cheers,
/Serge.P
Thomas H Jones
Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
>> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
>
>in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
>for $1000000 with the same OS.
>None of the others have such a broad range.
let me start by saying, "Put down the crack pipe and step away from the
keyboard."
1) How do you figure that sun is the most scalable of the above list???
2) How do you figure that sun is the only one with a broad range?
last time I checked, Sun had to do 2x64 cluster to achieve 128P system. SGI,
on the other hand, sells 128P systems as a single piece of hardware. And,
if you want to talk about clustered systems scalability, might i point you
to the ASCI Blue-Mountain project at Los Alamos National Labs (they started
year with 1024P cluster and will be ramping to better than 6000P by year's
end - see http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html)? That
seems more scalable than sun currently offers.
and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
-tom
--
"You can only be -so- accurate with a claw-hammer." --me
John Hascall
}void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
}>You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
}>while.
}Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
}replace them annually (or even more often).
??? I've been using the same DEC hockey puck mouse since '90
(and you can have it when you pry it out of my cold dead hands :)
John
--
John Hascall, Software Engr. Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you
ISU Computation Center demanded are now mandatory. -Jello Biafra
mailto:jo...@iastate.edu
http://www.cc.iastate.edu/staff/systems/john/index.html <=- the usual crud
Thomas Tornblom
Unless people have already rebutted this:
> > Sun (Solaris),
>
> Pros:
>
> Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
> software.
>
> Cons:
>
> Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
> uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
> root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
> know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
> config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
> larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
> change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
> backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
> manager. Put out by SUN.
>
Openwindows, although still shipped with the system, is not the
preferred windowing solution. CDE is nowadays.
sdtmail, which is the CDE mailtool, is MIME compliant.
root cannot by default telnet into a solaris 2.x box. That requires a
configuration change.
As of Solaris 2.6, with the "largefiles" mount option, there is no 2G
filesize limit.
Most people nowadays doesn't partition their into more than root and swap.
Optical mice has not been shipped for quite a while, although I
personally prefer them.
As for the other issues, they are personal opinions, and I guess I
can't be regarded as impartial ;-)
Thomas Tornblom Tel: +46 8 623 9100 E-mail: Thomas....@Sun.SE
Sun Microsystems AB Fax: +46 8 623 9102
Thomas H Jones
<Richard...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In article <35F81C6F...@pz.pirmasens.de>,
> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
>> It does have a reason, why MANY banks are still marriaged with IBM!!!
this is why NT is making inroads: people look at price/performance,
and dont factor in cost of ownership.
>> > Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
>>
>> Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
>> in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
>> for $1000000 with the same OS.
>> None of the others have such a broad range.
>
>For scalability lets compare a UE 10000 to an Origin 2000:
>(prices are in Australian dollars, as that's what I have access to)
>
>SGI Origin 2000
>Entry level: 2 CPU deskside model costing ~$40,000
>Max std config: 128 CPU supercomputer
Max std config (none sold): 256 CPU (one in operation at vendor lab)
>Maximum: Biggest sold is 1024 CPU, could go bigger, NOT a cluster
Maximum: Biggest sold (could go higher) is +6000 CPU
HIPPI/HIPPI6400 interconnect cluster see:
http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html
>Sun UE10k
>Entry level: 16 CPU full size costing ~$1.5 million
>Max std config: 64 CPU supercomputer
>Maximum: 4 x 64 CPU cluster
>
>MIPS and USparc chips are roughly comparible in performance. Whoever
>had the last speed upgrade tends to be faster. The Sun also has a lower
>maximum memory latency, but SGI has much lower minimum, your milage will
>vary as to which is best.
Chips arent exactly comparable in clock speed, but factors like bus
bandwidth, etc., make them performance comparable.
>UE 10k (Starfire) can be clustered up to 4 way, giving about double the
>performance of maxed out O2000 (according to Sun).
should be noted that independent benchmarks have shown the 128P origin
to be faster than the 256P sun cluster for many tasks.
>Last tidbit: "John West Rejects"
>When SGI and Cray merged the Starfire was dumped, as it didn't make the
>cut, and Sun bought it.
not exactly accurate. sun and cray (pre SGI takeover) had entered into
a design agreement that, when cray was bought, gave sun first right of
refusal on the co-developed platform. had sun NOT opted to continue the
project, SGI would have dumped it any way in favor or the inhouse produced
origin series.
>Suns best machine wasn't good enough to be included
>in SGIs product line (which does include CPUs other than MIPS: their fastest
>supercomputers use over 1000 Alpha chips. No Sparcs though :)
>Crap. SGI still make the computers with:
>
>The best high-end graphics in the world. Full stop.
>The most scalable architecture in the world. 2 - 1024 CPU, same binaries.
actually, that should be 1 - N CPUs, same binaries. IRIX 6.5 covers from
R4400 class workstations up through the monstrosity at LANL.
>The best business price/performance according to third party benchmarks.
>The coolest looking cases :)
"is that a toaster on your desk?"
"no, but we do have a nice space heater (Octane) over there..."
>> There are rumours, that IBM will buy Sun!
there have been a number of rumors about IBM buying a Unix vendor, not
just Sun. Who knows.
>They also don't do clustering, but
>then again, what do you need more that 1,000 CPUs for :) They do do failsafe
>style clustering for high availablity.
inaccurate. IRIX 6.4 and above include `arrayd` to perform clustering
operations. arrayd allows the sharing of memory and CPU resources and
scheduling of jobs between machines in a cluster.
Nick Manka
"Paul E.Lehmann" <pleh...@fred.net> writes:
> With all this diverse opinion on UNIX systems is it any wonder why Bill
> Gates has gotten where he is today. UNIX is a tremendous operating system
Incredibly evil licensing deals with incredibly stupid OEMs.
> BUT UNIX vendors dont't seem to understand that most people do not want
> quite so much diversity in (ONE??) OS. I think it is time for UNIX to join
I kind of like the diversity and choice. It isn't the vendor features
and various strengths that I mind, it's the stupid crap like being
compatible with their proprietary garbage from 1985 instead of using
something nice, open, and fairly modern.
Microsoft is, of course, the most guilty of this of -anyone-. They, in
fact, keep creating proprietary crap to this day, and if there was more
than one WNT implementation, it would be even more blatant.
Funny, that, I can go and get a UNIX actalike more or less tailored to
my needs, be it for a compute server, high-performance network file
server, website, development box, realtime application system, or a
half dozen other things - in fact I have a choice between several in
each category - and yet people whine that UNIX fails because it is so
splintered and that they would rather be forced into a shoe that
doesn't fit anyone and has rusty nails coated with flesh eating
bacteria in it.
Unix is splintered because Unix is such a success. The next generation
of operating systems likely won't be Unix, but if the current batch of
contenders is any hint, they'll probably look and act a lot like it.
Michael David Jones
>In article <35F81C6F...@pz.pirmasens.de>,
>Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
>>> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
>>Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
>>in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
>>for $1000000 with the same OS.
>>None of the others have such a broad range.
>keyboard."
> 1) How do you figure that sun is the most scalable of the above list???
> 2) How do you figure that sun is the only one with a broad range?
It's debatable, but not a preposterous statement. The E10000 scales at
92% of linear up to 48 CPUS and tails off slightly as you go to 64.
SGI can go to more processors with their MPP/ccNUMA design, but that
design is only highly efficient on a class of problems that can be
highly compartmentalized to retain locality of reference. There are a
lot of scientific problems that fit that model, but most business
workloads don't.
>last time I checked, Sun had to do 2x64 cluster to achieve 128P system. SGI,
>on the other hand, sells 128P systems as a single piece of hardware. And,
As long as you are willing to accept "32 interconnected 4-CPU nodes"
as a single piece of hardware, I suppose. The Origin2000 is a tremendous
system for some things, but it looks as much like a big cluster as
like a single machine. The E10000 is a 64-CPU SMP system.
>if you want to talk about clustered systems scalability, might i point you
>to the ASCI Blue-Mountain project at Los Alamos National Labs (they started
>year with 1024P cluster and will be ramping to better than 6000P by year's
>end - see http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html)? That
>seems more scalable than sun currently offers.
And a lot less available. Let's not compare things you can buy off the
shelf to research projects, eh?
>and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
>monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
Wow. Do they have binary compatibility down the whole range? IOW, can
I compile a program on the Indy and run it on the beast?
Mike Jones | jon...@rpi.edu
Percentage of Americans who consider themselves "poor": 10
Percentage of Americans who consider themselves "rich": 0.005
- Harper's Index, February 1992
Robert Tarrall
>control and just the licensing procedure was torturous. I realize
>that the vendors of low quantity, high cost software have to take
>steps to protect themselves but it is really a pain in the ass to
On the other hand, it's easier in the long run than the alternative, which
is high-quantity low-cost software that doesn't require funky licenses...
but which is so buggy that you spend lots of time on the phone to tech
support.
This is the real licensing scheme for most PC-based products - supply
beta-quality software for free and then make sure the user has a valid
license before you give them any support or bug fixes.
-Robert.-
Scott Collins
>It's debatable, but not a preposterous statement. The E10000 scales at
>92% of linear up to 48 CPUS and tails off slightly as you go to 64.
>SGI can go to more processors with their MPP/ccNUMA design, but that
>design is only highly efficient on a class of problems that can be
>highly compartmentalized to retain locality of reference. There are a
>lot of scientific problems that fit that model, but most business
>workloads don't.
>
>>last time I checked, Sun had to do 2x64 cluster to achieve 128P system. SGI,
>>on the other hand, sells 128P systems as a single piece of hardware. And,
>
>As long as you are willing to accept "32 interconnected 4-CPU nodes"
>as a single piece of hardware, I suppose. The Origin2000 is a tremendous
>system for some things, but it looks as much like a big cluster as
>like a single machine. The E10000 is a 64-CPU SMP system.
>
If in fact the UE10000 can act as a 64 CPU SMP machine and not as as
16 x 4 processor quads, then SUN has a problem. There is a formula to
calculate the performance increase gained on SMP systems as it
relates to SMP efficiency. Using these widely accepted formulas at
the rather abysmal (compared to DEC or IBM) SMP efficiency rate of
92% the UE10000 stops gaining performance over about 28 CPU's. This
is the exact reason why NUMA architectures were invented.
The bigger issue on the NUMA/Quad architecture UE10000's is the
effect that near/far memory access latencies have on performance.
Once again, the type of application and how well it lends itself
to an architecture should be your deciding factor. Furthermore,
as a professional in the SAP field, at this time there are only
a handfull of SAP R/3 implementations worldwide that NEED this
much processing power. Most large SAP implementations end up
getting split into a few interconnected systems for business
and availability reasons anyway.
--------------------------------------| __ ________ |
Scott Collins | \ \ / __ __/ |
UNIX/SAP Systems Manager | \ \/ / / / |
scott.coll...@mindless.com | \ / / / |
(remove "NO_SPAM" to contact by mail) | \/ /_/ |
--------------------------------------| Virginia Tech! |
Doug Siebert
>and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
>monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
You mean sort of the same OS. When you can take a disk out of an Indy and
boot an O2, Indigo^2, Onyx, Octane and Origin off it, then they'll have
something. Until then, the situation isn't all that much better (but it is
better) having 6.5 unify everything. The sad thing is that SGI makes a big
deal out of the 6.5 "all platform release" when any sane vendor has all their
releases as all platform releases (except perhaps for early access versions
that are only supported for a short time, sort of like the situation with
Irix 6.0/1) But when 6.2 came out, then the O2 was introduced and required
6.3, and the Octane and Origin came out and required 6.4, and that situation
stayed for nearly two years, that was just plain ridiculous.
I don't know about Suns, but I know on an HP I can do what I describe above
in HP-UX 9.x and 10.x between all 700 series models (and as far as I know
with all 800 series models, but not between 700 & 800) I believe in 11.x,
you can do what I describe with all models, including crossing between 700
and 800 series, subject to the fact that the V class will only run in 64
bit mode and 32 bit CPUs won't run in 64 bit mode. Now lest someone point
out how "terrible" it is that HP still ships 32 bit CPUs, while SGI has been
shipping only 64 bit CPUs for years, don't forgot that with HP you get a
choice on all their 64 bit CPUs (except V class) whether you want to run
in 32 or 64 bit CPUs. On SGIs, they make that choice for you, and few
systems are actually capable of running 64 bit mode (O2s never will, even
those with R10K processors, because of stupidity and short-sightedness in
the design stages, because of the then-high cost of RAM)
Mike McDonald
jon...@alumni.rpi.edu (Michael David Jones) writes:
> fer...@tsunami.xanthia.com (Thomas H Jones) writes:
>>if you want to talk about clustered systems scalability, might i point you
>>to the ASCI Blue-Mountain project at Los Alamos National Labs (they started
>>year with 1024P cluster and will be ramping to better than 6000P by year's
>>end - see http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html)? That
>>seems more scalable than sun currently offers.
>
> And a lot less available. Let's not compare things you can buy off the
> shelf to research projects, eh?
I'm sure if you have the money, they'd be more than willing to sell you one.
Provided DOE doesn't have a tizzy fit. Selling one of those configs would
raise the stock price enough so I could unload my shares. So put your orders
in now, avoid the rush! :-)
>>and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
>>monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
>
> Wow. Do they have binary compatibility down the whole range? IOW, can
> I compile a program on the Indy and run it on the beast?
I can't remember if Irix 6.5 supports Indys or not. If so, yes. An O2,
definitely.
Mike McDonald
mik...@mikemac.com
Michael David Jones
>>It's debatable, but not a preposterous statement. The E10000 scales at
>>92% of linear up to 48 CPUS and tails off slightly as you go to 64.
>>SGI can go to more processors with their MPP/ccNUMA design, but that
>>design is only highly efficient on a class of problems that can be
>>highly compartmentalized to retain locality of reference. There are a
>>lot of scientific problems that fit that model, but most business
>>workloads don't.
>>>last time I checked, Sun had to do 2x64 cluster to achieve 128P system. SGI,
>>>on the other hand, sells 128P systems as a single piece of hardware. And,
>>As long as you are willing to accept "32 interconnected 4-CPU nodes"
>>as a single piece of hardware, I suppose. The Origin2000 is a tremendous
>>system for some things, but it looks as much like a big cluster as
>>like a single machine. The E10000 is a 64-CPU SMP system.
>If in fact the UE10000 can act as a 64 CPU SMP machine and not as as
>16 x 4 processor quads, then SUN has a problem. There is a formula to
Actually, it can act as either.
>calculate the performance increase gained on SMP systems as it
>relates to SMP efficiency. Using these widely accepted formulas at
>the rather abysmal (compared to DEC or IBM) SMP efficiency rate of
>92% the UE10000 stops gaining performance over about 28 CPU's. This
>is the exact reason why NUMA architectures were invented.
I don't believe I made myself clear. I wasn't talking about 92%
efficient per added processor, but that 48 CPUs=.92*48*1 CPU.
>The bigger issue on the NUMA/Quad architecture UE10000's is the
>effect that near/far memory access latencies have on performance.
The E10000 isn't NUMA. It's completely SMP. All memory is addressed
through a crossbar switch, so the difference in latency between
accessing memory an the same system board as the processor and
accessing memory on a different system board is virtually nil.
>Once again, the type of application and how well it lends itself
>to an architecture should be your deciding factor. Furthermore,
>as a professional in the SAP field, at this time there are only
>a handfull of SAP R/3 implementations worldwide that NEED this
>much processing power. Most large SAP implementations end up
>getting split into a few interconnected systems for business
>and availability reasons anyway.
And this is the problem that the E10K was really intended to solve.
You can buy a single box, use a single plot of raised floor space, and
still have completely separate development and/or test systems that
can share resources with the production system based on demand using
E10000 domains. For example, you might have a domain with 20 CPUs for
your production system, a domain with 12 for development, and a domain
with 4 for nominal testing. When you get close to going to production
with the development system, you can move 8 CPUS (and memory, and I/O)
to the test system without rebooting any of them. If you hit an unexpected
end-of-{month,quarter,year} crunch you can "borrow" resources from the
development and/or test systems to the production system, again
without rebooting any of them. The systems are completely separate,
each with their own copy of Solaris, own I/O, etc. The development or
test machine can crash completely without disturbing the production
domain. This flexibility is the real distinguishing feature of the
E10K, not huge SMP performance.
Mike Jones | jon...@rpi.edu
Anything not nailed down is mine.
Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down.
Timothy J. Lee
|
|this is why NT is making inroads: people look at price/performance,
|and dont factor in cost of ownership.
But how does NT compare in price / performance to Linux and BSD?
Scott Collins
>And this is the problem that the E10K was really intended to solve.
>You can buy a single box, use a single plot of raised floor space, and
>still have completely separate development and/or test systems that
>can share resources with the production system based on demand using
>E10000 domains. For example, you might have a domain with 20 CPUs for
>your production system, a domain with 12 for development, and a domain
>with 4 for nominal testing. When you get close to going to production
>with the development system, you can move 8 CPUS (and memory, and I/O)
>to the test system without rebooting any of them. If you hit an unexpected
>end-of-{month,quarter,year} crunch you can "borrow" resources from the
>development and/or test systems to the production system, again
>without rebooting any of them. The systems are completely separate,
>each with their own copy of Solaris, own I/O, etc. The development or
>test machine can crash completely without disturbing the production
>domain. This flexibility is the real distinguishing feature of the
>E10K, not huge SMP performance.
>
Good information, the 10000 sounds impressive, but, separation of
systems is often very important for peace of mind. Physically
separating development/test/production can be VERY important as
different levels of security and access usually go hand in hand with
them. Additionally, while you can reallocate CPU's between domains
without rebooting, applications such as Oracle and SAP R/3 have to
be shut down and restarted. This imposes an INCREDIBLE performance
penalty on R/3 systems as you must completely rebuild your cache to
achieve good performance which can take 6 to 8 hours on an active
system. This really is not a good option for R/3. Good R/3 systems
design mandates a unified system capable of performing within defined
levels at PEAK times without modification.
I do appreciate your info on the UE10k and intend to research it
further for future projects. Thanks ...
Peter da Silva
Serguei Patchkovskii <patc...@acs1.acs.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>I do not think so. vi core dump is (relatively) easily reproducible: open
>a biggish file, then suspend vi using '^Z' (or thatever your stty susp is
>set to) and press '^C' (likewise, stty intr) after pressinv '^Z' but before
>the shell prompt appears. You may want to do it on a fairly heavily loaded
>machine - the window of opportunity is quite short.
No kidding. I just tried it on a heavily loaded system and I couldn't hit
^C fast enough. Have you filed a bug report with Dec, or have you just been
keeping it under your hat. I mean, I can't imagine anyone having a QC program
complete enough to have discovered that by testing.
>Finally, the various rpc.* core dumps are relatively infrequent - about once
>a week on all forty alphas running DU we have here together.
I haven't seen that and we have a lot more than 40 Alphas (we once got 2
terabytes of storageworks modules delivered on one day (two pallets of 18GB
drives), to be installed in customer machines).
And if it happened even once during a factory acceptance test I'd have heard
about it.
Mike Christensen
> >Last tidbit: "John West Rejects"
> >When SGI and Cray merged the Starfire was dumped, as it didn't make the
> >cut, and Sun bought it.
>
> not exactly accurate. sun and cray (pre SGI takeover) had entered into
> a design agreement that, when cray was bought, gave sun first right of
> refusal on the co-developed platform. had sun NOT opted to continue the
> project, SGI would have dumped it any way in favor or the inhouse produced
> origin series.
This is not exactly accurate either. I don't believe there was a
contractural "right of first refusual", though perhaps in essense there
was one, since Sun's "blessing" would have been required of any other
buyer.
Cray Superservers and Sun had non-disclosure agreements and Cray had
unannounced Sun info/future products in its possession at
the time of the buyout. Plus, the UE10000 required a fairly close
interaction between Cray and SMCC's Server Development
Group. It would have made it awkward, if not impossible, for SGI to
"manage" Cray Superservers. Also, Cray had
agreements with many large customers for ongoing support of the CS6400
and commitment to suppy what became the UE10000 that would have made it
awkward for SGI to simply close them down SGI's management made a
commitment to Cray Superserver's management that they (Superservers)
could do "whatever was right" (including spinning off as an independent
company, if financing could have been found). FWIW, Sun was not the
only company interested in acquiring Cray Superservers, but it was
first choice by Cray Superserver's management and employees.
BTW, Last I heard, the UE10000 product alone was selling at over a
$500M/year rate. How much $$ are the Origin2000's generating?
Mike
FWIW, former Starfire OS Project Manager.
Rev. Don Kool
> >> You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> >> while.
> This is a lie; upon rereading the post I responded to, I discovered that
> in fact the poster did mention this. My apologies to him.
> > That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
> >admitted it. Now if only they would ship us free replacement ball
> >mice for our thousands of optical mice, they may start the long
> >climb back into my good graces :-)
> Whatever. I expect that to happen around the time Microsoft ships free
> replacements for all the broken software they've sold.
Meow! :-)
Don
--
********************** You a bounty hunter?
* Rev. Don McDonald * Man's gotta earn a living.
* Baltimore, MD * Dying ain't much of a living, boy.
********************** "Outlaw Josey Wales"
http://members.home.net/oldno7
Rev. Don Kool
> I Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> > And SUN does a booming business in propriatary mouse "pads" that
> >seem to disappear. :-)
> I currently have more optical mice pads than optical mice. Yes, we've had
> a couple of mice fail, but we haven't lost any pads. I've also got at least
> a dozen PC optical mice in a drawer (my users are superstitious about female
> mice (nice term, thanks) or something) and as many mouse pads.
>
> Now losing those silly Sun Microphones... that I'll believe. And I can't
> understand what posessed tham to put batteries in them and have almost no
> feedback indicating that they're on (a one square millimeter patch of green
> paint on the SIDE of the unit!).
I wondered about that myself and then I saw the "SUN" logo on the
side and I understood. :-)
Hope this helps,
Rev. Don Kool
>
> I hesitate to add to this already tortuous thread, but nobody has
> mentioned the politics of buying. If you are a Sun shop, say, and
> your company policy is to buy only Suns then the salesperson will jack
> up the price. (More correctly, they will lower it less.) I use Sun
> in my example only because I have had such a bad experience with them.
> I would be amazed, however, if the others were any better.
>
> Of course, you can cut a good deal at the beginning, but then you are
> locked in. There is a very strong financial argument for heterogenous
> networks. Business is war and salespeople are not stupid.
I mentioned this earlier but I forget if it was in an e-mail
response or in a public posting. You are exactly right. Look at
all the people (us included) who had "standardized" on SUNs running
SunOS. Then SUN decides to move to SOLARIS and "unbundle" the
compiler (which was non-ANSI shit anyway but that's another
rant...). What is a large shop to say, "Hey, if you don't give us
the compiler for free, we'll just trash this several million dollar
investment in SUN hardware that we have and go with someone else"?
You can't do that until the equipment is nearing the end of its
useful life. I think now of the hundreds of SPARCprinters we have
and how newsprint isn't supported under SOLARIS 2.6. Thanks again,
SUN! (Another reason that the "If you're running SOLARIS 2.6, you
don't have that problem" replies don't solve the problem).
Rev. Don Kool
> }>You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> }>while.
>
> }Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
> }replace them annually (or even more often).
> ??? I've been using the same DEC hockey puck mouse since '90
> (and you can have it when you pry it out of my cold dead hands :)
The one with the little rocker thing on the bottom, right...? I
was telling another poster about that one earlier this evening.
I've had one for most of the '90s also. Never gave a moments
trouble, never needed cleaning, never figured out exactly how it
works :-)
I just got a ball mouse when I traded in my ancient DEC 3000/400
(acquired as an upgrade to a DECstation 5000 running ULTRIX no
less!) for a ALHPAstation 500. (It's either a 500 or a 600, I
forget. The one they stopped making). So far, so good. I've had
the same mouse on my PC at home since 1993 and it never gave me any
trouble so I don't expect any at work either. BTW; about six months
ago I finally did break down and buy a "wheel mouse" on my brother's
reccomondation. For those that aren't aware, the wheel is in the
middle of the center button and automatically scrolls the active
window. You can push down on it too to get the middle button
click. What a great idea! I find myself trying to wheel at work.
UNIX should support this bugger because my users that are using 14
and 16 pt fonts in order to be able to read their screens would love
it. Instead of having to try to lay the cursor on the little up and
down arrows of the scrollbar, you just put the mouse anywhere in the
window and wheel away. Great stuff!
Rev. Don Kool
> : > Many of the basic services are outright buggy - I had all of syslogd/
> : > rpc.lockd/rpc.statd/portmap/mountd and even vi (!) dumping core during
> : > normal operation (syslogd and vi dump core in reproducible, but not
> : > always avoidable situations. Others drop core in an apparently random
>
> : We have literally dozens of ALPHA servers and hundreds of
> : workstations running Digital UNIX and I have never seen any of this
> : behavior on any of them. You may have a hardware problem. We just
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I do not think so. vi core dump is (relatively) easily reproducible: open
> a biggish file, then suspend vi using '^Z' (or thatever your stty susp is
> set to) and press '^C' (likewise, stty intr) after pressinv '^Z' but before
> the shell prompt appears. You may want to do it on a fairly heavily loaded
> machine - the window of opportunity is quite short. Causing syslogd to dump
> core is equally easy, but does depend on /etc/syslog.conf being configured
> in a certain way (i.e., if ALL syslog output goes to regular files located
> on on local file systems, you are fine. If you send at least some of it down
> terminals or over the network (including NFS), it may be possible to core
> dump the syslogd.) I will not give the recipe due to the obvious security
> implications.
>
> Finally, the various rpc.* core dumps are relatively infrequent - about once
> a week on all forty alphas running DU we have here together. This translates
> to may be one core dump per year on a single machine - which may easily go
> unnoticed, especially if the affected machine does not depend on NFS too much.
> In our setup, the NFS and portmapper get stressed quite significantly (we have
> a remote boot farm, and cross-mount everything using automounter), so that
> I notice any of these services going away withing minutes.
>
> Anyways, this is the usual chore of system administration - Digital unix is
> no worse (but no better, either) is this respect than unices from other
> major players.
If everything you say is correct, your original statements are
still uncalled for. "Vi (!) dumping core during normal
operation"??? Since when is what you describe normal operation? I
cannot think of an occassion when a user would use "^Z" to suspend
"vi" unless they were on a VT terminal or something (they can still
escape to shell from vi without doing a "^Z"). Even in that case I
can't see them hitting "^C" right after (especially before the shell
prompt even appears). That's like saying we logged in as root and
had a monkey pound on the keyboard and he crashed the system so the
OS blows. :-)
Rev. Don Kool
> Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> >control and just the licensing procedure was torturous. I realize
> >that the vendors of low quantity, high cost software have to take
> >steps to protect themselves but it is really a pain in the ass to
> >have to license something to system ID. If you want to move it to
>
> On the other hand, it's easier in the long run than the alternative, which
> is high-quantity low-cost software that doesn't require funky licenses...
> but which is so buggy that you spend lots of time on the phone to tech
> support.
>
> This is the real licensing scheme for most PC-based products - supply
> beta-quality software for free and then make sure the user has a valid
> license before you give them any support or bug fixes.
And I was so hoping that "comp.unix.admin" would be free of the 'I
use UNIX because Bill Gates didn't invent it' crowd. :-(
Point of Order:
I administer UNIX in all its myriad flavors, OpenVMS and an, as
yet, small smattering of PCs. At home I have, like most average
computer users, a PC. It is a modest Cyrix P150 but quite a step up
from the Packard Bell 486/50MHz I had from '93-'97. I know UNIX
admins who have camped out and gotten a good deal on a beat up UNIX
box and those that have scraped their pennies together to buy an SGI
O2. Good for them and more power to them. I'm not writing code for
UNIX so I don't need to have a UNIX box to develop it on. If I did,
I would go back to the ISP I used to have that included a shell
account on their SOLARIS box with your account. (Actually I
wouldn't "go back", I would do both as I love my cable modem).
What I run is Internet software (e.g. Netscape, Outlook, WsFTP,
ICQ, etc...), financial software (e.g. Microsoft Money, Quicken,
etc...) and various and sundry other things like scanner software,
word processor, turbo-tax, etc... PCs are easy, fast and they do
(basically) what they're told. Just like in the UNIX world, the
only people who I hear "horror stories" from are those that tried to
"outsmart" the box (yeah, rename "C:\windows" to "F:\Fuck Bill
Gates", you'll really show him how "cool" you are. Install SunSoft
Developer Workshop in "/this_is_my_fucking_computer" and see what
happens when you try to run it. Or my all time favorite, "Bag the
GUI, I'm just going to edit the config files manually.").
UNIX does what it does very well, very expensive and very stable
for its users. PCs do what they do very cheaply and very user
friendly for their users. In the immortal words of Rodney King,
"Can't we all just get along?"
Yours in Christ,
Rev. Don Kool
> "Paul E.Lehmann" <pleh...@fred.net> writes:
> >With all this diverse opinion on UNIX systems is it any wonder why Bill
> >Gates has gotten where he is today. UNIX is a tremendous operating system
> >BUT UNIX vendors dont't seem to understand that most people do not want
> >quite so much diversity in (ONE??) OS. I think it is time for UNIX to join
> >the 20th century. Of course all these differences if "Flavors" of UNIX are
> >good job security for nerds.
> In general, this is nonsense foisted upon us by the Bill himself.
>
> There are several brands of CARs with differences, why not computers?
> There are many varieties of trucks, planes, breakfast cereals, shoes,
> and pretty much everything else we use.
When you hop from car to car, the steering wheel, gearshift and
ignition switch are generally pretty much in the same place.
> There is strength in diversity. Standards are good and usefull, but
> one size DOESN'T fit all, especially if the one size is built to
> terrible quality standards.
We really shouldn't pick on SUN so much :-)
> The "right tool for the job". With Unix, we don't need to settle
> for a pair of vice-grips because that is the only tool available.
> Modularity: Sun, Performance: HP,
I would include DEC ALPHA under "performance".
> Turn-key: IBM,
You are the only person I've ever heard call AIX "Turn-key". :-)
> CAD and other
> graphics: SGI, lowest price: Linux,
Like Soviet medicine, 'absolutely free and worth every penny'.
> highest performance fileservers: Auspex or NetApp, and so on.
Auspex runs a modified version SunOS 4.x. Hardly "cutting edge".
It is a full blown server with all the hassles, overhead and
complexities of a SUN server.
NetApp runs a from the ground up OS that fits on one floppy disk
and is designed to do nothing but serve files really fast. They
also use the ALPHA chip with is a plus.
> They all share many standards and they
> all have their own sets of strengths, just like different brands of
> cars, breakfast cereals, and so on. Like cars, once you've learned
> to drive one, you can learn to drive the next in a very short
> period of time.
Like cars, you may have to learn the hard way that you can't
jumpstart an old negative ground British car from a positive ground
American one without making a few adjustments.
> Unix public standards give us as many advantages as the difference
> among brands as well: cross-platform portibility of some executible
> formats (scripts, perl, etc), and the multi-user advantage can't be
> beat:
Agreed. Plus stability that can't be beat. I just logged into a
workstation of ours that had been up almost 200 days (so, of course,
I put an "at" job in to reboot it this evening).
> Timothy Lee posted:
> > With Unix, it is usually possible to install just once (or once per
> > OS), then use NFS, rsync, or rdist to share the installation with
> > every other computer (assuming you have the license issues done or
> > the software is free software). And new computers can be handled
> > by putting any necessary additional things in an install or postinstall
> > script.
> With "rdist", all things are possible. I maintain a LAN with machines
> from over five vendors, with several major releases of each at most
> times, to keep a bunch of developers busy. We use "rdist" to launch
> makefiles and all sorts of magic stuff to keep the general environment
> of these machines common. ...And it is amazing to be able to install
> a large CAD package like Unigraphics on one machine, type "rdist" and
> have it automagically installed on all the other machines of that
> vendor, and then loop for each vendor.
As you say "loop for each vendor". Wouldn't it be nice if they
were all binary compatible like PCs? Imagine the discounts the
vendors would offer if they knew the millions of dollars of
SPARCstations that you bought from them could just as easily run SGI
IRIX instead of SOLARIS. Especially if SGI came along and offered
to include the C compiler. I suspect that the SUN C compiler would
get "re-bundled" pretty fast.
Hope this helps,
Peter da Silva
> The one with the little rocker thing on the bottom, right...? I
>was telling another poster about that one earlier this evening.
>I've had one for most of the '90s also. Never gave a moments
>trouble, never needed cleaning, never figured out exactly how it
>works :-)
If those are the ones I'm thinking of...
Honeywell makes them. They're like those silly IBM chicklet things they put in
laptops with the stress meters, except upside down. Sort of have the same
relationship between them as "male" mice and trackballs.
I've only ever seen one for sale in a store once, and couldn't afford it
at the time. Sigh.
--
In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
`-_-'
'U` "Tell init(8) to lock-n-load, we're goin' zombie slaying!"
Peter da Silva
> I administer UNIX in all its myriad flavors, OpenVMS and an, as
>yet, small smattering of PCs. At home I have, like most average
>computer users, a PC.
So do I.
> It is a modest Cyrix P150 but quite a step up
>from the Packard Bell 486/50MHz I had from '93-'97.
I have a 486/50. I'm running UNIX (FreeBSD) on it. I'll bet it does the
Internet stuff faster than your P150. And I can boot into NT on the
rare occasion I need to run Windows software. And despite rumors, a 486
with a good host adapter (Adaptec 1742) and video card (ATI) is quite
fast enough to run modest personal finance stuff.
> What I run is Internet software (e.g. Netscape, Outlook, WsFTP,
>ICQ, etc...), financial software (e.g. Microsoft Money, Quicken,
>etc...) and various and sundry other things like scanner software,
>word processor, turbo-tax, etc... PCs are easy, fast and they do
>(basically) what they're told.
As long as what you tell it to do is something that someone has already
written software to do. Until Tcl/Tk was ported to NT, it was pure pain for
scripting (Visual Basic, give me a break!).
> Just like in the UNIX world, the
>only people who I hear "horror stories" from are those that tried to
>"outsmart" the box (yeah, rename "C:\windows" to "F:\Fuck Bill
>Gates", you'll really show him how "cool" you are. Install SunSoft
>Developer Workshop in "/this_is_my_fucking_computer" and see what
>happens when you try to run it. Or my all time favorite, "Bag the
>GUI, I'm just going to edit the config files manually.").
I edit all the config files manually. Actually, editing the config files
manually (with regedit) on NT works pretty well. I don't really have any
huge reliability horror stories with my own NT boxen, but I've got users
who've managed to really outsmart themselves. It does seem a bit fragile.
>In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"
Sure. Problem is, my favorite brand of user-friendly PC (which was more user
friendly than yours, but less user-friendly than Steve Jobs', and had so many
cool things about it I can't possibly list them all here) got crushed by the
bloke who makes your brand of user-friendly PC (the way he crushed everyone
but Apple who are now hanging on by the skin of their teeth). That tends to
put an edge on a relationship.
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> Unless people have already rebutted this:
>
> > > Sun (Solaris),
> >
> > Pros:
> >
> > Widely used (for some strange reason). Lots of commercial
> > software.
> >
> > Cons:
> >
> > Admintool. Openwindows. SUN "mailtool" isn't MIME compliant and
> > uses propriatary form of attachments. By default can TELNET in as
> > root. No real help for system administration (i.e., you have to
> > know where are the bodies are buried in order to edit the proper
> > config files). 2GB file size limit (although file systems can be
> > larger). Hard disk partitions that require destroying your data to
> > change. Optical mouse. User has to configure it to get the
> > backspace and delete keys to work properly in and out of window
> > manager. Put out by SUN.
> Openwindows, although still shipped with the system, is not the
> preferred windowing solution. CDE is nowadays.
"Preferred" by whom? Tell the (L)users who have been running
OPENWINDOWS for years that CDE is "preferred". Remember the users'
credo; "Change is bad. I should never have to learn anything new.
My cheat sheet says 'third menu item, second menu item, fourth menu
item, first menu item". That is the way it is, that is the way it
shall always be.".
> sdtmail, which is the CDE mailtool, is MIME compliant.
If you can pry "mailtool" and OPENWINDOWS from their cold, dead
hands.
Not to be rude but almost every response I've gotten to that "con"
has been a variation on 'use SOLARIS 2.6 and CDE'. That is great
for those that can but if I'm going to do that I may as well just
switch to any other non-SUN OS or mail client that does the same
thing. If "change" is the answer, why is my change limited to
another SUN product? I could just load Z-Mail or something. If SUN
is so hip on CDE and "dtmail", they should stop shipping "mailtool"
and OPENWINDOWS. If they are still shipping it, it is still fair
game for criticism.
I read press reports all the time about the huge installed base of
PCs that are still running Windows 3.x because of corporate inertia,
user intransigence and the cost of upgrading. Large corporations
and Government Agencies (like where I work) are in the same boat
with UNIX. We're still back filling IPXs with SPARC 2s. "Jump to
Solaris 2.6", is easy in some college lab with a dozen or two
workstations. Not so easy with thousands running newsprint to
SPARCprinters as well as many, many custom and in-house developed
applications many of which only run on SunOS 4.x. Just one example;
our Agency has adopted Triteal Enterprise Desktop (TED) as a
"standard" for workstations. The latest version of TED and the
latest version of SOLARIS have yet to be certified to work
together. I, for one, welcome Y2K because "you have to" is the only
way we're ever going to get people to accept the necessary upgrades.
> root cannot by default telnet into a solaris 2.x box. That requires a
> configuration change.
Any SOLARIS box? I'll have to check on that. I know SunOS was
always "welcome aboard" (then so is SGI IRIX and HP/UX and AIX.
Digital UNIX is the only one that I know of that has always made
root use the console.).
> As of Solaris 2.6, with the "largefiles" mount option, there is no 2G
> filesize limit.
Whoa.... I have probably 10 systems that are running SOLARIS 2.6.
I have accepted responses here that say it can handle files over 2GB
in size because I've never checked it out personally. SOLARIS 2.5.1
sure can't and our 2.6 systems are mainly test beds to see if our
applications will run so that we can start upgrading in earnest. If
I log onto a SOLARIS 2.6 system and mount a Network Appliance
normally (e.g. "mount netapp:/home /mnt"), you're saying I can "cd"
into a directory with say an 8GB file in it, do an "ls -l" and it
won't hang the system like every other SOLARIS variant before 2.6
has done? I will try that tomorrow as I will have to see it to
believe it.
> Most people nowadays doesn't partition their into more than root and swap.
Hmmm... I must be missing something here. SOLARIS install has
quite a lengthy section on partitioning your boot disk.
> Optical mice has not been shipped for quite a while, although I
> personally prefer them.
Figures. That's what I call "SUN blindness" :-)
> As for the other issues, they are personal opinions, and I guess I
> can't be regarded as impartial ;-)
Obviously, neither can I.
Rev. Don Kool
> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> writes:
> |Timothy J. Lee wrote:
> |> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> writes:
> |> >If you have Sun, keep Sun!
> |>
> |> Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
> |
> |Because each new brand of computers brings its own
> |problems. And such problems do not add up, they
> |multiplicate!
>
> However, new computers from the same vendor, and new versions of OSes
> from the same vendor, bring their own new bugs.
>
> |If you have 50 Suns, 50 HPs and 50 IBMs, you need
> |more manpower to mainatin these as if you have
> |150 Suns, 150 HPs or 150 IBMs.
>
> Only slightly more. And sometimes trying to force fit something
> onto an OS that it really doesn't like can be a bigger pain.
> Besides, if an administrator is comfortable with multiple platforms,
> his/her options become greater (e.g. Need a print server? That old,
> unwanted 486 PC and BSD or Linux would be a fine solution that does not
> require bothering the accounting / finance people.).
>
> Also, an all-Sun environment may end up heterogeneous (SunOS 4
> and SunOS 5), as can an all-HP environment (HP-UX 9 and HP-UX 10).
> An all-IBM environment might have some issues between AIX 3 AIXwindows
> and AIX 4 CDE.
All good and valid points although I would add, as has been
mentioned earlier, a homogeneous shop is at the mercy of one
vendor. They lose the ability to play them off against one another.
Rev. Don Kool
> > >If you have Sun, keep Sun!
> > Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
> Because each new brand of computers brings its own
> problems. And such problems do not add up, they
> multiplicate!
I like to think they bring challenges, options and leverage with
the vendors.
> If you have 50 Suns, 50 HPs and 50 IBMs, you need
> more manpower to mainatin these as if you have
> 150 Suns, 150 HPs or 150 IBMs.
So you have an application that needs to create 5GB data files but
your shop is a nice, homogeneous SUN shop. Rather than bringing in
a 64 bit solution (e.g. DEC, SGI) to handle the job you're going to
create a kludge with the SUNs? Enjoy the unemployment line.
Hope this helps,
Don
P.S. Yes, I've heard over the last few days that SOLARIS 2.6 will
support file sizes over 2GB. Tonight I heard that "support"
requires doing something about a "largefiles" option. Reminds me of
President Clinton assuring us that his statements about never having
sex with Monica were "legally accurate".
Rev. Don Kool
> fer...@tsunami.xanthia.com (Thomas H Jones) writes:
> |> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
> |>> Price/performance is bullshit. What's about reliability and service?
> |this is why NT is making inroads: people look at price/performance,
> |and dont factor in cost of ownership.
> But how does NT compare in price / performance to Linux and BSD?
LINUX... ROTFLOLASTD!!!!
Hope this helps,
Don
Rev. Don Kool
> Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
> >> Platforms: DEC Alpha (D/UX), Sun (Solaris), HP (HP/UX), SGI (IRIX)
> >Sun's are the most scalable in this list, because Solaris is premium
> >in multiprocessing. You get Ultra2 for $8000 and Enterprise 10000E
> >for $1000000 with the same OS.
> >None of the others have such a broad range.
>
> let me start by saying, "Put down the crack pipe and step away from the
> keyboard."
>
> 1) How do you figure that sun is the most scalable of the above list???
>
> 2) How do you figure that sun is the only one with a broad range?
>
> last time I checked, Sun had to do 2x64 cluster to achieve 128P system. SGI,
> on the other hand, sells 128P systems as a single piece of hardware. And,
> if you want to talk about clustered systems scalability, might i point you
> to the ASCI Blue-Mountain project at Los Alamos National Labs (they started
> year with 1024P cluster and will be ramping to better than 6000P by year's
> end - see http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html)? That
> seems more scalable than sun currently offers.
>
> and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
> monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
Exactly! I just got my IRIX 6.5 CDROMs this week. I have an INDY
behind my desk running 6.2 and I'm going to use that (since it is my
machine and no one will bitch if I fuck it up) as my ginuea pig to
install 6.5. As soon as I can get the developers to agree, I'm
going to upgrade our Origin 2000 to 6.5 as well. I have an O2
(bought as the console to the ORIGIN 2000 but without the necessary
software or breakout box to make it work, 'natch) laying around that
I'll probably upgrade as well since it's just sitting around not
paying rent. As you said, "seems like a pretty broad range to me".
One thing I know though; if I could upgrade them all at the same
time, I could sit at my desk on the INDY and have three "swmgr" GUIs
running to the INDY at the same time and no one would be able to
tell the difference as to which went to which platform.
Rev. Don Kool
> fer...@tsunami.xanthia.com (Thomas H Jones) writes:
> >Peter Koch <ko...@pz.pirmasens.de> wrote:
[...snip...]
> >and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
> >monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
> Wow. Do they have binary compatibility down the whole range? IOW, can
> I compile a program on the Indy and run it on the beast?
I would have to say, Yes. Mind you I am only a System Admin and
not a developer but I see what the developers do and I know what
gets loaded. You load an INDY, O2, ..., ORIGIN 2000 from the same
exact CD-ROMs and with the same exact compilers. IRIX 6.2 was the
same way before the newer machines came out. IRIX 6.5 is the latest
"coming together" of the OS. Personally I think that's kind of cool
of SGI. They bring out a newer, hotter processor and then tweak the
OS and make a release that only runs on it. Then the next one, then
the next one. After a while they consolidate and we're back to one
OS for everyone again. While annoying to some, I figure that means
that they are keeping current instead of forcing their newer
processors to work within the constraints of the older OS. I
realize that I may be in the distinct minority on this one :-)
Rev. Don Kool
> >>if you want to talk about clustered systems scalability, might i point you
> >>to the ASCI Blue-Mountain project at Los Alamos National Labs (they started
> >>year with 1024P cluster and will be ramping to better than 6000P by year's
> >>end - see http://www.lanl.gov/asci/bluemtn/hardware/schedule.html)? That
> >>seems more scalable than sun currently offers.
> >
> > And a lot less available. Let's not compare things you can buy off the
> > shelf to research projects, eh?
>
> I'm sure if you have the money, they'd be more than willing to sell you one.
> Provided DOE doesn't have a tizzy fit. Selling one of those configs would
> raise the stock price enough so I could unload my shares. So put your orders
> in now, avoid the rush! :-)
>
> >>and, with IRIX 6.5, everything from an indy up to and including that 6000P
> >>monster at LANL run the same OS. seems like a pretty broad range to me.
> >
> > Wow. Do they have binary compatibility down the whole range? IOW, can
> > I compile a program on the Indy and run it on the beast?
>
> I can't remember if Irix 6.5 supports Indys or not. If so, yes. An O2,
> definitely.
AFAIK it supports the INDYs. I have an INDY behind my desk running
6.2 that I use for various tasks. I just got my set of IRIX 6.5
CDROMs this week however I never had the time to upgrade the INDY.
I'll be able to report back with certainty by Monday or Tuesday as
giving the upgrade a go is definitely on my list.
Timothy J. Lee
| We're still back filling IPXs with SPARC 2s. "Jump to
|Solaris 2.6", is easy in some college lab with a dozen or two
|workstations. Not so easy with thousands running newsprint to
|SPARCprinters
Just make the old IPXs and SS2s running 4.1.4 or 5.3(?) into print
servers for the old SPARCprinters. Surely when they get replaced
with newer stuff (Sun or otherwise), they can still be put to use
serving those printers.
Rev. Don Kool
> Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> > I administer UNIX in all its myriad flavors, OpenVMS and an, as
> >yet, small smattering of PCs. At home I have, like most average
> >computer users, a PC.
> So do I.
A kindred spirit :-)
> > It is a modest Cyrix P150 but quite a step up
> >from the Packard Bell 486/50MHz I had from '93-'97.
> I have a 486/50. I'm running UNIX (FreeBSD) on it.
Another "computer guy" with something to prove. For years my
increasingly stale refrain has been that LINUX (and it's variants)
is for Bill Gates haters and tinkerers. Although I've lost count of
how many people I've pissed off with that remark, it almost exactly
equals the number that have come back and told me (after
experimenting with LINUX), "You're right". :-)
> I'll bet it does the
> Internet stuff faster than your P150. And I can boot into NT on the
> rare occasion I need to run Windows software.
So you need two OS's to do what I do with one. What's next... a
separate boot for each application? (See how ridiculous these
things can become?)
> And despite rumors, a 486
> with a good host adapter (Adaptec 1742) and video card (ATI) is quite
> fast enough to run modest personal finance stuff.
Please... from what I hear the latest version of Microsoft Money
that just came out (and has finally eclipsed Quicken on the Windows
Magazine "WinList") is a real hog and will barely run on a Pentium.
I have Money 98 and while it runs just fine on the P150, I wouldn't
exactly say I've got a lot left. When I ran Money 97 (or Money 5.0,
I forget) on the 486/50, it took damn near forever to just come up.
By "modest", you must mean modest indeed.
> > What I run is Internet software (e.g. Netscape, Outlook, WsFTP,
> >ICQ, etc...), financial software (e.g. Microsoft Money, Quicken,
> >etc...) and various and sundry other things like scanner software,
> >word processor, turbo-tax, etc... PCs are easy, fast and they do
> >(basically) what they're told.
> As long as what you tell it to do is something that someone has already
> written software to do. Until Tcl/Tk was ported to NT, it was pure pain for
> scripting (Visual Basic, give me a break!).
While I know that there are those out there who find this hard to
believe, the vast majority of home computer users don't write code.
I know; "Quick, somebody call Ripley's!!!!". Overwhelmingly people
that compute at home want to balance their checkbooks, write a
letter or school book report now and then, pop in an encyclopedia
CD-ROM and look something up, file their taxes easily and get on
AOL. Sad but true. And, BTW, they like software that is relatively
cheap, user friendly, reliable and (another thing that pisses us
UNIX people off) doesn't require a computer science degree or years
of experience to use.
> > Just like in the UNIX world, the
> >only people who I hear "horror stories" from are those that tried to
> >"outsmart" the box (yeah, rename "C:\windows" to "F:\Fuck Bill
> >Gates", you'll really show him how "cool" you are. Install SunSoft
> >Developer Workshop in "/this_is_my_fucking_computer" and see what
> >happens when you try to run it. Or my all time favorite, "Bag the
> >GUI, I'm just going to edit the config files manually.").
> I edit all the config files manually.
Why? I really mean this with the love of Jesus in my heart but...
are you that desperate to prove that you can? I'm not sure if
you're talking about Windows or UNIX here but when I do things I
never feel the overarching need to to change something just for the
sake of changing it. If Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom (LOL!),
has decided that Windows belongs in "C:\windows", so be it. I gain
nothing by putting it somewhere else just to be difficult (except
perhaps major problems later on). If SunSoft wants to put the
compilers in "/opt", I click on "OK". (BTW; I put them somewhere
else once for space reasons and then the compilers couldn't find the
necessary libraries. Seems that while SUN gives you the option,
they've made no provisions for you actually taking it. Another SUN
fuck-up).
> Actually, editing the config files
> manually (with regedit) on NT works pretty well.
Yes; infinitely easier and less prone to error than going
"click-click" on "setup.exe" and clicking on "OK" for the two or
three questions that it asks. Do you walk to work and then have
somebody drive your car over as well?
> I don't really have any
> huge reliability horror stories with my own NT boxen, but I've got users
> who've managed to really outsmart themselves. It does seem a bit fragile.
<yawn> And UNIX isn't? A Windows PC is like a UNIX workstation
where everybody has root. How "fragile" is that?
> >In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"
> Sure. Problem is, my favorite brand of user-friendly PC (which was more user
> friendly than yours, but less user-friendly than Steve Jobs', and had so many
> cool things about it I can't possibly list them all here)
Let me guess... AMIGA.
> got crushed by the
> bloke who makes your brand of user-friendly PC (the way he crushed everyone
> but Apple who are now hanging on by the skin of their teeth). That tends to
> put an edge on a relationship.
And you started out so well... :-) Personally I don't consider my
personal feelings towards the owner of the company when I purchase a
product. Rather I think about it's value and is it efficacious for
the job at hand.
Bottom line;
I do UNIX, OpenVMS and NT at work.
I do Win 95/98 at home.
All are fine for their intended purpose. As soon as someone starts
to talk about how Windows PCs are ill-suited for writing code at
home, I write them off as ill-suited for this type of discussion as
they already have lost sight of the fact (or are so deep into
programming) to realize that the kids, grannies, Yuppies, etc... who
are buying PCs from "Best Buys" and "Circuit City" are not buying
them to write code. They're buying them for games (mostly), the
Internet and personal productivity. Believe it or not there are old
ladies out there buying 400 MHz PCs to compose the church
newsletter, print out a banner to hang at the 40 year reunion and
send e-mail to the kids at school. They don't give a flying fuck
about how cumbersome writing code is on it. They think the fact
that it says, "You've got mail" and can answer the phone is really
neat.
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> | UNIX does what it does very well, very expensive and very stable
> |for its users. PCs do what they do very cheaply
> Ummm, Unix is cheaper than Microsoft OSes. E.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris
> (non-commercial version for $10 + shipping), SCO (non-commercial version
> for some cheap price that's less than Microsoft OSes).
Please... the minute you talk about some form of free pseudo-UNIX
on a PC, we're talking a different language. PCs are for games and
windows. If you want to do UNIX, buy an ALPHA (or HP, or SGI or
even a SUN).
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> | We're still back filling IPXs with SPARC 2s. "Jump to
> |Solaris 2.6", is easy in some college lab with a dozen or two
> |workstations. Not so easy with thousands running newsprint to
> |SPARCprinters
> Just make the old IPXs and SS2s running 4.1.4 or 5.3(?) into print
> servers for the old SPARCprinters. Surely when they get replaced
> with newer stuff (Sun or otherwise), they can still be put to use
> serving those printers.
Sidestepping Y2K for the moment...
The IPXs are going out the door. If you're going to make a SPARC 2
into a print server only, then you've got to procure an additional
workstation for the user that you took the SPARC 2 away from (plus
the physical space, of course). How nice it would have been if we
could have simply loaded SOLARIS 2.6 on the SPARC and had it still
able to be the print server for our quite servicable older
printers. Alas SUN handed HP a bonansa as we are now in the process
of replacing all our SPARCprinters with HP 4000 network printers.
Gotta be SOLARIS 2.6 and Y2K don't 'ya know. Guess we won't be
buying too many of those overpriced and non recyclable toner
cartridges from SUN any more. Smart move, SUN! (SUN has got to be
the only company in the world that has yet to realize that selling
consummables is a gravy business with no support costs).
Chris Quayle
the felt once every couple of weeks and voila, dust removed. That and
spray furniture polish on the mat and you have the smoothest running
mouse money can buy...
Chris
Peter da Silva wrote:
>
> In article <slrn6vgja4...@interport.net>,
> void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
> >You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> >while.
>
> Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
> replace them annually (or even more often).
>
> --
> In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
> `-_-' "If Microsoft don't think you need it, it's not there and there's no
> 'U` way to include it yourself." -- Geoff Lane, a.s.r.
--
There is no question of faith or belief in this. Quite the opposite,
this system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must
verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in this way can
you come to something.
Rev. Don Kool
> Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> > When you hop from car to car, the steering wheel, gearshift and
> > ignition switch are generally pretty much in the same place.
> The steering wheel, gearshift and ignition switch are the same for
> all Unix systems. The difference is the materials in the seats, the
> color of the handbrake, and the shape of the speedometer. MS Windows
> systems, however, do have their steering wheel under the drivers seat.
That is a matter of opinion.
> > Like cars, you may have to learn the hard way that you can't
> > jumpstart an old negative ground British car from a positive ground
> > American one without making a few adjustments.
> You obviously don't know what you are talking about. Just try to
> jumpstart an US built car by connecting + to car ground. Watch the
> fireworks.
Proofreading error: I meant "an old positive ground British car
from a negative ground American one". Sorry for the confusion.
> Returning to computers, I can jumpstart my Sun from
> hard disk
> floppy
> CD-ROM
> ethernet
> tape
> serial port
> while most peecees can only jumpstart from
> hard disk (C: only)
> floppy (A: only)
And this is important because...?
> > Agreed. Plus stability that can't be beat. I just logged into a
> > workstation of ours that had been up almost 200 days (so, of course,
> > I put an "at" job in to reboot it this evening).
> Couldn't stand it?
Maintenance reboot. Gotta clear out those "defunct" processes once
in a while.
> > IRIX instead of SOLARIS. Especially if SGI came along and offered
> > to include the C compiler. I suspect that the SUN C compiler would
> > get "re-bundled" pretty fast.
> Why are som many people upset about Sun not giving away C compilers?
Probably because they did it for years and then stopped when they
"upgraded" to SOLARIS. What's next; charge extra for print
services? People tend to dislike being nickel and dimed to death.
> With a Sun you get all the needed include files and libraries in the
> base OS. This makes it possible (and easy) to install a free compiler
> like gcc.
With the only problem being that you then have "gcc". :-) Real
compilers cost money for a reason.
> With a SGI you will not get any include files and installing
> gcc will not be possible unless you recreate all the missing parts.
> To install gcc you have to buy the IDO (the C compiler and development
> environment.) To make things even sillier, with an SGI you have to
> buy the SGI C compiler (IDO) when you buy some other SGI compiler, the
> other compilers need stuff from the IDO.
Up until release 7.1 of the SGI compilers, they didn't even require
a license. If you had the media, you could load them for free to
your heart's content.
Justin Dossey
<old...@home.com> did enter unto the VDT:
>> With a Sun you get all the needed include files and libraries in the
>> base OS. This makes it possible (and easy) to install a free compiler
>> like gcc.
>
> With the only problem being that you then have "gcc". :-) Real
>compilers cost money for a reason.
Antediluvian compiler snobbery will get you nowhere. If you see places
gcc is broken, by all means either (a) come up with something else, or
(b) fix them. People all over the world will appreciate it, starting
with the developers of gcc.
I don't want to be pedantic, but gcc has compiled my code just fine, and
I was under the impression that a "real" compiler was one that turned
source code into executables, executables that did not do silly things
like crash due to compilation errors. Every complaint I've heard about
gcc had to do with optimization issues, and that's a totally different
story.
The "cost money for a reason" argument is outdated and thus unfounded
in facts, as many of the utilities you have come to use and rely on
(I am guessing) are free and possibly even better than their commercial
counterparts. Expensive does not equate to high-quality, and free does
not equate to shoddy.
Maybe this thread should be moved to comp.os.*.advocacy or something. It
sure feels off-topic.
--
######## Justin Dossey ############ http://zero.ou.edu/~dossey #########
######## SysAdmin, Univ. of Oklahoma Dept. of Computer Science #########
######## Teaching Assistant, CS 1323 ## Programming Contractor #########
Peter da Silva
>Goran Larsson wrote:
>> Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
>> > When you hop from car to car, the steering wheel, gearshift and
>> > ignition switch are generally pretty much in the same place.
>> The steering wheel, gearshift and ignition switch are the same for
>> all Unix systems. The difference is the materials in the seats, the
>> color of the handbrake, and the shape of the speedometer. MS Windows
>> systems, however, do have their steering wheel under the drivers seat.
> That is a matter of opinion.
It's an analogy. Analogies are like instant coffee.
> Maintenance reboot. Gotta clear out those "defunct" processes once
>in a while.
If you're accumulating defunct processes on a UNIX system you broke it
somewhere.
> With the only problem being that you then have "gcc". :-) Real
>compilers cost money for a reason.
And this reason is?
--
In hoc signo hack, Peter da Silva <pe...@baileynm.com>
`-_-'
Michael David Jones
>>And this is the problem that the E10K was really intended to solve.
>>You can buy a single box, use a single plot of raised floor space, and
>>still have completely separate development and/or test systems that
>>can share resources with the production system based on demand using
>>E10000 domains. For example, you might have a domain with 20 CPUs for
>>your production system, a domain with 12 for development, and a domain
>>with 4 for nominal testing. When you get close to going to production
>>with the development system, you can move 8 CPUS (and memory, and I/O)
>>to the test system without rebooting any of them. If you hit an unexpected
>>end-of-{month,quarter,year} crunch you can "borrow" resources from the
>>development and/or test systems to the production system, again
>>without rebooting any of them. The systems are completely separate,
>>each with their own copy of Solaris, own I/O, etc. The development or
>>test machine can crash completely without disturbing the production
>>domain. This flexibility is the real distinguishing feature of the
>>E10K, not huge SMP performance.
>Good information, the 10000 sounds impressive, but, separation of
>systems is often very important for peace of mind. Physically
>separating development/test/production can be VERY important as
>different levels of security and access usually go hand in hand with
True, but in the E10K the systems are as physically separate as they
can be in the same frame. They have their own I/O, their own memory,
their own disk, their own copy of Solaris. The separation is enforced
by the crossbar switch which connects the system boards. The switch is
managed by a service processor (currently a SPARC 5) that talks to the
switch. It cannot be managed from within a domain. E10K partitions can
address all the needs for separation for security and access.
>them. Additionally, while you can reallocate CPU's between domains
>without rebooting, applications such as Oracle and SAP R/3 have to
>be shut down and restarted. This imposes an INCREDIBLE performance
>penalty on R/3 systems as you must completely rebuild your cache to
>achieve good performance which can take 6 to 8 hours on an active
>system. This really is not a good option for R/3. Good R/3 systems
>design mandates a unified system capable of performing within defined
>levels at PEAK times without modification.
You don't have to shut down *anything* to move system boards between
partitions. It does take several minutes to migrate processes running
on the CPUs of a system board to be moved and to drain the memory on
that board, but nothing has to be shut down.
>I do appreciate your info on the UE10k and intend to research it
>further for future projects. Thanks ...
Glad to help.
Mike Jones | jon...@rpi.edu
Lately, the terminal has become the number one status symbol for
programming managers. No matter how short of terminals the poor workers
may be, the project manager must have his terminal by his side for all
his guests to see. What he uses it for is rarely known, or at least is
a well-guarded secret.
- Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming
Michael David Jones
>"Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
>|for its users. PCs do what they do very cheaply
>Ummm, Unix is cheaper than Microsoft OSes. E.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris
>(non-commercial version for $10 + shipping), SCO (non-commercial version
>for some cheap price that's less than Microsoft OSes).
Actually, Solaris is a *lot* cheaper than the "Enterprise" version of
NT for any real number of users. A Solaris Server licence - unlimited
users - comes with any Sun server, and by the time you get done buying
Client Access Licenses for everybody after the first 10 NT users you
could probably buy another Sun for what you end up paying just for
software on NT with a couple of hundred users.
Mike Jones | jon...@rpi.edu
I like also the men who study the Great Pyramid, with a view to
deciphering its mystical lore. Many great books have been written on this
subject, some of which have been presented to me by their authors. It
is a singular fact that the Great Pyramid always predicts the history
of the world accurately up to the date of publication of the book in
question, but after that date it becomes less reliable.
- Bertrand Russell
Doug Hughes
> Paul E.Lehmann wrote:
> Amen to that! We were installing a program today for configuration
> control and just the licensing procedure was torturous. I realize
> that the vendors of low quantity, high cost software have to take
> steps to protect themselves but it is really a pain in the ass to
> have to license something to system ID. If you want to move it to
> another system, you have to call the vendor and procure a new
> license. Those of us without Internet access at work are forced to
> use the 'FAX back' services and then type in an un-Godly string of
> numbers, letters and odd characters by hand just to get the thing to
> work. Say what you will about windows, there is certainly an
> advantage to double clicking on "setup" and seeing the familiar
> 'install wizard' kick off for virtually every software package. We
> do UNIX, we're used to the quirks but they sure don't win over a lot
> of converts from the NT camp.
>
PC's may have some advantages, but licensing is NOT one of them.
It is a relatively EASY thing to have one license file for lots
of different applications. They can be integrated together. It's
also a relatively easy matter to call the vendor when you want to
move the license server, or even fake out the license server with
a program like sethostid when necessary.
Ever try to deal with the PC dongle method of licensing? It's completely
archaic. Point and click licensing? No way! When you have to
do thousands of machines, that's totally useless..
It doesn't scale.
It takes about 30 minutes to understand how flexlm works, and once
you've done it once, doing it more is tedious, but not hard, and not
that inconvenient.
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin Auburn University
do...@eng.auburn.edu
Doug Hughes
> Peter da Silva wrote:
> > void <fl...@interport.net> wrote:
>
> > >You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> > >while.
> >
> > Pity. Optical mice have a lot of advantages... like you don't have to
> > replace them annually (or even more often).
>
> And SUN does a booming business in propriatary mouse "pads" that
> seem to disappear. :-)
>
A laser printer, some transparencies, and reflective film (like a toner
bag) is all you need to construct your own mouse pad really cheaply.
The optical mice do last longer, but mechanical are cheaper to replace
these days (we get third party mechanical ball mice for about $17 ea. in
bulk.. I think that's right.. Can't remember exact price)
Timothy J. Lee
|> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
|
|> | UNIX does what it does very well, very expensive and very stable
|> |for its users. PCs do what they do very cheaply
|
|> Ummm, Unix is cheaper than Microsoft OSes. E.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris
|> (non-commercial version for $10 + shipping), SCO (non-commercial version
|> for some cheap price that's less than Microsoft OSes).
|
|on a PC, we're talking a different language. PCs are for games and
|windows. If you want to do UNIX, buy an ALPHA (or HP, or SGI or
|even a SUN).
Why? A new $700 PC running any of the above is often faster and more
useful than a used DEC, HP, SGI, or Sun computer that costs as much or
more. It's often also more useful than the same PC running a Microsoft
OS.
Also, if Sun Solaris is Unix, by your definition, then where does the
"pseudo-Unix" comment come from with respect to Solaris x86?
Doug Hughes
Let's drop the sparcprinter thing. They are crap. It will cost you
less money to replace them then it will to continue buying the
outrageously priced consumables (in the long run). They are cheaply
put together, and generally evil things.
However, if you must use one, don't complain about Sun dropping
newsprint. Just use ghostscript. It works fine and will generate
output for a SPARCprinter.
I'm sorry we ever bought any of those things.
Peter da Silva
Michael David Jones <jon...@alumni.rpi.edu> wrote:
>Actually, Solaris is a *lot* cheaper than the "Enterprise" version of
>NT for any real number of users. A Solaris Server licence - unlimited
>users - comes with any Sun server, and by the time you get done buying
>Client Access Licenses for everybody after the first 10 NT users you
>could probably buy another Sun for what you end up paying just for
>software on NT with a couple of hundred users.
At $13.00 for a client access license in quantity... you can't get much
of a Sun for a couple three thousand. What really kills you is the per
user licenses for applications.
Volker Borchert
|> void wrote:
|> >
|> > You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
|> > while.
|>
Huh? I like them very much. Admittedly, after seven or eight
years, the LED's grow dim, and you have to replace them. How
often do you clean and/or replace your ball mice?
vb
--
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic." Dr Leonard McCoy <mc...@ncc1701.starfleet.fed>
"I'm a mechanic, not a doctor." Volker Borchert <b...@teknon.de>
Doug Hughes
> Doug Hughes wrote:
>
> > history and other OS stuff deleted. Focussing on factual errors.
>
> > "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
>
> We have to make sure all the applications, including the home-grown
> ones, work with 2.6 before we can upgrade. OPENWINDOWS users don't
> like CDE (more accurately, don't like change of any kind). With Y2K
> the change is coming but we will most likely have to pry SunOS 4.x
> and OPENWINDOWS from their cold, dead hands before it does.
>
>
> > where the mailtool does to MIME.
>
> "dtmail" does MIME. I mentioned SUN "mailtool" which does not
> (although I've heard there is a MIME compliant version out there, it
> remains about as real to me as Bigfoot).
>
You can set a variable in your .mailrc that lets mailtool read and
interpret MIME messages. You still can't send them though. I was
never a great fan of mailtool anyway. There are plenty of free mail
clients available. (including privtool which is a mailtool look-alike
that supports PGP)
> > You haven't been able
> > to telnet in as root for quite some time (I don't remember the last
> > time you could by default..) as for system-administration and setup,
> > just run sys-unconfig and reboot. It asks you for all the information.
>
> I haven't done that although I have installed both SunOS and
> SOLARIS but not recently (I tend to stick to the other OS's as we
> have lots of SUN SAs but very few for "everything else"). I'll have
> to try it and see but somehow I doubt it asks you about automount
> options (i.e., wheather you want to use "automount" or "autofs" and
> what command line options you want to start it with), default
> router, which directories to export, NIS domain, DNS domain,
> nsswitch.conf setup (i.e., resolver order), multiple NIC card IP
> addresses or names, etc...
No, It won't do that. It basically does the usual networking stuff.
IP, hostname, subnet masks, NIS/NIS+, timezone, etc. Stuff that you
do for a standalone machine.
But hey, once you get one machine setup, it's really really easy to setup
X additional with no additional effort (jumpstart/autoinstall).
>
> > Optical mice are gone;
>
> Hmmm... none of the hundreds we have seem to magically have grown
> balls :-)
>
> > all machines shipped for the last year or so
> > have been mechanical mouse.
>
> Must me nice to be in a shop where all the machines are new :-) We
> don't have the luxury of abandoning SunOS for SOLARIS just yet, much
> less trashing all of our SPARC workstations for ULTRAs.
>
So buy a mechanical mouse for ~ $17. We're not talking break the bank
here. But, the optical mice are more reliable (you do have to change
the felt every now and then, particularly for your more crusty users.. ;)
> > And, the server addition comes with SDS which will let you grow
> > and rearrange filesystems on the fly. (see Intranet extentions CD)
>
> I'll have to look into that.
>
> > Backspace/delete? Sounds like a really sort of petty nit.
>
> Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on that. We run an extremely
> multivendor environment and SUNs are the only workstations that
> can't seem to get it right. On a SUN running OPENWINDOWS, there are
> all kinds of problems with when to use the backspace key and when to
> use the delete key. Log into the system and you have to use delete
> instead of backspace. Start OPENWINDOWS and you're back to using
> backspace. SUNs don't even work right when jumping from system to
> system. You can be backspacing fine and then "rlogin" to another
> SUN (with TERM set correctly) and all of a sudden you have to use
> delete instead of backspace (or do an "stty"). While it would be a
> "petty nit" to a user, it is a royal pain in the ass to a System
> Administrator who is constantly jumping from workstation to
> workstation and working both in and out of the window manager. What
> makes it even more annoying is that SUN has never has the
> wherewithall to address such a basic error.
Yeah, but you can set it once and be done with it. set it to whatever
you want. There are at least 3 different ways to do it. You can use
xmodmap, or stty, or loadkeys, or whatever. Just set it and forget about
it. Maybe you shouldn't have to do it, but it's nothing to get worked
up about. This is really really trivial.
>
> BTW; some have noted that it is a simple matter to configure the
> dot files to fix this. My answer;
>
> 1. I shouldn't have to (I don't have to on any other OS).
> 2. Easy for a user who logs in and stays there. More difficult
> for a SysAdmin
> to do on every workstation they use/fix/build.
>
> As always, this thread is all opinion anyway.
see auto-install. Make all your machines easy to install. Never worry
about mapping again. I don't see why this is such a big deal. Many
applications have their own idea of which should be which anyway. In some
apps, delete acts like backspace and deletes the object to the left of
the cursor and moves left. In some apps, delete stays where it is, deletes
the character under the cursor and shifts the remainder of the line to
the left. This is just one of those things.
void
<tim...@netcom.com.DELETE-THIS.BIT> wrote:
>
>Why is a heterogeneous environment necessarily a mistake?
A homogeneous environment has its disadvantages as well. Just ask the
victims of the internet worm.
--
Ben
"You have your mind on computers, it seems."
void
>Timothy J. Lee wrote:
>
>> But how does NT compare in price / performance to Linux and BSD?
>
> LINUX... ROTFLOLASTD!!!!
I'm beginning to suspect that you have BSD blindness. Like the fnords in
Robert Anton Wilson's _Illuminatus_ books, you just don't see the word.
Let me try using it in a sentence:
###### ##### ######
# # # # # #
# # # # #
###### ##### # # outperforms NT daily on cheaper hardware.
# # # # #
# # # # # #
###### ##### ######
Rev. Don Kool
> |> > You forgot to mention that Sun hasn't shipped optical mice in quite a
> |> > while.
> |> That just proves my point that they suck. Even SUN has finally
> Huh? I like them very much. Admittedly, after seven or eight
> years, the LED's grow dim, and you have to replace them. How
> often do you clean and/or replace your ball mice?
I had to tap one lightly on the desk once to get the mouse
unstuck. Two taps, I think. Other than that, I haven't had to
replace one ever and I've never had a user come in needing a
replacement either. Not counting lost mouse "pads", we replace
about 10 optical mice a year. All that is beside the point to me
anyway because I'm not talking about reliability when I say they
suck. I'm talking about using one on a daily basis. Holding the
mouse "pad" down with one hand while you try to slide the mouse over
it with the other isn't my idea of a pleasurable computing
experience. The ones with the clear light are much better than the
ones with the red light though. The ones with the red light stick
to the "pad" like glue. Also I've never had to walk a user through
properly orienting his mouse pad for a ball mouse.
Rev. Don Kool
Yes, one "jumpstart" server for each LAN segment.
> > > Optical mice are gone;
> > Hmmm... none of the hundreds we have seem to magically have grown
> > balls :-)
> > > all machines shipped for the last year or so
> > > have been mechanical mouse.
> > Must me nice to be in a shop where all the machines are new :-) We
> > don't have the luxury of abandoning SunOS for SOLARIS just yet, much
> > less trashing all of our SPARC workstations for ULTRAs.
> So buy a mechanical mouse for ~ $17. We're not talking break the bank
> here. But, the optical mice are more reliable (you do have to change
> the felt every now and then, particularly for your more crusty users.. ;)
I keep supplies of both types on hand. When a user walks in with a
dead optical mouse, I ask them which type they would like as a
replacement. They always choose the ball mouse.
> > > And, the server addition comes with SDS which will let you grow
> > > and rearrange filesystems on the fly. (see Intranet extentions CD)
> > I'll have to look into that.
> > > Backspace/delete? Sounds like a really sort of petty nit.
> > Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on that. We run an extremely
> > multivendor environment and SUNs are the only workstations that
> > can't seem to get it right. On a SUN running OPENWINDOWS, there are
> > all kinds of problems with when to use the backspace key and when to
> > use the delete key. Log into the system and you have to use delete
> > instead of backspace. Start OPENWINDOWS and you're back to using
> > backspace. SUNs don't even work right when jumping from system to
> > system. You can be backspacing fine and then "rlogin" to another
> > SUN (with TERM set correctly) and all of a sudden you have to use
> > delete instead of backspace (or do an "stty"). While it would be a
> > "petty nit" to a user, it is a royal pain in the ass to a System
> > Administrator who is constantly jumping from workstation to
> > workstation and working both in and out of the window manager. What
> > makes it even more annoying is that SUN has never has the
> > wherewithall to address such a basic error.
> Yeah, but you can set it once and be done with it. set it to whatever
> you want. There are at least 3 different ways to do it. You can use
> xmodmap, or stty, or loadkeys, or whatever. Just set it and forget about
> it. Maybe you shouldn't have to do it, but it's nothing to get worked
> up about. This is really really trivial.
Trivial on one machine == a constant pain in the neck when jumping
from machine to machine.
> > BTW; some have noted that it is a simple matter to configure the
> > dot files to fix this. My answer;
> >
> > 1. I shouldn't have to (I don't have to on any other OS).
> > 2. Easy for a user who logs in and stays there. More difficult
> > for a SysAdmin
> > to do on every workstation they use/fix/build.
> >
> > As always, this thread is all opinion anyway.
> see auto-install. Make all your machines easy to install. Never worry
> about mapping again. I don't see why this is such a big deal. Many
> applications have their own idea of which should be which anyway. In some
> apps, delete acts like backspace and deletes the object to the left of
> the cursor and moves left. In some apps, delete stays where it is, deletes
> the character under the cursor and shifts the remainder of the line to
> the left. This is just one of those things.
"One of those things" that makes a SUN annoying to use.
Peter da Silva
>I'm talking about using one on a daily basis. Holding the
>mouse "pad" down with one hand while you try to slide the mouse over
>it with the other isn't my idea of a pleasurable computing
>experience.
It helps to clean the felt pads on the mouse occasionally, and you can get
replacement foam pads from an office supply store for a trifle. On the test
floor we tape the pads to the workbench.
Rev. Don Kool
> Rev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> > Another "computer guy" with something to prove.
> You're not in any position to make assertions about why I'm running UNIX at
> home. I spend more time at work supporting the relatively small number of
> Windows NT systems at work... the UNIX X-terminals at work just work. The
> NT boxen, I'm always running around to and beating up on when someone breaks
> something. Why should I put up with that at home as well.
I'm not cracking on UNIX. I make my living doing UNIX nine hours a
day, six days a week. I like UNIX just fine. Even SUN's version
isn't that bad most of the time. I also use a regular old PC at
home to do regular old stuff. Because of the large installed base,
there are all kinds of applications for home users on PCs that will
never make it to UNIX. I merely take issue with UNIX people who
crack mercilessly on PCs and, when asked, list all kinds of
programming, scripting and multiuser related concerns as their
reason for hating them. Personally I find it hard to believe that
those people are so out of touch as not to realize that the
overwhelming majority of those who buy PCs will never even think of
using them for those activities. If you look at what the majority
of people do with their PCs, its obvious they are running what I had
one particularly haughty UNIX admin refer to as "consumer garbage"
and games. PCs do that shit great, they do it fast and they do it
relatively inexpensively. Joe Lunchbox can even share files with a
friend without worrying what brand of PC the other guy is running.
It's like the new commercial I saw for some kind of truck. They
show a guy in a sports car trying to take plywood home from the
lumber yard. The plywood is stacked in the car, a convertable, with
a hole cut in it for the guy's head to stick through so that he can
drive. The voice over touts the advantage of a truck for hauling
over the sports car. Kind of making fun of the sports car in a
humorous way. Basically the sports car is a PC and the truck is
UNIX. The sports car may not haul a load of plywood very well but
very few people buy it with that use in mind.
> > For years my
> >increasingly stale refrain has been that LINUX (and it's variants)
> >is for Bill Gates haters and tinkerers.
> That may well be. I'm not running Linux, or a variant of Linux, and while
> I regularly check it out I find it even more frustrating than Windows (not
> to mention that it seems like a completely different OS with each new
> release). Linux has no doubt done more to turn people off UNIX than all
> other factors put together.
> >> I'll bet it does the
> >> Internet stuff faster than your P150. And I can boot into NT on the
> >> rare occasion I need to run Windows software.
> > So you need two OS's to do what I do with one.
> That's possibly true, but I can't buy one operating system that does what
> I can do with two. Even with the Cygnus "cygwin32" package it's simply not
> suited for my needs.
> >> And despite rumors, a 486
> >> with a good host adapter (Adaptec 1742) and video card (ATI) is quite
> >> fast enough to run modest personal finance stuff.
> > Please... from what I hear the latest version of Microsoft Money
> >that just came out (and has finally eclipsed Quicken on the Windows
> >Magazine "WinList") is a real hog and will barely run on a Pentium.
> And where is someone holding a gun to my head forcing me to run this
> bloatware? I guess I'm not a rampant enough consumerist to need more
> than an annual dip into tax software.
"Bloatware", "Windoze", "Pee Cee", "Micro$oft" and references to
Bill Gates are not generally signs of an open mind on the matter :-)
Perhaps see it from a different perspective;
"And where is someone holding a gun to my head forcing
me to write code. I guess I'm not a rampant enough coder
that I need to write it at home too."
I think it was you who said something earlier on about PCs being
fine if all you want to do is run code someone else wrote.
Hello.... McFly.... That's all the vast majority of people who use
PCs want to do. They're not looking to write the next 'killer
app'. They're looking to pop in an encyclopedia CDROM or let the
kids go on AOL to "chat". Go down to your local Best Buys or
Computer City and see who's buying the latest computers. You could
unload a double barrel shotgun in most of those places and never hit
a programmer.
> >> As long as what you tell it to do is something that someone has already
> >> written software to do. Until Tcl/Tk was ported to NT, it was pure pain for
> >> scripting (Visual Basic, give me a break!).
> > While I know that there are those out there who find this hard to
> >believe, the vast majority of home computer users don't write code.
> That's fine. I've recommended Windows NT and Macintoshes to people who don't
> need an extensible operating environment. I don't happen to be one of those
> people.
Bingo! As long as you realize that puts you solidly in the
minority, we're on the same page. Like the TV commercial I
mentioned earlier. Cracking on PCs for being bad development
platforms is like cracking on the sports car because of it's limited
cargo space. Those that write code on PCs are like the poor,
redheaded stepchildren of the PC world. Their concerns are
ignored. The impetus is to write applications that will sell in the
thousands (i.e., those that the average guy needs or at least thinks
is "cool").
> >Sad but true. And, BTW, they like software that is relatively
> >cheap, user friendly, reliable and (another thing that pisses us
> >UNIX people off) doesn't require a computer science degree or years
> >of experience to use.
> My users have "a computer science degree" and "years of experience",
Count yourself very, very lucky. My users run the gamut. We
support everyone from high level managers, to secretaries, to
analysts and down to computer programmers of every skill level. I
mentioned to someone else that we had the more advanced users
screaming for Netscape 4 when it first came out. When we finally
got it loaded, we had the other group complaining how "different"
and "hard to use" it was and asking if we could go back to version
3. You can't win in these situations.
> and I
> still have to hold their hands. Even the ones who prefer Windows. For
> example, one of them downloaded and installed a new version of Netscape
> and managed to lose their proxy configuration... so I told them where
> to go and told them the system and port number, and explained which
> entries to put them in, and he says it doesn't work... and lo and behold
> he'd put the system name, the word "port", and the port number all in
> the system field.
I sometimes wonder about what all is required for a computer
science degree (mine is in Chemistry). Some of these kick ass
programmers are so lost on basic computer functions that we almost
have to log them into their systems and start the editor for them.
Then they can sit there and program like the dickens all day.
> And I get this all the time. They don't want to learn anything about the
> computer they have on their desks [1], and since it's all GUI-driven they
> need me to be right there to set things up for them when they make a
> mistake.
We have some that do nothing but bring up terminal windows and do
all their work there and some that have never even seen one. Of
course, as adminsitrators, we end up encouraging this because we try
to make things easier and easier for the users. I have a group of
users on AIX machines who are high level staff people. It literally
takes them minutes to tell me the name of their workstation and
there is a sticker on the monitor of every computer. "Hold on, I'll
look for it in the back...". They recently decided that they needed
to be able to access floppy disks because they are going to be doing
PowerPoint stuff and they'll need to read in files, work on them in
WinDD and then write them back out. Being busy, I e-mailed them the
"man" pages for the commands "dosread", "dosdir", "dosformat",
etc... This left them with their mouths gaping for a week or so
before they finally called me back up to tell me that they didn't
get it and ask for help.
As a totally optional, extra-credit, on my own time activity, I
decided to create CDE actions for each of the commands. Of course I
also had to place the actions in the pull right menus because they
haven't figured out how to use the CDE control panel at the bottom
and use the Applications window. Now they call me up to have me run
them through the actions. I explain it to them like a four year
old, "Where it says, 'File name on workstation', enter the name of
the file on your workstation. Where it says, 'File name on floppy',
enter the file name on the floppy disk. Now click 'OK'.", and they
say that they can now handle it. A month later I get a call that it
doesn't work. I go down and they're trying to read a CD instead of
a floppy. Worse yet, I mount the CD and see that it is an install
CD for a Windows program! There's no way you can explain this stuff
to them either. You just have to tell them they can't do it and
wait for the call that complains that they aren't getting any
support.
> >> > Just like in the UNIX world, the
> >> >only people who I hear "horror stories" from are those that tried to
> >> >"outsmart" the box (yeah, rename "C:\windows" to "F:\Fuck Bill
> >> >Gates", you'll really show him how "cool" you are. Install SunSoft
> >> >Developer Workshop in "/this_is_my_fucking_computer" and see what
> >> >happens when you try to run it. Or my all time favorite, "Bag the
> >> >GUI, I'm just going to edit the config files manually.").
> >> I edit all the config files manually.
> > Why? I really mean this with the love of Jesus in my heart but...
> >are you that desperate to prove that you can?
> No, because if I can connect to \\userbox\C$ and edit \winnt\foo.ini instead
> of walking to their desk I've saved myself another ten minutes. Longer if
> I have to make two trips because they forgot I was coming or walked off
> to take a leak and their screensaver came up in the meantime. I'm not enough
> of a BOFH to log them out and lose their work just to make a point.
[...You seem to think that I'm some kind of PC booster. I assure
you I am not. I merely speak up when I see them getting a bum rap.
PCs do an admirable job at their task in life -- running shrink
wrapped, off-the-shelf software really fast and really easy.
Millions do this, millions have voted with their wallets for PCs in
their homes and offices. For more serious work, you need more
firepower. Right now that means UNIX and to an unfortunately lesser
and lesser degree, OpenVMS. ...]
GUI != PC any more than UNIX == SUN. This thread, or at least my
remarks in it, were directed at those that purposely make things
harder on themselves by not using a GUI (if available) just because
it is a GUI. Some GUIs are poorly written and more cumbersome to
use than editing files by hand or running things from the command
line. Some or not. Personally I use the GUI when it helps me get
the job done faster and I use the command line when that is more
efficacious. I see no need to be a 'command line snob'. I can 'rsh
userbox setenv DISPLAY `hostname`:0.0; run_my_gui"' as easy as using
any other method. I don't have to walk over there either.
Just recently I had another System Admin ask me the command to
mount a CD in AIX. I didn't know it because the only thing I ever
pop a CD into an AIX box for is to load software and the routine
that loads the software mounts it automagically. My answer was
"type 'smit'". I then hung up the phone, rsh'ed to an AIX box and
proceeded to try and find out the command so that I would know it
the next time it came up. The "man" page for "mount" on AIX is
confusing as hell on this subject and, as I recall, doesn't even
mention mounting a CDROM. Suffice it to say that the command line
option was not "-t" for type or anything obvious. I forget exactly
what it was now, but I think it was something like "-s" for
subsystem or something weird. I know that I read the description of
that option in the "man" page and it didn't even sound like the
right one. Of course there was no mention of what keyword to use
for the actual file system type (e.g. cdfs, hsfs, etc...). It
turned out to be "cdrfs" and the way I found out was to use the
GUI. When I got to the mount dialog, I clicked on "command" instead
of "ok" and it spit out the command it was about to execute. Of
course the novice SA who I directed to use SMIT had the CD mounted
in 30 seconds. Sometimes the GUI is good :-)
> >> Actually, editing the config files
> >> manually (with regedit) on NT works pretty well.
> > Yes; infinitely easier and less prone to error than going
> >"click-click" on "setup.exe" and clicking on "OK" for the two or
> >three questions that it asks. Do you walk to work and then have
> >somebody drive your car over as well?
> Odd, that's what I'm trying to avoid.
:-)
> >> I don't really have any
> >> huge reliability horror stories with my own NT boxen, but I've got users
> >> who've managed to really outsmart themselves. It does seem a bit fragile.
> > <yawn> And UNIX isn't? A Windows PC is like a UNIX workstation
> >where everybody has root. How "fragile" is that?
> Almost all my users have root on their development boxes (we're developing
> real-time software), and just yesterday I had my first major UNIX breakage
> this year. You don't need to run as root all the time on UNIX, and even as
> root it takes more deliberate effort to break stuff.
It must be nice to have such competent users. I would hesitate to
give root to the upper level managers, secretaries, high school
work-studies, analysts or even the software developers we support.
(Hell, I hesitate to give it to some of the newer SAs!) :-)
> > And you started out so well... :-) Personally I don't consider my
> >personal feelings towards the owner of the company when I purchase a
> >product.
> You obviously have some pretty strong personal feelings against *someone* here
> or you wouldn't have made such an emotional attack on UNIX in the first place.
No; I don't. I never made "an emotional attack on UNIX", I merely
objected to the attitude that 'PCs are shit because they don't do
what UNIX does' attack. They were never meant to. PCs do a lot of
stuff well. UNIX does a lot of stuff well. OpenVMS does a lot of
stuff well. Some of that stuff overlaps. There are too many people
who are overly emotionally invested in one or the other. (Another
argument against a "homogeneous shop")
The 'It isn't worth a shit for development; Multiuser is a joke;
You can't log into it remotely' arguments leave me cold. It's
simply a different paradigm; no more, no less. Those arguments
against PCs ignore their strengths. Millions of people wouldn't be
buying them if they didn't do something well. To ignore that is to
ignore reality and it strikes me as sour grapes. Perhaps to my
detriment, I don't shy away from saying so :-)
> It's just a tool. Despite my feelings about Windows, I use it when it's the
> best tool for the job. I have a Windows NT box on my desk at work, and a UNIX
> box at home, because that's the combination that serves *my* purposes best.
Sounds good. I have a DEC ALPHA on my desk, a SUN SPARC 2 next to
my desk and an SGI INDY behind my chair. (Since all are sporting
20" monitors, people often ask if I plan on having any more
children!) When I need to do things like install software on my
SGIs, I spin in my chair and use the INDY because it can handle the
OpenGL graphics that (depending on the OS version) are required.
When I need to investigate the latest SUN OPENWINDOWS screw-up, I
roll over to the SPARC 2. When I get home, I wiggle the mouse on
the PC to get the screen saver to go away and pop up a mail or
Netscape window from the task bar. Using the proper tool for the
job is a good thing.
To be honest, pissing you off was not the intent of my posting. If
it was, I could have been much more offensive :-) My point is just
that UNIX enthusiasts often need to take some of the anger that
you're feeling and consider that someone that chooses to use a
simple PC at home (even someone well versed in UNIX) is not an idiot
and doesn't appreciate being painted as one. I do UNIX all day. I
do a good job. I like helping others and solving challenging
problems. When I get home I want to read a few newsgroups, write a
few checks, check the news and (very seldom) play an engaging
shoot-em-up game. Does my little PC work well for that? Damn
straight it does. What would it cost me to drop a little SGI O2 in
my PC's place, hook up all the periphials (even if it was possible)
and get UNIX versions of all the software (if they were available,
which they are not) --- thousands. If my aim was to do at home the
things that UNIX excels at, would I spring for the O2 and the
compilers -- in a New York minute.
> And I take the time to learn about things before dismissing them... unlike
> people who think FreeBSD is some sort of Linux variant.
Actually I think it's some UNIX variant (or at least that's the
impression I get from the context in which it is mentioned). Any
type of UNIX on PCs is not for large, high dollar operations. That
is why I am throughly unfamiliar with it. I had toyed with the idea
of loading my old 486 with LINUX but I ended up giving it to a
friend to tinker with instead. That is the extent of my familiarity
with PC UNIXs. To me a PC is like a video game or other toy. You
plug it in, you buy the games that interest you (Win98, Netscape,
Office, Quicken, Turbo-Tax, etc...) and you enjoy it. UNIX isn't a
toy and I don't consider loading it on a toy to be anything but an
idle hobby like doing a crossword puzzle.
> > I do UNIX, OpenVMS and NT at work.
> > I do Win 95/98 at home.
>
> In order of how much I work on them:
>
> I do NT, UNIX, and various real-time systems at work.
> I do UNIX and NT at home.
> > All are fine for their intended purpose.
> I pay little attention to the "intended" purpose of an operating system. Rather
> I look at what they do and what I need done. Microsoft "intends" Windows NT
> to be used as a server. I find it makes about as good a desktop OS as you can
> find, if you need to run Windows software. It's not very well suited as a
> server, unless you're willing to direct a whole lot of capital expenditure
> into buying at least one separate server for each job.
>
> I notice that lately Microsoft has been advertising NT *against* 98 as a
> desktop. Their intended application has changed, perhaps? It's certainly a
> ray of hope.
Not sure. We're just starting to roll out NT and, so far, only
have a limited base (in my shop. some shops are all NT). But, much
like the giant boulder in the first "Indiana Jones" flick, NT is
coming and there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell of stopping it.
Our agency has even stated that by 2002 we will be all NT. I have
no "jihad" against it and I've even signed up for the classes. I
figure we do a dozen or so OS's now, what's one more. I will feel
much better about NT when I get a more solid base in it. On the
other hand, I am once again in the minority. Most other SAs are, as
usual, digging in their heels and refusing to learn it.
> > As soon as someone starts
> >to talk about how Windows PCs are ill-suited for writing code at
> >home, I write them off as ill-suited for this type of discussion as
> >they already have lost sight of the fact (or are so deep into
> >programming) to realize that the kids, grannies, Yuppies, etc... who
> >are buying PCs from "Best Buys" and "Circuit City" are not buying
> >them to write code.
> Who's talking about grannies, yuppies, and kids. You were complaining about
> people running UNIX at home, and I was explaining why *I* did it.
Actually I was "complaining" about people dismissing PCs out of
hand because they aren't a great development platform, don't have
any kind of real security or can't do all the things that UNIX can.
If what you do at home is better suited to a UNIX box, then you
should be running a UNIX box by all means. My offense is with those
that so hate PCs for illogical reasons ("Windoze", "Micro$soft",
"Bill Gates", etc...) that they contend even Joe Sixpack would be
better served by buying a UNIX box or loading LINUX on his PC than
by picking up a PC for a song, grabbing a few interesting titles at
"Sam's Club" and popping in the 'autorun' CDROM to install them when
he gets home. I don't see the lines between the two as all that
blurred.
> I just helped my ex-CFO get a PC running Windows 98, because that's what's
> best suited for her.
I suspect that we agree much more than we disagree but we've just
started off pricking each other the wrong way. :-)
> I used to recommend Macs but I can't really justify them any more, given
> the likely future of Apple. But I can't find internet client software on
> Windows that satisfies me [2] (well, netscape, but even there I'd really like
> to perform massive surgery on the toolbar. Internet Explorer prior to 4.0
> wasn't bad, but I don't like the new version... and I can run Netscape on
> UNIX
Every day at work I have to wonder why Netscape takes longer to
come up on my 500 MHz ALPHA with 128MB RAM than it does on my
pitiful little P150 with 64MB RAM. (I know... it's that the port to
DEC UNIX isn't that great -- again, they put their development
effort where the volume is)
> and save a bit of money on RAM) and I couldn't build my personal web
> pages on a Windows 98 box [3], so I use UNIX and run a script that assembles
> them from text files and a database.
Archaic as it sounds, I use "vi" to make web pages. Admittedly I
don't do too much JAVA or frames or things like that. I just make
basic web pages with links and pictures to give our users a place to
find the information they need. I also do forms and cgi-scripts to
automate things like account requests. All vi.
> [1] I don't expect them to, either. I'd much rather they spend their time
> doing their job. I do encourage them to learn more, but that's not
> their job... it's mine.
>
> [2] What newsreader do you use, for example?
I just use the one that comes with Netscape. I downloaded "Agent"
and my brother uses it on his PC but I never even fired it up.
Before I got the cable modem, my ISP included a shell account on
their SOLARIS server and I used PINE.
> [3] We got in a whole bunch of fancy Microsoft-based web tools at work, but
> they all produced really horrible HTML... and didn't save me any time
> over writing quick glue scripts.
Catch you later,
Rev. Don Kool
> IRev. Don Kool <old...@home.com> wrote:
> > Please... the minute you talk about some form of free pseudo-UNIX
> >on a PC, we're talking a different language. PCs are for games and
> >windows. If you want to do UNIX, buy an ALPHA (or HP, or SGI or
> >even a SUN).
> There's nothing "pseudo" about BSD. It's a rock solid operating system.
It's not the OS I was thinking about :-)
No, just kidding really... I don't have any experience running any
form of UNIX on a PC. At work we just plain don't do it. We have
high dollar UNIX workstations on everyone's desk. They don't run
it. There are some offices (more each day) that have PCs but they
run NT. The only way I would ever see PC-UNIX would be to load it
at home. And, as we've been arguing, at home UNIX would never do it
for what I, and most of America, want our PCs for.
Doug Hughes
> Volker Borchert wrote:
>
> I had to tap one lightly on the desk once to get the mouse
> unstuck. Two taps, I think. Other than that, I haven't had to
> replace one ever and I've never had a user come in needing a
> replacement either. Not counting lost mouse "pads", we replace
> about 10 optical mice a year. All that is beside the point to me
> anyway because I'm not talking about reliability when I say they
> suck. I'm talking about using one on a daily basis. Holding the
> mouse "pad" down with one hand while you try to slide the mouse over
> it with the other isn't my idea of a pleasurable computing
> experience. The ones with the clear light are much better than the
> ones with the red light though. The ones with the red light stick
> to the "pad" like glue. Also I've never had to walk a user through
> properly orienting his mouse pad for a ball mouse.
>
This has nothing to do with the LED, but with the quality of the felt
and the cleanliness/dirtiness of the mouse pad. Keep your area clean and
dust every once in a while and things will work a lot better. (Same thing
goes for mechanical mice -- keep area clean for best results. You can also
get replacement felt, or, do as we did and replace with teflon. Slides
like butter at the expense of some light scratching of pad (coating pad
woul help here - but we just made our own.)
Craig Armour
> horrible free UNIXes on them.
and what is so Horrible about these *Free* unixes. I had the first
Unscheduled downtime on our mailserver in six months the other day... an
that was only because the UPS failed.
Free un*xs are good. they provide a cheap, cost effective means to setup
servers and workstations. Software for them is easy to find, and 99% of
the time, if you can't find an application that can handle your
*Specific* task, you can always hack the source of one to do it.
And they run on my VAXstation ;)
Cheers
--
Craig Armour: Kings College, C.Ar...@kings.uq.edu..au
The University of Queensland s34...@student.uq.edu..au
Brisbane, Australia remove erroneous character to reply
Rev. Don Kool
> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> |Timothy J. Lee wrote:
> |> "Rev. Don Kool" <old...@home.com> writes:
> |> | UNIX does what it does very well, very expensive and very stable
> |> |for its users. PCs do what they do very cheaply
> |> Ummm, Unix is cheaper than Microsoft OSes.
Call SGI up and order a copy of IRIX 6.5.
> E.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris
> |> (non-commercial version for $10 + shipping), SCO (non-commercial version
> |> for some cheap price that's less than Microsoft OSes).
> | Please... the minute you talk about some form of free pseudo-UNIX
> |on a PC, we're talking a different language. PCs are for games and
> |windows. If you want to do UNIX, buy an ALPHA (or HP, or SGI or
> |even a SUN).
> Why? A new $700 PC running any of the above is often faster and more
> useful than a used DEC, HP, SGI, or Sun computer that costs as much or
> more. It's often also more useful than the same PC running a Microsoft
> OS.
"More useful" to who? Is "a new $700 PC running any of the above"
more "useful" to me when I want to run '"Turbo Tax" to compute and
electronically file my return? Is it "more useful" when I want to
run the latest version of "Office" so that I can exchange documents
with my office mates or friends without conversion? Is it "more
useful" when I want to run "PhotoShop"? It may be faster on running
benchmarks but it is not "more useful" by a long shot for people
that want to run commercial off the shelf (COTS) software. As a
matter of fact, unless you want to do at home software development
on the cheap (or just tinker and learn UNIX), there is no compelling
reason to load any variant of UNIX on a home PC.
> Also, if Sun Solaris is Unix, by your definition, then where does the
> "pseudo-Unix" comment come from with respect to Solaris x86?
I would never consider SUN SOLARIS to be UNIX. It is merely a
varaint. As is "Solaris x86".
Hope this helps,
Michael David Jones
>In article <6te11u$22...@alumni.rpi.edu>,
>Michael David Jones <jon...@alumni.rpi.edu> wrote:
>>Actually, Solaris is a *lot* cheaper than the "Enterprise" version of
>>NT for any real number of users. A Solaris Server licence - unlimited
>>users - comes with any Sun server, and by the time you get done buying
>>Client Access Licenses for everybody after the first 10 NT users you
>>could probably buy another Sun for what you end up paying just for
>>software on NT with a couple of hundred users.
>At $13.00 for a client access license in quantity... you can't get much
>of a Sun for a couple three thousand. What really kills you is the per
>user licenses for applications.
200 users x $13 would get you an Ultra 5, not a bad desktop. But
you're right, the *real* problem is the CALs for Exchange and all the
other cruft that you get nicked for.
Mike Jones | jon...@rpi.edu
Languages such as Pascal, that use top down parsing and avoid goto
statements, practically force the programmer to implement algorithms in
a logically impeccable manner.
- Edward R. Swart