Guardian and OSS environment.

[Shiva]

Hi again.
I've read through some more manuals and I found that in Tandem system - there's basically two environments. One, Guardian, and other OSS. I believe where I do all my work (FUP, spooler, volume, and all my taco commands that I've learnt) are from the guardian environment - though I'm still not sure. And I tried to understand the OSS environment, but not quite so easy. Because everywhere in the manual and online - I find that OSS is always relatively compared with Linux et al. For someone who has not much knowledge about linux - how would you go about explaining both these environments? And am I right when I say - only these two environments? Irrespective of G or J series, or so?

[Keith Dick]

Shiva wrote:
> Hi again.
> I've read through some more manuals and I found that in Tandem system - there's basically two environments. One, Guardian, and other OSS. I believe where I do all my work (FUP, spooler, volume, and all my taco commands that I've learnt) are from the guardian environment - though I'm still not sure. And I tried to understand the OSS environment, but not quite so easy. Because everywhere in the manual and online - I find that OSS is always relatively compared with Linux et al. For someone who has not much knowledge about linux - how would you go about explaining both these environments? And am I right when I say - only these two environments? Irrespective of G or J series, or so?

I am not sure I picked up on everything you are asking about, but I certainly can answer some of what you ask.

TACL, FUP, SPOOLCOM/PERUSE, VOLUME -- yes all of those are in the Guardian environment.

All the software series -- G, H, or J -- provide the Guardian and OSS environments.

Guardian and OSS are not completely separate from each other as you might at first think. For example, as a programmer, you can use features of both in the same program if you find that useful. At the interactive command level, most OSS commands can access at least some Guardian files. The OSH command lets you run OSS commands from the Guardian environment and the gtacl command lets your run Guardian commands from the OSS environment.

You are right that there is not much introductory descriptions of OSS features and tools. Knowledge of Unix or Linux is very widespread, so I imagine Tandem/Compaq/HP felt it was not necessary to educate the NonStop users on the basics of OSS because it is very much like Unix or Linux. There are lots of books and some web sites that offer beginner's introductions to Unix or Linux. That would be the route to take to gain some understanding of it. If you want to do a little hands-on learning of Unix/Linux basics, but don't want to do it on your NonStop system, you can use VirtualBox on a Windows PC to create a virtual machine into which you can install any of the popular Linux distributions. That is pretty good for learning, though you'll need to do a bit of system administration of the Linux installation that way, and you would not have to do any system administration if you use the OSS environment on your NonStop system.

I will stop here for now. I hope this makes things a bit more clear. Continue to ask questions about things you want to understand better.

[Robert Hutchings]

Hi Shiva,

Keith's suggestion to use VirtualBox for Windows to learn Linux is a very good idea. You can download VirtualBox for free and then download Ubuntu or almost any "distro" ISO and install it. In the old days, Cygwin was a POSIX implementation for Windows and it is still available for free.

However, Guardian is a unique OS and can learned with manuals and tutorials. I highly recommend that you visit docs.hp.com and click on "NonStop" on page 2.

[Shiva]

Hey keith! Your answers definitely cleared many doubts, but also sparkled a few doubts. And I'm in no position to try and learn Linux or Unix at this point. Is there a way or a manual for non-unix background people to know OSS better. I already feel like I know the answer you're going to give. But still, that optimist in me, hopes for a positive reply.

It's not that I don't want to learn unix at this point - but that the odds are stacked against, if I may say so. Even me spending time to learn tandem is getting harder with my work schedule, but I'm determined not to let anything stop me. And a very thank you for continuing to answer all my silly questions with long and clear answers. I'm very impressed.

[Shiva]

Hey Robert, thanks for your suggestions. I did try that link. I took a lot of modules from that link. It is one of those modules that raised this question in me. :)

[Keith Dick]

Shiva wrote:
> Hey keith! Your answers definitely cleared many doubts, but also sparkled a few doubts. And I'm in no position to try and learn Linux or Unix at this point. Is there a way or a manual for non-unix background people to know OSS better. I already feel like I know the answer you're going to give. But still, that optimist in me, hopes for a positive reply.
>
> It's not that I don't want to learn unix at this point - but that the odds are stacked against, if I may say so. Even me spending time to learn tandem is getting harder with my work schedule, but I'm determined not to let anything stop me. And a very thank you for continuing to answer all my silly questions with long and clear answers. I'm very impressed.

There is a manual that might be good for what you want: Open System Services User's Guide. It is in the online manual set, along with the other manuals I imagine you have been reading. I've never used it much, so I cannot say how well it would work as an introduction for someone unfamiliar with Unix/Linux, but it might be worth looking at. At least it does cover aspects of the integration between OSS and Guardian, which you would not get in a basic tutorial on Unix or Linux. I just skimmed the table of contents, and it looks reasonable, at least at first glance.

You probably would not have to read all of this manual. There probably are many things that you would just not be interested in at first, so you could skip over them until you come to something that does look like you'd want to know about it.

It might not be the best way to learn about OSS, but it is the only manual I can think of right now to suggest.

[Shiva]

Thanks again, keith. I'll look into it and get back to you. Don't have enough words to thank this forum!