From: xm9@sdcc12.ucsd.edu (richard g. adair)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: HP-UX 9.0
Summary: SYSV roots?
Keywords: SUN and HP
Date: 5 Sep 92 14:11:20 GMT
Organization: Arete Associates, San Diego

In article <HARDY.92Sep2205331@golem.ps.uci.edu> hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) writes:

>??   but wonder if HP isn't drifiting back to it's SYSV roots...

One wonders if the ideal driving the OSF operating system is still
valid.  Originally, the OSF operating system was proposed to make
some sense out of the SYSV/BSD mismatch of UNIX operating systems
(Since the government insisted, plus the vendors saw FINALLY
that DOS was really the enemy :-) Actually, the fight was between
SUNATT and HPDECIBMSGIETC.  It appears now that SUN, being
disqualified for one too many government contracts, has recanted
their BSD origins and has brought out a SYSV kernel  (I just got it,
and it has a whole book about problems/changes),  SYSV print spooler
and all.  In actuality, there is now only one UNIX, as far as an
administrator can tell.  This is extremely healthy for UNIX if it
wants to survive ten more years (and HP for that matter.  HP may
want Bill Gates' market share, but the reverse is true.  Plus, ol'
Bill could buy HP if he wanted out of pocket change :-)

When (not if) OSF/MOTIF wanders off into SUN land, we will have a
level playing field.  Do we need to go farther?  If you put all the
new OSF (really Apollo) networking components into the SYSV TCP/IP
mess, you will have a very good and stable base.  Enough
development!

What UNIX needs a to be as easy as a MAC.  Not just for administration,
but for users.  How about the following:

	1) Pushing the power button starts shutdown.

	2) Easier networking (maybe buttons?  One button per
	   machine, push it and get a list of files systems to
	   mount?  Perhaps it can be folded into the file manager in
	   Vue?  Click and drag for mounts?  How about defaulting to
	   soft and bg for disk mounts?  How about an NFS that
	   automatically takes NFS disks offline when a machine
	   goes down, and doesn't bring them back up until the
	   machine comes back on line?  How about an NFS that 
	   realizes that a copy from one remote machine to another,
	   like so, is two network file copies of the data:

			machine-1		machine-2
				\		/
				 \	      /
				  host-machine

	  Whereas a single copy could be done if the host-machine
	  just issues a copy command to machine-1?

			machine-1 --------->   machine-2
			   \
			Please copy?
			     \
				host-machine

	3) Better press.  Maybe even OSF sponsered UNIX ads?

	4) A self modifying kernel?  The Kernel says, "Gee, I'm out
   	   of this resource, let's send mail to the root user and tell
	   him/her what is wrong!  How about fix it myself?"

	5) Dual fork file systems.  Yeah, you may have to license
	   this from Apple, but you'll need this if Vue will ever work
	   for normal humans.  File extensions for file types are
	   just too kludgy for words, left over from the VMS/DOS days.


There are plenty of others.  Perhaps the UNIX wars really should be
over, with OSF being the fighter against other operating systems?
UNIX White Blood Cells   OSF becomes WBC? :-)

Tony Burzio
Arete Associates
San Diego, CA
From: mjs@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 20:00:44 GMT
Subject: Re: get rid of dld.sl in C environment
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA