From: todd@draco.macsch.com (Todd C. Williams)
Subject: Re: Question for net.views column in UNIX Today!
Organization: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp.
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 92 10:19:38 GMT

In article <1992Apr3.190000.23149@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> vsnyder@math.jpl.nasa.gov (Van Snyder) writes:
>
>Sure, my PC crashes more frequently than my Unix box, but when it does, it
>only takes 15 seconds to reboot, not 15 minutes.

Do these numbers sound a bit exaggerated to anyone besides me?

>I'm willing to put up with that to have a REALLY GOOD editor (brief or sage

I wonder what "REALLY GOOD" means to you, as opposed to the rest of us...

>that I can afford ($250 or less),

elvis is a *free* vi clone.  I can afford that.

>The problem with Unix applications is that those one can afford are really
>sleazy (e.g. vi -- one level undo?

Sounds like you need to learn vi.

>edit one file at a time?

Sounds like you need to learn vi.

>modeful interface?

Yup.  It means I don't need keypads on all the different keyboards/terminals
I have to use.  It means I don't need those annoying WordPerfect function
key templates.  It means I don't have to take my fingers off the keyboard--
it means I can edit *faster*.

>while the good ones are really expensive (compare Frame or
>Interleaf or Island Write or Unix WordPerfect to Wordperfect or Word on a PC).

Earlier you said $500 was reasonable -- I've seen WP for UNIX for $280.
Comparing Interleaf to WP is comparing golden apples to rotten oranges.

>>> Everyone agrees that a standalone Unix system is harder to administer than a
>>> standalone Mac or PC.

Everyone agrees that an Indy car is harder to drive than a bicycle.

>>Well, mainly, when it breaks it breaks in less obvious ways. I'll agree that
>>the network situation is exactly the opposite: UNIX tends to let you know
>>what went wrong less ambiguously.
>Maybe when YOUR workstation breaks some network related thing your Unix
>tells you more obviously what is going on.  I recently had just the
>opposite experience:  (1)  The sendmail.cf that was delivered with our
>system carefully stripped off the internet domain name.

And I supposed your PC's and Macs have better, more powerful/configurable/
flexible mailers?

>(2) since it was sendmail.cf, which is the only thing I've ever seen that's
>worse than OS\360 JCL,

Guess you don't know about IDA sendmail...

>I just got one from a colleague, and it seemed to work.

And then you'll blame *your* mistake on the program you didn't care to learn.

>One doesn't look inside of sendmail.cf unless absolutely necessary, and one
>has almost no hope of changing it in such a way as to improve it.

Careful...your intelligence is showing.

>(3) A gateway two hops away broke.  (4) Nothing in my system told me that
>gateway was broken, since there was another gateway that gave me access
>to the same places.

Am I to assume that your PCs and Macs would automatically handle this?

>I stumbled onto /usr/spool/mqueue/syslog -- Isn't that an obvious place
>to look?  After all, that's where all the other log files for all the
>other tools go, right?

If you don't like it, configure it with syslog, and have it sent to
your screen or wherever you like.

>(7) After that, it was only a day's work to
>discover that the node my mail was being sent to was broken (ping +
>lots of phone calls), and eventually discover that it was mentioned
>in sendmail.cf as "DAfoo.bar" with nearby comments that "this is your
>internet mail relay..." with nothing nearby or in "man sendmail" that
>gives you a clue that that's the ONLY place your mail gets sent, even if
>it's on the same subnet you're on!

"man sendmail" is the man page for the sendmail executable.  There is
a separate document to describe the config file syntax, but you wouldn't
want to bother with reading anything -- since you "just got one from a
colleague, and it *seemed* to work" (emphasis mine).  Besides, with your
attitude of "sendmail.cf...the only thing I've ever seen that's worse
than OS\360 JCL", you wouldn't get anything out of it.

>I don't have anything on my PC's except telnet, rlogin, ftp and nfs,

What?!  No internet mailer programs which are better than sendmail???

>so I don't know whether network related problems are bigger on PC's
>or smaller, but the above experience convinced me that Unix network
>problems can get arbitrarily bad.

Well, car crashes are often much worse than bicycle accidents.
...especially if you don't know how to drive, and don't try to learn
before jumping in with both feet...and a negative attitude.
-- 
Todd Williams    UNIX Systems Coordinator     todd@macsch.com    (213) 259-4973
MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. ("MSC"),  815 Colorado Blvd.,  Los Angeles, CA   90041
"The Democrats stand for nothing except 'I wish I was a Republican' and the
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered
in balloons and ribbons."  -Frank Zappa, 1991  (Zappa for president!)
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