dma-mm (02/17/83)
Anyone having used UNITY or IS1 please respond with opinions of its useability, support, and speed of operation; we are considering these as replacements for EUNICE. Thanx, ....!cca!dma-mm (michael)
custead (02/19/83)
>From the information I gleaned at UNICOM I concluded that both
of these were less complete than EUNICE. At least one (and
maybe both -- can't find my notes) were lacking uucp support.
For many sites, uucp is one of the primary motives for running
EUNICE -- to allow UNIX and VMS machines to exchange files.
I sat down at the UNITY terminal at UNICOM. The rep at the booth
said that it was full 4.1. I immediately noticed that finger
and uptime were not there. One of the things I especially like
about EUNICE is the 4BSD style load average reporting that it provides.
(Both finger and uptime work correctly under EUNICE.)
If anyone has more information comparing these 3 emulations, pleae
(oops) please post it...I think it would be of general interest
to readers of this newsgroup.
custeadjohnl (02/21/83)
#R:cca:-434600:ima:14500001:000:2491
ima!johnl Feb 20 14:20:00 1983
Since there seems to be interest yet in Unity, Eunice, IS/1, and the
like, here's the party line on IS/1-VMS as best as I understand it. For
the record, I work for Interactive Systems, supplier of IS/1, but have no
particular connection with the VMS product.
The important thing to understand is that IS/1 (which has been
renamed IS/WB since we upgraded it to System III) has a significantly
different goal from Eunice or Unity. Eunice and especially Unity are
designed to emulate Unix as exactly as possible under VMS. Compatibility
with native VMS programs is not a major goal in either case. IS/WB is
intended to provide as much Unix functionality as we can while
admitting that we're in a VMS environment.
For example, IS/1 doesn't translate filenames (except to upper case,
and change slashes to brackets for directory names) and uses VMS file
formats wherever possible, particularly when the files contain text.
This means that you can't use all the file names you use under native
Unix, so that uucp, which uses strange names, doesn't work right. (We
have our own INnet network which works fine and gateways to uucp, by the
way.) The other two give you general Unix filenames but have to use
complex name translation schemes where the VMS file names bear no simple
relation to the Unix file name. Also, IS/WB programs can be run either
under the shell which runs them as a separate process, or from DCL which
loads them directly into its address space, saving a lot of time. In
each case, IS/WB chooses a smoother interface with VMS where the others
choose more exact Unix emulation.
The point here is that IS/WB is for people who are using VMS in
production and want to add Unix tools and programs. The other two seem
more for people who want to use Unix but are forced by their system
managers to use VMS. It depends on what you want. Please don't flame
about how awful VMS is; I'm not too crazy about it but there's a lot of
canned software that runs only under VMS.
There are other issues too, notably price and support. IS/WB is not
cheap, but it has been around longer than the other two and so is
probably better shaken down. IS/WB also has a lot of optional mail,
networking, and word-processing software that go way beyond what Unix
gives you.
John Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238; (617) 491-5450
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