ucscb.bitbug@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (07/13/86)
Much has been said about how badly UC Berkeley supports BSD 4.x. My question is: how well do BSD licensees such as Mt. Xinu and others support BSD Unix? If BSD is badly supported by everyone, fine, but nowhere have I seen mention of third party vendors in flames about BSD support. James Buster ucscc!ucscb.bitbug@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
kimery@wdl1.UUCP (07/15/86)
/ wdl1:net.unix / ucscb.bitbug@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU / 5:24 am Jul 13, 1986 / #Much has been said about how badly UC Berkeley supports BSD 4.x. #My question is: how well do BSD licensees such as Mt. Xinu and #others support BSD Unix? If BSD is badly supported by everyone, #fine, but nowhere have I seen mention of third party vendors #in flames about BSD support. Strange, I don't remember anything about support in the 4.x BSD license agreement. Try Mt. Xinu. They are in the business of supporting 4.x BSD.
ables@mcc-pp.UUCP (King Ables) (07/18/86)
You might be interested to know that Mt. Xinu only supports
4.3BSD to the extent that they want to. Their contract says
if they make mods or bug fixes, they can send them to customers,
but if they don't make any bug fixes, that's ok, too. 'course,
that's a lot more support than you'll get from Berkeley
(0.0001 > 0).
-King
ARPA: ables@mcc.arpa
UUCP: {gatech,ihnp4,nbires,seismo,ucbvax}!ut-sally!im4u!milano!mcc-pp!ables
---
"And in our top 10 list of body parts and Van Pattens, we have a tie
at number one.... Richard." -Davechris@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/20/86)
In article <1132@mcc-pp.UUCP> ables@mcc-pp.UUCP (King Ables) writes: >You might be interested to know that Mt. Xinu only supports >4.3BSD to the extent that they want to. Their contract says >if they make mods or bug fixes, they can send them to customers, >but if they don't make any bug fixes, that's ok, too. How does this differ from the support provided from any other company? One trusts a company to fix bugs because one knows the company will not last long if said company does not, not because the company has somehow promised to do so. >'course, that's a lot more support than you'll get from Berkeley >(0.0001 > 0). Actually, Berkeley does provide a rather amazing amount of support, considering that they have no particular need to do so. I recall a time a few years ago trying to bring 4.1 up on a 750 with only an RA81 drive. We got a boot sequence over the phone to read the tape, and some similar stuff, and wasted about two hours on that before discovering that the system had its UDA50 at a non-standard address . . . . -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@mimsy.umd.edu
rex@usgs3-vms.arpa (07/23/86)
One more item on Mt Xinu's support of BSD. I've repeatedly asked about support for Fortran (no groaning please). Their usual answer is something like "we don't really support Fortran 'cause no one here is into Fortran". Since we literally have hundreds of thousands of lines of Fortran here, and the 4.2 f77 was essentially shipped broken (later fixed - thanks again Donn Seeley & friends), Mt Xinu did not get our business. -- Rex
mwm@mica.berkeley.edu (Mike Meyer) (08/03/86)
Am I the only person who has had good experiences with Mt. Xinu? We bought a binary from them, and got quick response to problems, almost always new software by UUCP or over-night mail. Occasionally, we got "We don't do that, and never claimed to" (which was invariably correct). However, even in those cases, things weren't hopeless. To wit: In article <2489@brl-smoke.ARPA> rex@usgs3-vms.arpa writes: >One more item on Mt Xinu's support of BSD. I've repeatedly asked about support >for Fortran (no groaning please). Their usual answer is something like >"we don't really support Fortran 'cause no one here is into Fortran". >Since we literally have hundreds of thousands of lines of Fortran here, >and the 4.2 f77 was essentially shipped broken (later fixed - thanks again >Donn Seeley & friends), Mt Xinu did not get our business. I recognize that problem; that's the shape we were in. I recommended we run VMS instead of Unix because of the thousands of lines of FORTRAN, and only stopped objecting loudly to Unix after I got a look at the "new, improved f77" that was floating around at the time (mid-83). When the stock 4.2 f77 proved to be unusable, I talked to Donn Seeley & Mt Xinu, and viola - Mt Xinu got a tape from Donn, and shipped me binaries of the new version (which Donn couldn't do because of screwiness in the AT&T license). Worked much better, and everyone was happy (thanx again, Donn). We only had one problem that didn't get resolved to everybodies satisfaction, and that involved some kernel mods specifically for us, for which Mt. Xinu wanted far to much money. I have no problems recommending Mt. Xinu to people based on our experiences. <mike
brad@gcc-milo.ARPA (Brad Parker) (08/04/86)
> > Am I the only person who has had good experiences with Mt. Xinu?... >... > <mike No, you're not the only one. We've used Mt.Xinu for a few years to support our Unix systems. I've always been very pleased with their service and support. We don't use Fortran, so I can't comment on that. I've found them easy to work with and very willing to make changes in our configuration and then uucp a new kernel. (We're a binary only site). These days they ship a reconfigurable kernel. That's all I ever wanted (except source ;-) Also, their "BSD bug list" seems very complete and they seem to address the things on it in a timely manner (our Mt. Xinu unix is the only unix (out of 5) which has a dumb rwho bug fixed) -- J Bradford Parker General Computer (HyperDrive Beach, 3rd Cabana) harvard!gcc-milo!brad Good Sex is easier than a good slow roll. ("Left Stick! Right Rudder!...")