snoopy@ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz) (12/17/85)
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Organization: European Computer-Industry Research Centre, Munchen, W. Germany
Keywords: System V, DEC, UNIX
Dear Friends,
please forgive the numerous cross postings, but I have heard a
bit of news here in Germany, that is disturbing.
The news is, that DEC will in future support System V on its
VAX products.
This is all it said. Now the questions. Hopefully one of you
out there (you listening, Armando ??) could tell me (us)
more...
1- Does this mean that DEC will not base its future Ultrix
releases on BSD 4.n, as it has done in the past ?
2- Is this something to do with the fact that Bell are
changing their "porting base" to 3B2 processors and DEC has to
therefore take over the responsibility of releases for VAX ?
2.5 (as related with above) Will a yes answer to the above mean
that there will be a System V based Ultrix and a BSD based one ?
( I.e. two Ultrices instead of one ?)
3- Will DEC "do away" with BSD completely ? I.e. will the next
Ultrix (1.3 or 2.0) be a System V based kernel, and all
utilities change (and all those networks go away???) ?
4- Or will the System V support be on a level similar to Mt.
Xinu's MORE/bsd, which provides a compatibility library
only ?
5;-) Will Bell take over the world ?
Please understand: I have this from an official source (albeit
in German) and I am getting worried. Please reply either to the
net or to me and I will summarise.
Thanks,
Snoops
(Anxiety INC.)
--
Love,
Sebastian (Snoopy)
"You haven't done it, till you've done it with pointers"
\!mcvax\!unido\!ecrcvax\!snoopy /* N.B. valid csh address */george@cornell.UUCP (George R. Boyce) (12/18/85)
From DECUS I have a document which lists the mods made to v1.1 of ultrix in order to get v1.2. In sort DEC has: 1. ported System V IPC facilities including shared memory semaphores, message queues, and named pipes. Shared memory segments are virtual and are eligble for paging and swapping. Named pipes use sockets for actual data transfer. 2. added System V system call interface. A compile time environment variable and/or compile switch (-Y) selects whether the System V libraries are searched first or last. This work was based on the work of Douglas Gwyn of BRL. 3. *not* ported any System V section (1) commands and utilities except for ipcs and ipcrm. 4. very good conformance with System V as measured by the System V Interface Definition published by AT&T. The small differences are in the area of error codes returned by some of the system calls. The above is paraphrase of a paper titled Evaluation of System V Compatibility in Ultrix-32 V1.2 written by Gregory Depp and David Ballenger of DEC. I have complete faith that the BSD4.2 basis of Ultrix will continue to be what Ultrix is all about. But the above additions sure look nice to me. Oh, the also added the BSD4.3 speedups but not xns or nfs. I understand that they are fixing a few problems before they announce distributed file system support. George Boyce, Cornell Computer Services, george@cornell
jrw@opus.UUCP (James R. Webb) (12/18/85)
Disturbing news? I know this is not the place for the religious war between the System V and Berkeley factions, but I think DEC is moving in the right direction in "supporting" System V on the VAX line. A clarification here, by supporting, I mean that they have purchased the source license from ATT and modified the code to allow it to be used with their processors. For example, one of the machines I administer is an 8600 that runs System V Rel. 2. When we bought the machine it came with a cpio tape of source files that DEC had changed in the standard release of SVR2. DEC supports these changes to the operating system. They support the UDA50 for System V Releases 1 and 2 in the same fashion, they supply an update tape. The rational behind this is that, if they sent out an entire distribution, then they would be selling UNIX, and would have to charge the $43,000 source licence cost, as ATT would be loosing sales then. This is the only support I know of as to DEC's policy on System V. I have heard that they are not supporting 4.3BSD on the 8600 because it would be in direct competition with Ultrix, so I doubt very much that they are abandoning Ultrix... I highly doubt that they will bring out a System V Ultrix either, for there really is no reason for them to do so, for they charge MANY $$$ just for they update tapes to System V now... -- James R. Webb ihnp4!opus!jrw
jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao) (12/19/85)
In article <177@ecrcvax.UUCP> snoopy@ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz) writes: >The news is, that DEC will in future support System V on its >VAX products. The official line from DEC is that Ultrix 1.2 (the next release, for those of us who aren't already beta-testing it) will be built on the current release (1.1, which is 4.2 + frills) but it will also meet the System V Interface Description (SVID). In other words, DEC claims that any program which meets the specifications in the SVID (roughly equivalent to s5r2.0v2 +/- 2) can be compiled and run under Ultrix 1.2 with no loss of functionality. They say that at the same time it will also exhibit all the lovable charac- teristics of 4.2 BSD with a good number of performance enhancements from 4.3 BSD thrown in. I have removed net.followup from the header, and hope all people of good sense did the same. -- Joe Yao hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
naftoli@aecom.UUCP (Robert N. Berlinger) (12/25/85)
> The official line from DEC is that Ultrix 1.2 (the next release, > for those of us who aren't already beta-testing it) will be built > on the current release (1.1, which is 4.2 + frills) but it will > also meet the System V Interface Description (SVID). Even though Ultrix might meet the SVID, it does not necessarily follow that anything will port straight over. 1. SVID does not mention anything about the C compiler, yet programs might have to be changed to get them to compile on a 4.2BSD based cc. 2. Many programs rely on the System V utilities to be present. So far, I haven't heard anything about DEC porting the application level utilities. 3. SVID does not mention anything about hardware support. Will DEC support my RM05 look alikes? My KMC11 assisted DZ11s? My KMC11 driven RJE? I'm sure I could think of a few more question... So far, I'm not convinced that ULTRIX will do the job for us System V/DEC customers. -- Robert Berlinger ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,ihnp4,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli
radzy@calma.UUCP (Tim Radzykewycz) (01/01/86)
In article <177@ecrcvax.UUCP> snoopy@ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz) writes:
[Snoopy mentions that he is disturbed by an announcement that DEC
will support sysV on the VAX computers]
If I understand correctly, what DEC plans to do is provide a
*source level* system V compatibility. Ultrix will continue
to be based on 4.X, but with enhancements which allow source
compatibility. Of course, this means a new set of "compatibility"
libraries, a few new system calls, and a new compiler/assembler
flag. They plan to follow the SVID (system V interface definition)
published by AT&T.
The reason for this plan seems to be that DEC predicts that future
serious work will have most products based on the AT&T version
of UN*X, and that most developers prefer bsd for software development.
disclaimer:
Please note that I am not employed by DEC and have only talked with
a few DEC personell. I have neither the ability, nor the right
to give actual DEC company policy on this or any other matter.
--
Tim (radzy) Radzykewycz, The Incredible Radical Cabbage.
calma!radzy@ucbvax.ARPA
{ucbvax,sun,csd-gould}!calma!radzy