[comp.os.misc] Re^2: Unix bigotry

soren@freja.diku.dk (J|rn Bo S|rensen) (02/09/89)

pace@spectra.COM (William B. Pace) writes:

>               The bad part about ACL's was that you had to re-specify the
>ENTIRE access control list whenever you wanted to delete/change/add an entry
>(if you used the default CLI)....(Do they still do it this way?)

Yep! But a small 'shell-file' (CHACL <user/group>) could easily do it for you.

>but with a real nice extra.  Whenever a user accessed a file, the access
>was logged by account, number of accesses, date of last access and type
>of access.  Even if you PERMITted the file to the world, you could still
>get a list of the specific users that accessed the file.  

Just start SYSLOG/DETAIL=FULL (although that will quickly fill up your disks).
--------------------
Jan B. Andersen
aka :NET:MEZA.RUC.DK:UDD:D.JBA

marc@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Marc 'Sphere' Sabatella) (02/17/89)

/ hpfcdc:comp.os.misc / karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer) /  8:54 am  Feb 15, 1989 /

>NOS as an alternative to Unix?  Ha.  Consider that NOS only runs on expensive
>mainframes.  Consider also that CDC's highest performance machines, the
>ETA series, are available with Unix System V.  Can't you get a native Unix
>for the Cray, now, too?

(I believe CDC and ETA are separate entities, although ETA did spin off from
 CDC.  CDC's own supercomputers are the 200's)

There was a discussion (wasn't it here?) a while ago concerning single
character I/O.  NOS doesn't support it, and that fact alone causes it to
run X% faster than Unix on the same machine.  I would also claim that the better
support for batch-mode processing in NOS also makes it faster than Unix, and
the numerous kludges necessary to get Unix to run on a machine with 60 bit
words is also bound to slow it down a little more, etc.

If you are going to shell out the major $$$ for a Cyber 200, ETA-20, or Cray 2,
you don't want to saddle it with an operating system that is not going to take
full advantage of the hardware.

shore@mtxinu.COM (Melinda Shore) (02/23/89)

In article <5900004@hpfcdc.HP.COM> marc@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Marc 'Sphere' Sabatella) writes:
>If you are going to shell out the major $$$ for a Cyber 200, ETA-20, or Cray 2,
>you don't want to saddle it with an operating system that is not going to take
>full advantage of the hardware.

There are several errors in your assumptions.  First, "Unix" does not
necessarily mean "interactive."  NQS, the batching system provided with
Unicos and other large Unix systems, is surprisingly effective.  There
are sites that run their Crays under Unicos but batch-only.  Secondly,
most supercomputer users run enormous Fortran applications that do
very few system calls, so that compiler quality is more of an issue than
operating system performance.  (In the case of Cray machines, the compiler
used under Unicos is the same as that used under COS.)  Thirdly, again
in the case of Cray machines, Unicos performs very much like COS but
actually provides somewhat *faster* i/o.

Because the way in which large-scale scientific computers are used is
so different from the way in which smaller more conventional machines
are used that it is certainly worth rethinking the criteria used to talk
about appropriateness of operating systems.
-- 
Melinda Shore                                     shore@mtxinu.com
Mt Xinu                                      ..!uunet!mtxinu.shore