fkittred@uunet.uu.net (Fletcher Kittredge) (01/26/89)
schultz@mmm.serc.3m.com (John C Schultz) writes: >We would like to add an HP 9000/340 or 350 (w its own boot disk and tape >drive) to an existing small network of SUN stations - all SUN 3 >somethings....How close is HP's UNIX to SunOS?... 1) We have such an environment, and it works quite well. Actually, in our environment, we have workstations from a large number of vendors co-existing without major problems. 2) HP-UX is not close to Sun O/S at all. However, if you are not a Unix hacker, you probably won't notice. HP-UX has a pretty good compatibilty package, with the major, inexplicable exception of lack of Unix domain sockets. >The only difficulty I can see is that complex software such as the GNU >code tends to require different flags to compile/link as compared to SUN >systems. 3) Since the HPs are faster, we have our general purpose software live on them. On our main HP server, I have one copy of the main GNU packages, I then symlink the sources into various platform specific directories. Presently we have architecture specific directories for the Sun4, VAX Ultrix, Sun3, HP300 and HP800. To compile, we just break the link to the configuration specific files, modify them and run the make. The objects end up the the platform specific directories. This process is surprising easy. For instance, I think that for GNU emacs the only file unique to a platform is "config.h" (we share the same copy of the lisp code between all systems.) 4) My impression is as of 1/19/88, HPs support of X11 is second to none, many of their own utilities are built on top of it. Their current supported version is X11R2+, with the + being backing store and bug fixes. 5) One caveat is that this is a porting, X mumbling, Unix hacking group; there may be problems we don't notice that a different group might find bothersome. regards, fletcher Fletcher E. Kittredge fkittred@bbn.com
dfh@uncecs.edu (David Hinnant) (01/26/89)
schultz@mmm.serc.3m.com (John C Schultz) writes: > I am looking for anyone's opinions on how well this will work. How close > is HP's UNIX to SunOS? They both have NFS so can I mount SUN disks on the > HP and vice-versa. We use X windows on our SUNs, presumably the same > software, e.g. twm, emacs, xgdb will work on HPs? We have a HP-900/318M a Sun-3/260 and a Sun-4/260. NFS is no problem, although each system administers it differently (SunOS 3.5 on the Sun-3; SunOS 4.01 on the Sun-4). Ugh. One nice thing though, HP has YP which also works A-OK with the Suns. We run X11r3 on the Suns and HP's very own X11r2 on the HP. Ugh. HP took out most of the nicer core and user contributed standard HP stuff -- no xcalc; not even xlogo! Nice thing though, we have the X source... I had a "remsh" (HP's name for "rsh") on the HP that invoked xcalc and other stuff off of the Suns. No problem. Dunno about gdb; we're just getting the GNU stuff compiled and installed. Our HP has no tape. We do backups to the Suns over Ethernet of the user files system. If the system ever croaks, we'll borrow a tape drive and rebuild enough to get Ethernet up and then restore from the Sun's tape drive because (in my limited experience) HP TAPE DRIVES CANNOT READ TAPES CREATED ON ANY NORMAL MACHINE. Also I cannot read normal tapes in my HP machine. What's the scoop? Has anyone found an exception to this? Watch out for mail on the HP. Sucks. Big time. Our Sun-4 serves as the UUCP gateway to the outside world. On the Suns you can use "@" and "!" type network addresses to any machine. On the HP if you use Ethernet as the delivery media, good old UUCP syntax croaks; only Arpa style addresses work. HP says this will be fixed in HP-UX 6.5. However, I'm not sure if I want to run another larger OS on my non-upgradable, 4 MB 68020 machine. It pages like a slug from hell now. With just modest old me witha few xterms and normal background daemons I whip a load average of 7-9 with no effort. Hhmmm. You be the judge. David Hinnant UUCP: ...{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!dfh Bell Northern Research (919) 991-8299
glenn@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams) (01/27/89)
schultz@mmm.serc.3m.com (John C Schultz): > I am looking for anyone's opinions on how well this will work. We just integrated 40 hp9000s300 systems into a large networked Sun environment with few problems. > How close is HP's UNIX to SunOS? HP-UX is Sytem V based versus Berkeley derived. This does result in some inevitable differences. However, with Sun incorporating more of S5R3 all the time, and HP incorporating many Berkeleyisms, they are both beginning to look more similar. The main complaint with the HPs is the lack of job control, i.e., SIGSTOP, SIGCONT, etc. > They both have NFS so can I mount SUN disks on the HP and vice-versa. > We use X windows on our SUNs, presumably the same software, e.g. twm, > emacs, xgdb will work on HPs? NFS interoperates nicely. In fact we adopt a file system architecture on the HPs similar to SunOS 4.0: we moved the HP /usr to a Sun file server under /export/exec/hp. This required moving a few things out of /usr to /var, e.g., /usr/spool, /usr/tmp, /usr/lib/cron, etc. All user directories live on Sun file servers. This leaves only 17MBytes on the local HP disk, giving pleny of space for swap and temp space. We use X11R3 on both Suns and HPs. > The only difficulty I can see is that complex software such as the GNU > code tends to require different flags to compile/link as compared to SUN > systems. To solve this, we created a link tree for each system which is isomorphic to the source tree. Makefiles, objects, and executables are local to the link tree, sources stay in the source tree. For building X, your imake template will pick up the correct macros depending on the /lib/cpp predefines and build the correct Makefile tree specific to that system. The same can be done with most generic systems, e.g., GNU emacs, etc. As for installing local binaries, libraries, etc., we created an /export/exec.local/{hp,sun3} on the Sun file servers which gets mounted to /usr/local on HPs and Suns. All architecture dependent files go in there. Architecture independent local files go into /export/share.local/{lib,man,...} which gets mounted to /usr/local/share. Things like the emacs lisp libraries, X library directory (excluding SNF fonts), local man pages, etc. go there. Merging the systems certainly complicates matters a bit, but makes updating a bit easier in that you don't have to remember where all the copies of variants live; you can just conditionalize shared files as appropriate for minor variants. For example, we have default .cshrc and .login files that live in /usr/local/share/lib/ that get run by both HPs and Suns. This allows us to instantiate as identical environments as possible on the different flavors of systems. Glenn Adams MIT AI Laboratory
scott@longs.lance.colostate.edu (02/01/89)
We have 11 HP 9000/320's and 330's running HP-UX 6.2 with NFS sharing a network with 4 SUN 3/50's and 150 VAXstations, all running some variant of UNIX. NFS YP, and X to and from HP's works well for us. The problem you may have is that HP-UX is a System V kernel with "BSD enhancements." You can share account and file space between HP and SUN, but be careful with .login and .cshrc. HP-UX and SunOS don't always agree on what you can put in these files. Our approach has been to partition the HP filespace from the SUN's and VAXen. You may be interested in a BSD port to HP 3XX's from the University of Utah CS dept. (hpbsd-dist@cs.utah.edu) Scott C Douglas Center for Computer Assisted Engineering College of Engineering Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 303-491-7954 scott@longs.lance.colostate.edu
aad@uunet.uu.net (Anthony A. Datri) (02/08/89)
[[ Some people have told me that they can't reach this person at either address he gives. So the From line for this message is taken straight from the "Berkeley" From line. If it doesn't work, nothing will. --wnl ]] ames!mailrus!BBN.COM!fkittred@uunet.uu.net (Fletcher Kittredge) writes: >schultz@mmm.serc.3m.com (John C Schultz) writes: >>We would like to add an HP 9000/340 or 350 (w its own boot disk and tape >>drive) to an existing small network of SUN stations - all SUN 3 >>somethings....How close is HP's UNIX to SunOS?... >2) HP-UX is not close to Sun O/S at all. However, if you are not a Unix >hacker, you probably won't notice. HP-UX has a pretty good compatibilty >package, with the major, inexplicable exception of lack of Unix domain >sockets. We're running HP-UX 6.02. The NFS seems to work fine with Suns, but it can't rdump to a sun, nor does it have a version of lpr/lpd that'll print to a remote machine. I was once told that these work under 6.2 -- as soon as I get it installed I'll be able to tell. >>The only difficulty I can see is that complex software such as the GNU code >>tends to require different flags to compile/link as compared to SUN systems. HP-UX is a SysV-type OS, with some berkeleyisms added. It does have "more", and a csh that does escape completion. Most of the things I've tried to recompile under it worked fine by telling the Makefile that it was SysV. >3) Since the HPs are faster, we have our general purpose software live on >them. Our 9000/320 has 6 meg of memory, and an examination of the CPU board leads me to believe that it's a 15Mhz 68020, but it still runs significantly slower than one of our 3/50's. Anthony A. Datri @SysAdmin(Stepstone Corporation) aad@stepstone.com stpstn!aad
crum%lipari.usc.edu@oberon.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) (02/08/89)
schultz@mmm.serc.3m.com (John C Schultz): > How close is HP's UNIX to SunOS? Note that a viable alternative to HP-UX on HP 9000 Series 300 computers is Utah's port of 4.3BSD+NFS. Mail hpbsd-dist@cs.utah.edu for more info. glenn@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams): >to look more similar. The main complaint with the HPs is the lack of job >control, i.e., SIGSTOP, SIGCONT, etc. Yes, HP-UX for HP 9000 Series 300 computers lacked job control signals the last time I checked (6.0), but HP-UX for HP 9000 Series 800 computers includes job control signals. Gary
mike@hpfcdc.hp.com (Mike McNelly) (02/09/89)
> HP-UX is Sytem V based versus Berkeley derived....The main complaint with > the HPs is the lack of job control, i.e., SIGSTOP, SIGCONT, etc. Just to clarify things a bit: HP-UX on Series 800 machines has always had job control and all the necessary goodies that go with it. Series 300 HP-UX will have job control on the next release which is "very soon now". Mike McNelly mike%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com
aad@uunet.uu.net (Anthony A. Datri) (02/11/89)
dfh@uncecs.edu (David Hinnant) writes: >drive because (in my limited experience) HP TAPE DRIVES CANNOT READ TAPES >CREATED ON ANY NORMAL MACHINE. Also I cannot read normal tapes in my HP >machine. What's the scoop? Has anyone found an exception to this? Their cartridges are pre-formatted, and I also believe they are written in the opposite direction relative to things like Suns. You can use an HP-type tape in a Sun or whatnot, but it'll never work in an HP again. >Watch out for mail on the HP. Sucks. One of my predecessors had the insight to replace the sendmail.cf file on ours with one from a Sun. Didn't work at all. I've never been able to figure out how to get the real one off the distribution tape. Anthony A. Datri @SysAdmin(Stepstone Corporation) aad@stepstone.com stpstn!aad
thp@uunet.uu.net (Timothy H Panton.) (02/16/89)
hplabs!mike@hpfcdc.hp.com (Mike McNelly) writes: >Just to clarify things a bit: HP-UX on Series 800 machines has always had ... >Series 300 HP-UX will have ... As this illustrates, the current release of HPUX differs noticeably between the 2 machines, more than can be justified by their different cpu types. This means that a site with a mix of HP-800, HP-300 and Suns needs to concider about 2.25 operating systems ;-) Makes one appreciate the work that went into making SunOs 4 support 4 cpus. Tim Panton, Westhawk Ltd. Paper: Westhawk Ltd. 26 Rydal Grove, Helsby, Cheshire, WA6 OET. UK. Phone: +44 92822574 uucp : ..!mcvax!ukc!cam-cl!westhawk!thp
campbelr@hpsel1.hp.com (Bob Campbell) (03/08/89)
>>hplabs!mike@hpfcdc.hp.com (Mike McNelly) writes: >>Just to clarify things a bit: HP-UX on Series 800 machines has always had >... >>Series 300 HP-UX will have >... > >As this illustrates, the current release of HPUX differs noticeably >between the 2 machines, more than can be justified by their different cpu >types. This means that a site with a mix of HP-800, HP-300 and Suns needs >to concider about 2.25 operating systems ;-) The releases for the models 300 and 800 are merging. >Makes one appreciate the work that went into making SunOs 4 support 4 cpus. I have great respect for them for doing it. I just happen to have more respect the reliability of the HP 9000s800s and the work put into providing compatibility mode for our 3000s900 customers. But I may be a bit biased :-) >Tim Panton, Westhawk Ltd. Bob Campbell Some times I wish that I could stop you from campbelr@hpda.hp.com talking, when I hear the silly things you say. Hewlett Packard - Elvis Costello