schafer@brazos.rice.EDU (Richard A. Schafer) (01/04/90)
We just put up AIX on an RT, and find that the man command is missing. Our IBM rep now tells us about some PRPQ which contains the man command and the man files, perhaps at a cost per machine. Has anyone ever run into this before and is there another way out? Do you indeed have to pay $58/machine just to get what every other Unix system I know of provides standard? Richard A. Schafer Manager, Network and Systems Support Office of Networking and Computing Systems Rice University
news@puzzle.UUCP (newshound) (01/04/90)
In article <4083@brazos.Rice.edu> schafer@brazos.rice.EDU (Richard A. Schafer) writes: >Has anyone ever run into this before and is there another way out? Do >you indeed have to pay >$58/machine just to get what every other Unix system I know of provides >standard? Well, I had to whip up a man command for my SysV R3V2 machine. It's just a shell script, but I've seen compiled versions posted to comp.sources in the past. -- Bob
karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) (01/04/90)
In article <4083@brazos.Rice.edu> schafer@brazos.rice.EDU (Richard A. Schafer) wrote: We just put up AIX on an RT, and find that the man command is missing. >Our IBM rep now tells us about some PRPQ which contains the man command >and the man files, perhaps at a cost per machine. AT&T unbundled the manuals from the basic System V license some years ago. Some vendors of System V-based operating systems decided to bundle the manuals (and the added cost) into their basic offering, and some did not. For example, I think SCO bundled man pages with their text processing package (nroff), which costs extra. BSD-based systems (DEC, HP) were not affected by this change, since their licenses derive from 32V, not from SysV. >Has anyone ever run into this before and is there another way out? Do >you indeed have to pay $58/machine just to get what every other Unix >system I know of provides standard? You might buy one, and let users access it over your network. On the other hand, you might consider how much cheaper it is to buy the on-line manuals than to buy just one paper copy. Chuck Karish karish@mindcraft.com (415) 323-9000 karish@forel.stanford.edu
ron@woan.austin.ibm.com (Ronald S. Woan) (01/05/90)
Chuck's prior reply to this query is the basic answer that was given to me when I asked some people about this when I came to work here. Actually when you think about it, most people don't really need a local copy of the man pages when they are on a network, so why charge everyone for their distribution. They take up quite a bit of disk space and can be a pain to install (for those of us that still install by the 5.25" diskettes to our RTs). Ron +-----All Views Expressed Are My Own And Are Not Necessarily Shared By------+ +------------------------------My Employer----------------------------------+ + Ronald S. Woan (IBM VNET)WOAN AT AUSTIN, (AUSTIN)ron@woan.austin.ibm.com + + outside of IBM @cs.utexas.edu:ibmchs!auschs!woan.austin.ibm.com!ron +
nghiem@ut-emx.UUCP (Alex Nghiem) (01/14/90)
In article <1257@awdprime.UUCP> @cs.utexas.edu:ibmchs!auschs!woan.austin.ibm.com!ron writes: >Chuck's prior reply to this query is the basic answer that was given >to me when I asked some people about this when I came to work here. >Actually when you think about it, most people don't really need a >local copy of the man pages when they are on a network, so why charge >everyone for their distribution. I have heard comments about lack of the AIX man pages with the standard AIX distribution many times before. I am sure IBM knows well that the lack of man pages is another difference that makes AIX different that the other guys. I think it would much better service to the customer if the man pages were part of the standard distribution and that the customer can elect whether or not he wants to install it. When one uses UNIX systems from multiple vendors, one often runs into slight differences in the operation of each vendors version. It is much easier to determine and address these differences if the man is available, whether or not the UNIX box one uses is stand alone or part of a network. AIX is the only UNIX I have access to that is distributed without the man pages. Consequently it is much more trouble for me to work with AIX that with the other guys. My comments apply specifically to AIX on the RT.