[comp.unix.sysv386] How about a thread on UHC R4 Unix?

lee@gdc.portal.com (Seng-Poh Lee, Gen DataComm, +1 203 758-1811) (03/18/91)

I see a lot of discussion about Xenix 386, ESIX, Dell and Interactive Unix, but
nothing about UHC Unix R4. Doesn't anybody run this? It seems to be very
competitive in price and appears to have a lot of the goodies. If anyone out
there is running UHC and has some comments about it, how about starting a
thread?

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Seng-Poh Lee				Work:	lee@gdc.portal.com
Technology Center			...!uunet!portal!gdc!lee
General DataComm Ind. Inc.		Home:	lee%splee.uucp@hsi.com
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tts@ttank.ttank.com (Karl Bunch) (03/18/91)

In <7776@gdc.portal.com> lee@gdc.portal.com (Seng-Poh Lee, Gen DataComm, +1 203 758-1811) writes:

>I see a lot of discussion about Xenix 386, ESIX, Dell and Interactive Unix, but
>nothing about UHC Unix R4. Doesn't anybody run this? It seems to be very
>competitive in price and appears to have a lot of the goodies. If anyone out
>there is running UHC and has some comments about it, how about starting a
>thread?

I agree.. So speak up you UHC users/admins.  If you're having so many
problems you're embarassed to admit to running it.. Well save us all a
lot of pain.. If it's working great.. Well.. Let us in on the fun! :-)

Karl
-- 
% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
% Karl Bunch                            ||| UUCP: ..!uunet!zardoz!ttank!karl
% Think Tank Software                   ||| INTERNET: karl@ttank.com
% "...you'd be suprised how far a hug will go with Geordi, even Worf!" -- Riker

timj@maynhbd.UUCP (Tim Jones) (03/24/91)

Seng-Po, It might not be a good idea to dedicate a thread to only UHC, but
an SVR4 thread would be a good idea.

As for UHC, while we are not endorsing them officially,  we use their
SVR4r2.0 set for our departmental host and have had very few problems
(none that have not been resolved by a phone call to UHC TS).  It is
extremely stable (not one PANIC: in three months of use), has a very
good set of man pages (hard copy is available for additional $), full
support for X11R4 with Openlook, NeWS (Sun) and Motif and is installable
from tape!

We've also looked at Microport's version of SVR4 and found that it is 
also very stable (we chose UHC as our host OS because we installed it
first).  It offers everything that UHC offers except X11R4 and Motif
(they ship X11R3 and OL/NeWS).  The support from Microport is also very
good (as it usually is from smaller companies).

I think that we can attribute the overall stability of the Intel SVR4
systems to Intel.  While they have dropped actual end user sales of UNIX
and turned over their customer base to Interactive, they are still the
compatibility and compliance manager as well as the main clearing house
after USL (was AT&T) turns it over for distribution.

The only reason that you probably don't hear more from current SVR4
users could be because no one has admitted to compleating any type of
news read/send port.  I am looking at Cnews and will post results to
the net as things progress.

Oh yes, there are still some poorly documented differences between
3.2 and 4.0, but these things are getting better every day (literally).

Tim Jones	...!uunet!maynhbd!timj		The words here are my
Keeper of the news -- Taker of the blame	own and don't reflect
Maynard Electronics, Inc.			anything outside of my
An Archive Company				own micro perspective!

jennings@anchor.colorado.edu (Jeff Jennings) (03/25/91)

In article <10@maynhbd.UUCP> timj@maynhbd.UUCP (Tim Jones) writes:

>As for UHC, while we are not endorsing them officially,  we use their
>SVR4r2.0 set for our departmental host and have had very few problems
>(none that have not been resolved by a phone call to UHC TS).  It is
>extremely stable (not one PANIC: in three months of use), has a very
>good set of man pages (hard copy is available for additional $), full
>support for X11R4 with Openlook, NeWS (Sun) and Motif and is installable
>from tape!

We have 3 486 boxes running UHC where I work.  It took over two weeks to 
finally get the distribution installed, including almost daily calls to
UHC.  Packages have dependencies on other pacakages being installed, but 
nowhere is there a list of the order to install things in.  When a package
fails to install, it doesn't just give up and fail to install, it generally
trashes the kernel config files, requiring the entire base distribution to
be reinstalled.  Get the distribution on tape, we had no problems with
installing that.  We must have installed the system from floppies over a
dozen times.

Our boxes are EISA bus, with SCSI adapter cards, vga, logitech mice, 8-16 megs
of memory, 100-660 megs of disk space.  We tried a machine with 32 megs of
memory, there is a problem with the SCSI interface (hardware? driver?) such
that it trashes memory above 16 megs and the kernel panics.

Our machines seemed to panic once a day or so, we replaced the clone Adaptec
SCSI cards with real Adaptecs, the panic problems seemed to go away.

We are still waiting for the X manuals.  We got only the Open Look manuals.
The X implementation seems ok, resolution is only 640x480x16 on Paradise 
VGA 1024 cards.  They say they will have hi-res drivers for X soon.  No imake
program or Imake.tmpl files came with the X distribution, making it tough 
to compile applications.

We have the machines Etherneted together, using WD boards and thin wire 
ethernet.  No problems with NFS, TCP/IP, etc.

In summary, pretty good, still a few bugs in the distribution and installation
from floppies.  Still not quite stable, I would say, I didn't have anything
like these problems installing my ESIX system.  To be fair, we had some
problems installing VENIX (Interactive SVR3.2) on the same type 486 box, but
we never got the trashed kernel config or the kernel panics.

>
>Tim Jones	...!uunet!maynhbd!timj		The words here are my
>Keeper of the news -- Taker of the blame	own and don't reflect
>Maynard Electronics, Inc.			anything outside of my
>An Archive Company				own micro perspective!


-- 
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Jeff Jennings
University of Colorado, Boulder
jennings@boulder.colorado.edu

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (03/27/91)

In article <10@maynhbd.UUCP> timj@maynhbd.UUCP (Tim Jones) writes:

| The only reason that you probably don't hear more from current SVR4
| users could be because no one has admitted to compleating any type of
| news read/send port.  I am looking at Cnews and will post results to
| the net as things progress.

What's the big deal? Dell comes with C news on the tape, you just
install it. I compiled B news and that worked, too. I am planning to try
an install TMNN in the not too distant future, as soon as my feed gets
better. If nothing else that may make me the only site on the net
actually running that combo.

The development machine is called toybox, for good reason.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me

cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) (03/28/91)

jennings@anchor.colorado.edu (Jeff Jennings) writes:

>In article <10@maynhbd.UUCP> timj@maynhbd.UUCP (Tim Jones) writes:

>UHC.  Packages have dependencies on other pacakages being installed, but 
>nowhere is there a list of the order to install things in.  When a package
>fails to install, it doesn't just give up and fail to install, it generally
>trashes the kernel config files, requiring the entire base distribution to
>be reinstalled.  Get the distribution on tape, we had no problems with
>installing that.  We must have installed the system from floppies over a
>dozen times.

We installed UHC SVR4 from floppies twice (although I have decided 
we will never do it again - we'll use tape next time) with no problems
either time. 

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170