peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (04/03/91)
In article <31@titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes: > HP-UX or any other SysV based OS is too painful to administrate. What have you been smoking? I want some. BSD system administration hasn't changed significantly since V7. You still have to add drivers by editing makefiles, one way or the other. Compared to the System V sysadm stuff, and the idmk* programs, it's like stone knives and bear skins. And where Berkeley *has* innovated in system administration it's not done such a good job. I'm no big fan of MMDF, but next to sendmail.cf it's a masterpiece of clarity. We have some SPARCstations here and I'm dreading hooking them into the mail network. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (04/04/91)
In article <2+FAN65@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: | And where Berkeley *has* innovated in system administration it's not done | such a good job. I'm no big fan of MMDF, but next to sendmail.cf it's a | masterpiece of clarity. We have some SPARCstations here and I'm dreading | hooking them into the mail network. Get the latest version of EASE from source.unix (or misc) which was posted a few months ago. It takes about 2/3 the pain out of it. It has all the changes from the last version because we have everything from Sun to v.3 with sendmail here. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode, but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"
renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English) (04/05/91)
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > In article <31@titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes: > > HP-UX or any other SysV based OS is too painful to administrate. > What have you been smoking? I want some. I don't think he's been smoking anything. If most of the systems he works with are BSD-based, a single SysV based machine, or a new group of them will be painful to administer. Many of the scripts that he's written won't work correctly, and the user community will complain that things don't work as they used to. --bob-- renglish@hplabs Not speaking for anyone.
sblair@upurbmw.dell.com (Steve Blair) (04/05/91)
In article <1991Apr04.172441.22142@cello.hpl.hp.com>, renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English) writes: |> If most of the systems he |> works with are BSD-based, a single SysV based machine, or a new group of |> them will be painful to administer. Many of the scripts that he's |> written won't work correctly, and the user community will complain that |> things don't work as they used to. |> |> --bob-- |> renglish@hplabs |> Not speaking for anyone. ************* I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, but this statement Bob, is patently *mis-leading*. Just because things dont' 100% work the same thing the same way does not imply, or *mean* that there's something "wrong" with an operating system. For example: I've spent many, many years in BSD systems' environments. Now as a member of the UNIX groups at DELL, I find myself working in new ways. Very, VERY few things that worked before in BSD land don't work in SYS V.4 . I've got a csh that works great, my pick of cc's that I wish to utilize, as well as library, and include file support for both environments. When assisting new users, I give them the *choice* of deciding if they'd like things to be as the "knew & loved" in BSD land, or to explore new territories in SVR4. My scripts that worked on BSD systems work quite fine here, at least in DELL V.4, and programs that I used to run under X in BSD land were exceptionally trivial to have work in V.4 land. Please carefully evaluate an operating system's "particulars" before branding things that may well work as well, or better than other environments..... regards, -- Steve Blair DELL UNIX DIVISION sblair@upurbmw.dell.com ================================================================
mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) (04/05/91)
In article <1991Apr04.172441.22142@cello.hpl.hp.com> renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English) writes: >> In article <31@titccy.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes: >> > HP-UX or any other SysV based OS is too painful to administrate. >I don't think he's been smoking anything. If most of the systems he >works with are BSD-based, a single SysV based machine, or a new group of >them will be painful to administer. Many of the scripts that he's >written won't work correctly, and the user community will complain that >things don't work as they used to. If you love writing many scripts for system administration, SysV will offer generic mechanism to do so (run level and other complicated mechanism), I admit. But, my policy is to use the system with the least modification. I don't write many scripts. I am lazy. I know what to modify to setup BSD environment. /etc/rc* and some other files. Thus, I administrate one type of BSD based system (with extensions such as NFS and SysV commands, which dose not affect administration) from several different vendors, though there are small differences. But administration of SysV based systems (but having BSD features in different way, which affects administration, especially networking) is different vendor by vendor. If you administrate only one type of a machine, and OS version up dose not occur so often, SysV may not be so bad, though I still miss dmesg and fastboot. Masataka Ohta PS Followup-To: is directed to comp.unix.admin only.
vancleef@iastate.edu (Van Cleef Henry H) (04/06/91)
In article <17746@uudell.dell.com> sblair@upurbmw.dell.com (Steve Blair) writes: >In article <1991Apr04.172441.22142@cello.hpl.hp.com>, renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English) writes: > >|> If most of the systems he >|> works with are BSD-based, a single SysV based machine, or a new group of >|> them will be painful to administer. Many of the scripts that he's >|> written won't work correctly, and the user community will complain that >|> things don't work as they used to. >|> >|> --bob-- >|> renglish@hplabs > >************* > >I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, but this statement >Bob, is patently *mis-leading*. Just because things dont' 100% work >the same thing the same way does not imply, or *mean* that >there's something "wrong" with an operating system. > >For example: > >I've spent many, many years in BSD systems' environments. Now as >a member of the UNIX groups at DELL, I find myself working in >new ways. Very, VERY few things that worked before in BSD land >don't work in SYS V.4 . I've got a csh that works great, my pick >of cc's that I wish to utilize, as well as library, and include >file support for both environments. When assisting new users, I >give them the *choice* of deciding if they'd like things to be >as the "knew & loved" in BSD land, or to explore new territories >in SVR4. > >My scripts that worked on BSD systems work quite fine here, at >least in DELL V.4, and programs that I used to run under X in >BSD land were exceptionally trivial to have work in V.4 land. > >Please carefully evaluate an operating system's "particulars" >before branding things that may well work as well, or better >than other environments..... > >regards, > >-- >Steve Blair DELL UNIX DIVISION sblair@upurbmw.dell.com >================================================================ I have left in a rather long quote, rather than cut it or attempt to summarize. What Dell is offering in SysV.4 I don't know. However, I can attest to "administrative function differences" from running an Ultrix system alongside (and connected to) a 386 with SCO UnixV.3 and a 286 running Xenix. My recollection is that running almost anything that required privileges (plain su in Ultrix and Xenix, a rather painful-to-set-up hierarchy in SCO Unix) also required different commands, command formats, dealt with different files in different directories. Now, granted, Dell's Unix---which I have never seen advertised or described---may be more like Ultrix. Interactive is another ball game. One of the things that makes difficult for the "novice" user as compared with MS-DOS is the need to administer the system---if nothing else, to set up accounts and passwords, start and stop the system. As to commonalities between shell scripts, I submit for consideration the Makefiles for C-Kermit and X11. --
renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English) (04/09/91)
sblair@upurbmw.dell.com (Steve Blair) writes: > I've spent many, many years in BSD systems' environments. Now... > I find myself working in new ways. Very, VERY few things that worked > before in BSD land don't work in SYS V.4 . I've got a csh that works > great, my pick of cc's that I wish to utilize... That is all true, but it is also not the point. If I have a large number of different systems to administer and I have to keep track of the differences between them, it is much more painful than if I have only one. As a user who has used both, I care very little which one I use. If I were an administrator, I would become increasingly unhappy as the number of variants I had to simultaneously administer increased. I don't know which is harder or easier or whatever, but even if sysV were half as difficult to administer as BSD, the addition of sysV machines to a BSD world makes the administrator's job more difficult. --bob-- renglish@hplabs.hp.com I'm not even saying this. If HP could talk, it probably wouldn't, either.
jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) (04/13/91)
> One of the things that makes difficult for the "novice" user as compared > with MS-DOS is the need to administer the system---if nothing else, to > set up accounts and passwords, start and stop the system. Hey, don't look now, but a lot of those novices have discovered a simple way to solve this particular problem. I'm talking of course about just logging in as root and not bothering with all that security junk. You wouldn't believe how many users of Unix-based workstations who view typing "root" at the login prompt and the default root password at the Password: prompt as part of the ritual of rebooting their system. They learned the hard way when they installed their system that "As a user, nothing works; as root, everything works." So they always run as root. As for security, well, if that were a concernin the Real World, then nobody would be buying DOS system, now would they? Running a Unix workstation as root is no worse than running DOS in its normal form, so what's the big deal? Sure, all those experienced hackers like the security system, because they understand how to use it. But the rest of the world has a job to do. They've wasted enough time trying to decipher the nonsensical messages they get when they log in as other than root. They don't have the time or the patience to solve the system's problems. When someone gets around to building a Unix system that works as non-root, they'll use it, meanwhile they do what it takes to get rid of all those incomprehensible security hassles. Please don't bother flaming me for being such an idiot. I know as well as you do what's wrong with the above comments. (And when I typed "su" here an hour or so ago, it took me three tries to remember the password; it's been months... ;-) I'm just pointing out how badly the Unix vendors have blown it, and how easy it is for a novice user who has no intention of becoming a security expert to cut though all the permission problems and get on with their jobs. -- All opinions Copyright (c) 1991 by John Chambers. Inquire for licensing at: Home: 1-617-484-6393 Work: 1-508-486-5475 Uucp: ...!{bu.edu,harvard.edu,ima.com,eddie.mit.edu,ora.com}!minya!jc