ESIX and MCA

[John C. Archambeau]

pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>For example, by way of not mentioning it, you are surely obliquely
>making fun of SCO Unix, a system whose security system is so complex and
>obnoxius that most people disable it in haphazard ways by default,
>possibly leaving themselves less protected than if it were not there to

I will not buy SCO Unix until SCO makes up their bloody mind about what
they're going to do once and for all about Xenix.  Their sales division says
one thing and their tech support division says another.

>You are also probably making also fun of all those system administrators
>that still use sendmail (whether or not the DEBUG option is compiled in
>by default) instead of smail3, which is far simpler to configure and
>thus probably more reliable, not to mention that you have sources and
>can apply corrections instantaneously (the same advantage of course
>applies to the freely available UCB sendmail, but here you feign
>ignorance of its availability, and pretend you have to stick with the
>manufacturer's binary, over which you have no control).

I hate sendmail.  My hate relationship with sendmail stems from having a Sun
SPARCstation 1 on my desk at work.  It is true that I could chuck ESIX's
sendmail for smail 2.5 or smail 3, but if a vendor will let such bugs go out
the door (and more bugs have been found with ESIX) that I find to be
indicative of the support I'll get from the vendor.  I'm not buying "yea, it's
broken alright, tough (*bleep*)."  That doesn't cut it.

>jca> Sorry Everex, but if you had a better attitude about fixing things
>jca> that were broken, then I would reconsider.  Now I'm looking at SCO,
>jca> ISC, Dell, Intel, and UHC.
>
>Hahahaha. Even better! You are a good sport. Here you must be making fun
>at some of these other vendors; probably you are thinking of how much
>time (months, years!) after patches were posted in this newgroups did
>any of these release a version of the filesystem that did not have the
>inode allocation bug. Also, your reference at UHC means that you are
>pretending to consider SVR4, which is just out, and therefore presumably
>a poor choice if one wants a stable and well debugged system for
>reliability and security.

I am considering all WORKING options.  I don't have the buy the machine and
flavor of Unix for another month (at least).  This is the information
gathering phase.  Every Unix vendor does it differently, it's just a matter of
finding out which vendor adds the right glitter to the AT&T code to do the job
well.

>jca> ... | Small memory model only for
>jca> ... | Unix?  Get the (*bleep*) out
>jca> ... | of here!
>
>Here you surpass yourself in subtlety: your irony here is that *all*
>UNIXes on 386 allow you to run programs _only in the small memory model_
>(even if the UNIX kernel actually runs in the large memory model, in a
>small way :->).

Keep in mind that the 386 isn't the only CPU that has Unix available for it. 
I put that in my signature after finding out about Coherent's limitations. 
Even got a nasty gram from someone from Mark Williams Company.  With respect
to the 286, the signature is approprate.  And keep in mind that your flavor of
Unix has to support 386 protected mode.  A 386 does not a 32-bit address sapce
make.  Run Xenix 286 or uPort SysV/AT and you'll see what I mean, then you'll
read into the semantics of the signature.  You may be narrow-minded enough to
only see things in the 386, but I see it all over the place.

If you think I can raise hell now, whichever Unix vendor I do decide to go
with who doesn't give adequete support and bug fixes will have the opportunity
to hear me do Sam Kinison over the phone.  I personally don't like losing my
voice over tech support issues since I do that often enough as is, so it would
be nice to see what's out there now before I buy.  First couple of times, I
don't yell...it's after that then the person on the other end goes deaf.

 
     // JCA

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