Esix Rev D. FFS and/or SCSI -- beware

[Bill Heiser]

In article <1990Nov5.180148.1046 at ingres.Ingres.COM> seg at Ingres.COM (scott e garfinkle) writes:
>Just to warn prospective users of Esix.  First of all, their fast file
>system (the Rev. D apaptation of the Berkeley FFS) appears to be flaky.
>It will not work at all on my system.  On a friend's system (a normal RLL
>drive and 25 mHz board), it caused the loss of an entire (root) file

Was this "normal" RLL drive listed in the Esix compatibility list?


>On another, related, front, the new (to Rev. D) SCSI driver is extremely
>flaky with certain drive/adapter combinations.  It doesn't work at all
>(despite lengthy attempts by their technical staff to make it work) with
>the HP 97548S (and some other) SCSI drives and the Adaptec adapter.

Again, is this device listed in the Esix compatibility list?


>Incidentally, the limits on the size of files you can edit with ex/vi
>under Esix are there just because the engineers decided not to compile it
>with the VMUNIX flag turned on.  Also, it appears that the Esix X11r4

This *is* extremely annoying.  I wonder if they would consider releasing a 
new version of vi with the VMUNIX flag turned on...

>implementation will not be released for the 3.2 product.  Kind of interesting:
>there is no upgrade to SVR4 because "it is a separate product" and, yet,
>upgrades to the 3.2 product will not be forthcoming.

Well, it does seem like there should be an upgrade path.  I for one, however,
don't plan on "upgrading" for a while anyway.  Since SYSVR4 is such a new
product, it is bound to be pretty flakey for a while (not specifically Esix,
but the unix product in general).

>These are my own opinions, unrelated to my employer.  In fact, I would have
>posted them from home if Esix wasn't crashing so often.

How is your Esix "crashing"?  Is it the above problems you're referring to?


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