Answers to the Ultrix/Unix/Eunice... Question
SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.cornell.edu
SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.cornell.edu
Fri May 20 23:57:40 AEST 1988
Here is the summary I promised and as requested. Thank you one and
all for your information. We still have not decided what to do at
this site (currently we have Ultrix on a VAX 11/750). I just hope I
still have a job I like when the shuffling stops.
Wendy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"mkhaw at teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA" 6-MAY-1988 12:43
To: SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cunyvm.CUNY.EDU
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
I don't have prices, but I do have some names and pros/cons:
VMS:
- DEC/Shell -
pros: sold and supported by DEC
cons: only emulates V7 Unix, lacking lots of modern Unix tools
- Eunice -
pros: like 4.2bsd
cons: subject to VMS limitations on things like max. depth of
subdirectories, filename length, time to fork a new process.
Now and then it's obvious that Eunice is not real 4bsd, but
just a very close imitation. I also don't know if Wollongong's
quality and support have improved, but we didn't have good
experiences with Eunice. The version we had was buggy, and
each time we had a VMS upgrade, it was a major problem to
get Eunice functioning again, and Wollongong was not much help.
Need we say no one uses Eunice now that we have Suns and
Ultrix?
- Unity -
I don't know much about this, except that it sounds similar to Eunice.
The vendor is HCR, a company in Toronto, I think.
IBM-PC:
- Xenix -
from Microsoft or SCO (the Santa Cruz Organization). Don't know much
about Xenix, except I've heard from associates who've ported from 4bsd
that there were a lot of flaky things in Xenix compared to either
4bsd or MSDOS
- System V -
available from SCO, Microport (Scotts Valley, CA), and Interactive
Systems (Santa Monica, CA). It's System V on a PC-AT. What can I
say? I'm a 4bsd person and I'm not real crazy about System V.
There are other, shall I say "fringe", Unix-like systems for PCs: Venix,
QNX, etc., but I know next to nothing about them except that they exist.
Macintosh:
No choice, there's only A/UX from Apple. It only runs on a Mac II with at
least 80Mbytes of hard disk. I've heard that the typical configuration for
an A/UX system will cost you as much as, or more than a low end Sun or Apollo.
Other workstations:
The major ones are the obvious ones: Sun, Apollo, VAXstation, HP (HP-UX is
like System V mostly, but sort of bsd-ish too). There are smaller players
and niche workstations: Masscomp, Silicon Graphics, Integrated Solutions(?,
not sure of the name, but their initials are ISI). Most of the traditional
minicomputer vendors also sell some sort of Unix box: Prime, Gould, NCR,
Unisys, etc. Even IBM and Tandem sell Unix boxes these days.
Mike Khaw
internet: mkhaw at teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
usenet: {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!mkhaw%teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
USnail: Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA
94303
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"anamaria at lll-lcc.llnl.GOV" 6-MAY-1988 17:16
To: SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.CORNELL.EDU
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
Wendy:
I would like a summary of your responses or findings.
In addition, I think the best place to start is to ask the
question to /usr/group community and USENIX. I think
/usr/group might be able to give you a list of UNIX-flavors
available very fast. THEIR address is 4655 Old Ironsides Dr.,
#200 Santa Clara, CA. 95054 (408) 986-8840
They have an up-to-date list of UNIX vendors of Hardware as
well as Software and what are the UNIX flavors they use.
Hope it helps, and please send any findings to anamaria at lll-lcc.llnl.gov
Ana Maria De Alvare'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"toense at nav.icst.NBS.GOV" "Robert Toense" 9-MAY-1988 00:24
To: SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.CORNELL.EDU
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
We, at one time, ran a VAX 780 with VMS and Eunice. This was a couple
years ago, but at that time our experience was "less than impressive".
Running an operating system within an operating system just did not
perform well.
Also, it is "UNIX-like". What looked like UNIX functioned as expected,
however things were missing and sometimes just different.
If you want a system to look like is UNIX, my personal choice would be to
choose a system with a POSIX interface. POSIX is a standard interface to
the native system, not an operating system within an operating system.
No, it is not everything, but I believe that it is a good start. If
nothing else, building code to a POSIX interface will make it highly
portable.
Robert E. Toense
(toense at cplxsys.icst.nbs.gov)
Phone: (301)975-2930
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"Pabbisetty.Henr at Xerox.COM" 9-MAY-1988 08:41
To: shutter%ithaca.BITNET at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subj: information request
Wendy,
Could you please send me a summary of the responses that you receive? Thanks, in
advance.
Please see the book:
UNIX Papers : For Developers and Power Users (I am not sure of the exact
title).
This book is published by The Waite Group (Howard W. Sams). It contains a
comparison of the various shells and a good critique of UNIX.
Hope I have been of help......Good Luck.
- nagesh pabbisetty
Email: Pabbisetty.henr at xerox.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"steinmetz!davidsen at uunet.UU.NET" 10-MAY-1988 15:50
To: steinmetz!SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.CORNELL.EDU
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
Wins:
Xenix/386
aux (but still with teething pains)
Losses:
Anything on a 286 (although I've been using one for years with
xenix, it's not for anyone but a system hacker, and not
as productive as a 386 for anyone).
For VMS:
Wollongong is the best of a poor lot with Eunice. VMS just won't
support UNIX stuff very well, due to filename formats, slow
to start processes, etc.
Hopefully that will get you started. If you have the budget, Excellan
has been very good to us on VMS and PC's running UNIX.
--
bill davidsen (wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"texsun!vector!chip at sun.COM" 13-MAY-1988 16:25
To: SHUTTER%ITHACA.BITNET at cornellc.ccs.CORNELL.EDU
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
In article <13543 at brl-adm.ARPA> you write:
>I've been charged with the task of finding the various life forms that
>call themselves "unix based" systems. Specifically, we are currently
>running Ultrix on an 11/750...
I ran a Eunice VAXen about three years back at another job. We upgraded
to 4.2 (both VMS and Eunice) just a month or two before I left, so most
of my experience was with V3 stuff. Back then, Eunice used two VMS files
to represent a UNIX file whose name wouldn't map into VMS space. For
example, ".cshrc" would "DIR" as something like:
HSH0GLAKAA.HSH
HSH0GLAKAA.HSN
where the ".HSH" file was the actual file and the ".HSN" file just contained
the ".cshrc" name for mapping. But, the hashing introduced with V4 names
helped this. Still, hashing is needed to represent mixed-case file names
and some special characters.
I have very mixed feelings about Eunice. We had to support about a half
dozen VMS-only applications, but wanted a unix environment. And for
this we were successful. But, there were some kludgy things about Eunice.
Probably the biggest problem I had in porting was the lack of links.
Other than this, the filesystem and terminal I/O was fudged into
unixness pretty well. I successfully ported usenet, rn and hack without too
much trouble.
Response was excruciatingly poor. (The machine was a 785.) I avoided
shell scripts at almost all costs because of this.
One major collision between VMS and UNIX is that unix is fork happy, and
VMS makes spawn's very expensive. Eunice's answer was to keep processes
around for a while when unix was done with them. If a fork happened in
the next minute or two, it reused that process. Otherwise, it let it
go.
This worked, mostly. One big problem was that if a process had some
VMS permission enabled when it killed itself, the recycled process would
still have this permission. Don't know if this has been fixed.
Another problem is that you couldn't run "unix" format scripts. If
you didn't reformat them with the "unixtovms" command, they would cause
a VMS dump when you tried.
So...the bottom line of my ramblings is that I wouldn't use Eunice if
I didn't have to. It did work, but it wasn't a pretty sight.
Is "ithaca.bitnet" Cornell? I graduated from there at some point in
the distant past (EE '83). I was in the last CS101 which used punched
cards, and there wasn't an undergrad CS degree at that time. We had
just a PDP/11-44 and an IBM mainframe to play with then. Do you know
if PL/C is still being used?
---
Chip Rosenthal /// chip at vector.UUCP /// Dallas Semiconductor /// 214-450-0400
{uunet!warble,sun!texsun!rpp386,killer}!vector!chip
I won't sing for politicians. Ain't singing for Spuds. This note's for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"Unix-Wizards at BRL.ARPA" 14-MAY-1988 03:56
To: WENDY SHUTTER <SHUTTER at ITHACA.BITNET>
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
Please see the paper "Comparing UNIX Shells" by John Sebes.
Source: UNIX Papers for UNIX Developers and Power Users.
Edited by: Mitchell Waite
Publishers: Howard W. Sams & Company.
Few of the UNIX' I know are: SunOS, DG/UNIX, A/UX(Apple), ULTRIX (VAX) and IBM
has a version that runs on their mainframes!!!
I would appreciate if you could send me a copy/summary of the responses you
receive in your search..... Good Luck...
- nagesh pabbisetty.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: IN%"jerryp at cmx.npac.SYR.EDU" "Jerry Peek" 15-MAY-1988 21:20
To: SHUTTER at ITHACA.BITNET
Subj: Re: UNIX/Ultrix/Eunice ...?
Wendy,
>From your article, I wasn't quite sure if you wanted a complete UNIX or
just a shell and utilities. If it's the latter, you should get in touch with:
Mortice Kern Systems
43 Bridgeport Road East
Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2J4
CANADA
(519)884-2251
toolkit%mks%watmath at relay.cs.net
They have a pretty good Korn Shell and a ton of UNIX-like utilities for the
IBM PC and clones.
--Jerry Peek, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse, NY
jerryp at amax.npac.syr.edu
+1 315 423-4120
More information about the Comp.unix.wizards
mailing list