Ultrix/32 & VMS Summary

[senetza%vp.uleth.adhocnet.ca%UNCAEDU.BITNET at CORNELLC.CIT.CORNELL]

Here's a summary of what was sent regarding VMS and Ultrix/32...


From: David R. Stampf <drs at bnlux0.bnl.gov>

  1) file formats
  2) signals    - there simply aren't that many on vms
  3) ioctl      - simply isn't there
  4) fork       - works differently
  5) select     - ain't there either.
  6) #includes  - the directory names don't work without some work on
                    your part to define some alises.
  7) complexity - easy stuff on unix is difficult on VMS (ie:- ioctl a
                    terminal)
  8) pipes      - there aren't any in VMS


From: Ray Curci (scri) <curci at stat.stat.fsu.edu>

1. The only way you can have file transfer and remote login is to buy
   DECNET for your vms system and DECNET/ULTRIX for your ultrix system.
   DECNET is a real hog and will substancially show down your systems.

2. Most systems today are UNIX-based, but most DEC people are VMS-based.
   I have tried to get ultrix questions answered by their technical
   support people only to find out that the vast majority of them have
   are well versed in VMS, but UNIX illiterate.

   (Note:  someone from here got a VMS guru to admit that the sales of
           Ultrix will be more than VMS within 5-6 years!!  LJS)

3. If you want to speak to most other hosts, you will want to have
   TELNET, FTP, SMTP mail, and perhaps NFS.  Ultrix comes with these programs,
   although there are incompatibility problems between their implementations and
   NCSA-telnet for the PC/XT/AT, CMU-TEK-TCP for VMS software, and others.
   DEC does not offer TELNET, SMTP, or NFS for VMS systems, only FTP in
   something they sell for extra $$$ called the "vms/ultrix connection?"

4. As you have found out, the VAX11-C compiler for vms has many differences
   with the standard 'CC' compiler under UNIX.  ULTRIX v3.0 has a
   VAX11-C compatible compiler to solve thie problem in their mind.
   Ultrix v3.0 has both cc and vax11-c that come with it.

5. I help manager (1) VAX 8700, (1)11/780, (2)3500s, (25)VS2000s, (1)uVAXII
   under VMS and (2)VS2000s and (1)11/780 under Ultrix.  We also have about
   15 Sun3s some Iriss, MacIIs, etc.  The ultrix has more bugs than any other
   Unix implementation I have seen.  DEC's VMS is very propriatary and limits
   your options.  If you stick with the more standard UNIX machines that
   have TELNET, FTP, SMTP, NFS, etc., you can minx and match systems from
   SUN, HP, IRIS, Apollo, and (in theory only) DEC.

6. In my opinion, VMS is dying.  DEC's newest machines that use the MIPS
   cpu do not run vms, they use ultrix only.  VMS is written primarily in
   assembly language and BLISS (a weird dec assembly-like language).
   We have the source code to earlier versions of VMS on microfische.
   It is an incredably large program.   The effort to ever port VMS to a
   non-DEC cpu is pretty much impractical.

7. DECNET-DOS (software that runs on ibmpc/xt/at to use file system, etc.,
   on a decnet machine) is a piece of junk, whereas SUN PC-NFS works very well.


---------------------

Also, a healthy discussion deciding whether a DECstation 3100 or a VAXstation
3100 could run Ultrix or VMS prevailed.  Summarized below is what was decided.

  1)  DECstation 3100 can only run (now) Ultrix.  This is because it is a
        MIPS chip (RISC).
  2)  VAXstation 3100 can run either.  It depends upon the boot-node chosen.
        DEC has assured us that it could boot from the DECstation 3100, but
        that is yet to be seen.

That's about it.  Thanks for the input, it really started us thinking.

Leonard Senetza <senetza%vp.uleth.adhocnet at UNCAEDU.BITnet>

"Pretend to spank me, I'm a pseudo-masochist"