On 8/7/19 7:04 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> FWIW: V7 had /stand which was a funky UNIX-like standalone system that 
> some applications could be compiled.

I've seen /stand on a few systems (I think SCO OpenServer and / or 
UnixWare) but never really knew what it was for.  I think I had naively 
assumed it was associated with the kernel and / or booting.

Now I'm somewhat more curious what it was.  Was it a simplified version 
of the OS with minimal utilities with fewer dependencies so that the 
system could boot and load more features.

I thought that Linux's initramfs / initrd had the usual suspect files / 
utilities copied from /.  So the idea that a utility in /stand would be 
different from the same utility in / seems strange to me.

> The problem was that it was a little different so you would end up 
> seeing #ifdef STAND in code for things like fsck, fsdb, even cat. 
> At Masscomp we ended up with three target environments for a couple of 
> the system maintenance utilities: the OS, /stand and the boot ROMS. 
> This was expensive/a PITA to maintain and keep straight, and in the 
> case of the boot ROM, space was a huge problem.

Ya.  I can see how that would be a PITA to maintain.

> The RAMFS idea was created to get rid of at least /stand and IIRC we 
> were able to drop a number of utilities out of the boot ROM.  I'm not 
> sure how far they took it.   I left for Stellar and it was always the 
> way Stellix booted.

ACK



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die