Snake Oil (was Re: 4.4BSD)

Snake Oil (was Re: 4.4BSD)

[Mike Jenkins]

On Tue, 26 Jan 1999 "Steven M. Schultz" <sms at moe.2bsd.com> wrote:

> 	I maintain the opposite.  VMS _was_ (past tense) the driver of
> 	VAXEN but that was due to Ken "UNIX is Snake Oil" Olsen.  Since DEC

I got a whole different perspective on that Snake Oil thing after reading
"A Quarter Century of UNIX" by Peter Salus.  According to Armando Stettner
(DEC Ultrix Architect) Ken Olsen meant, "Much the way people were peddling
snake oil a century ago, now every vendor is hyping Unix as a cure for
everything".  He was only making a analogy but the statement was "taken
out of context".  Anyway, the book has been enjoyable.

Mike
P.S. Where is Armando now?  Is he still doing Unix stuff?

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 09:40:55 +1030
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To: "David C. Jenner" <djenner at halcyon.com>
Cc: PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society <pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au>
Subject: Re: UNIX robustness
Message-ID: <19990128094055.E66239 at freebie.lemis.com>
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On Wednesday, 27 January 1999 at  5:23:58 -0800, David C. Jenner wrote:
> "Steven M. Schultz" wrote:
>>
>>         At least it's a different thread... ;-)
>>
>>         I had a UNIX system in my house that ran (and was working hard
>>         the whole time) for over 2 years before pity was taken on it
>>         and a beefier replacement system installed.  The original system
>>         was a 386/33 serving as a rather busy secondary nameserver and was
>>         never touched/rebooted/powercycled for 2+ years.  As time went on the
>>         load increased and it became apparent the system was overloaded (and
>>         paging excessively) so a P5/90 with more memory was installed.  A
>>         couple months after that the disk died ;-)
>
> I had (still have) a PDP-11/23+ that ran (still runs) 2.9BSD (with an
> honest-to-goodness AT&T binary license) that was my UUCP link to the
> net from 1989-1993.  At one stretch, it ran almost two years before a
> power failure finally got it.
>
> It was unusual to go that long without a power failure, so the limiting
> factor was clearly the power and not the hardware or software.  The
> system has a watchdog timer, so when there was a problem the system would
> usually automatically reboot, unless there was a serious hardware problem.
> Reboots were fairly rare and usually a power problem, so it would be hard
> for me to pinpoint the cause of non-power-instigated reboots.

I think you'd have to consider a reboot to be a failure.  Steveen
could say better than I, but I'd expect 2.9BSD to have told you why it
died.  2.11BSD certainly does.

Greg
--
See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers
finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key

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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 16:07:22 -0800 (PST)
From: "Steven M. Schultz" <sms@moe.2bsd.com>
Message-Id: <199901280007.QAA27431 at moe.2bsd.com>
To: djenner at halcyon.com, grog at lemis.com
Subject: Re: UNIX robustness
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Hi -

> From: Greg Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> 
> I think you'd have to consider a reboot to be a failure.  Steveen
> could say better than I, but I'd expect 2.9BSD to have told you why it
> died.  2.11BSD certainly does.

	Well, it tries its darndest to do so.  If the system gets its
	knickers sufficiently twisted I've seen it hang part way thru
	printing the panic message.  'course then there are the self
	inflicted crashes where an errant driver scribbles all over memory,
	in which case you may not get a meaningful indication of what
	went wrong ;)

	Steven

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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Update.UU.SE>
To: emanuel stiebler <emu at ecubics.com>
cc: Jorgen Pehrson <jp at spektr.eu.org>,
        PDP11 UNIX Preservation Society <pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Re: 4.4BSD
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> > What's that? When I want to edit text I want an editor, not an vi-itor
> > or an emacsitor, those aren't even words! ED is the standard editor. :)
> 
> SURE !!!
> I think most people simply forget, that emacs doesn't work so well on a
> line printer console  ;-))

I have only one things to say to you guys; TECO.
(And besides, EMACS is just a bunch of macros for TECO, GNU-EMACS don't
even count... ;-)

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 19:24:31 -0800
From: "David C. Jenner" <djenner@halcyon.com>
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Subject: Re: UNIX robustness
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Yes, and it was almost 2 years between reboots.  Otherwise, they were
rather rare, and I can't remember why.  I have all the console logs
around somewhere under a pile, and if/when I uncover them, I'll look
through them to see what happened.  Maybe I'll suddenly report it here
in 6 months--after my next reboot, err, cleanup.

Dave

Greg Lehey wrote:
> 

> 
> I think you'd have to consider a reboot to be a failure.  Steveen
> could say better than I, but I'd expect 2.9BSD to have told you why it
> died.  2.11BSD certainly does.
> 
> Greg
> --
> See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers
> finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 00:05:26 -0800 (PDT)
From: Brian D Chase <bdc@world.std.com>
To: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au
Subject: Re: 4.4BSD
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On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Michael Sokolov wrote:
> Thor Lancelot Simon <tls at rek.tjls.com> wrote:

> > I frankly consider this to be silly, somewhat presumptious, and, for myself,
> > at least, a waste of time.  But if it's something _you_ want to do, I
> > encourage you to do it, I suppose.
> 
> You may believe whatever you want, but I will only remark that several very
> prominent VAX hardware gurus (some of them on this list) support my work very
> eagerly. Whatever you or the NetBSD gang may believe,

"Death to the murderous NetBSD grandparents and the atrocities they've
 commited against the true Unix." -- Bee S. D'argic

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!


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On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Brian D Chase wrote:

> "Death to the murderous NetBSD grandparents and the atrocities they've
>  commited against the true Unix." -- Bee S. D'argic

Yeah, what kind of sadistic, malicious bastards would create a *free*
version of unix, then port it to nearly every platform imaginable!!?!?
What could have been going through their twisted minds?

----------------------------------------------------------
"...and an eternity, my friend, is a long f*cking time..."