From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 23967 invoked from network); 18 Mar 2023 20:40:15 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (2600:3c01:e000:146::1) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 18 Mar 2023 20:40:15 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 524E8412A9; Sun, 19 Mar 2023 06:40:02 +1000 (AEST) Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0F74C4124B for ; Sun, 19 Mar 2023 06:39:55 +1000 (AEST) Received: from cwcc.thunk.org (pool-173-48-120-46.bstnma.fios.verizon.net [173.48.120.46]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id 32IKdfUX010956 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 18 Mar 2023 16:39:41 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mit.edu; s=outgoing; t=1679171982; bh=IQgCX8K1b/0hF1fN32rdDk0wiUD4lj+8GpNpESzoUbM=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To; b=Bn3vrVSXW4Avv840Z8W8CuG5qEQBwDMMojLXcX03+ayQHESYsT8xY0Jg4hvxRU6VL w5zBJGUpsFsJuE7xp0GSqawhfZJR+X+WSJA02qZTU+ZsdfclwMUZHWrIFSuxNgNNdV Wgy1pnRfwFaYvSs0FW/G2rD17WU3qx/uoU9ura6lT+Lo/Uzy1A//LYjiqeasAJArzd iU02KS/M00yAuMMr+5rhmIIyrebqpG8MqLP9ETgDsE7KF5r1sklKwNBHX89llFLmEK YP8oBNcMelFf7hSE+UY+8qoU7BCYA2uac/LsCc/XW56sEjwjne+FKysJ4+QX2wcTvw KQ7Jhy4WnU8+Q== Received: by cwcc.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id 0CB4815C3AC6; Sat, 18 Mar 2023 16:39:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2023 16:39:41 -0400 From: "Theodore Ts'o" To: segaloco Message-ID: <20230318203941.GC11916@mit.edu> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Message-ID-Hash: EK6U6ZE4BLMUHKNNVVLYCQML4SHYP2QL X-Message-ID-Hash: EK6U6ZE4BLMUHKNNVVLYCQML4SHYP2QL X-MailFrom: tytso@mit.edu X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: UNIX co-creator =?utf-8?q?Ken_Thompson_is_a=E2=80=A6?= what, user now? List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 04:21:24PM +0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote: > > Do Linux providers even know the POSIX standard exists? No I don't > expect them to go pay for certification but geeze, the amount of > times in the past few years I've propped up a random distro on a > machine or VM and been unable to rely on even the most basic stuff > being there is disheartening. No wonder people don't use Linux in > the UNIX-y way so often, half the darn system isn't represented in > most Linux base installs. Is this the LSBs fault or does nobody look > at that anymore either? My experiences recently say not... The Linux Standard Base has largely been abandoned --- none of the major Linux companies were willing to pay their engineers to spend time working on it. (It was one of those things that really only mattered to people who were selling software to enterprises, and the *reason* why companies spent $$$ paying engineers to work on LSB and going to ISO meetings was so that enterprise softare vendors could more easily ship product that would work equally well on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Enterprise Linux.) But even when LSB was around (Debian is dropping LSB support in the next release), it was generally not installed by default and was *not* part of the base install. If you installed the LSB package, it would drag in all of the userspace utilities and libraries needed to provide POSIX.1 and POSIX.2 conformance. One of the reasons why users prefer a very small base install is because if they are trying to install on small systems (such as Rasberry PI), or if they are using container systems (e.g., Docker), they want to keep the base system as small as possible. And there are utilities like uuencode and uudecode, which while required by POSIX.2, in reality, the most users for most Linux distributions don't use, so it's not installed by default. If you want it, you can always install the sharutils package. Finally, I'll note that what Posix.2 requires has changed over time. For example uucp used to be required for POSIX.2 compliance. It no longer is required. In addition, POSIX.2 has withdrawn tools like banner and chroot, and they will be withdrawing calendar, col, cpio, pg, spell, sum, and other utilities in the next revisions of the standard. Complaining about what is the default seems to me to rather pointless. And if you are going to insist on complaining aobut it, what about Solaris? The default Solaris install didn't come with cc or fort77 installed, even though they are required by POSIX.2. You had to pay $$$ to get an optional package if you wanted those tools, and Solaris was still considered "Unix" since it was descended from AT&T code, and they didn't need to present their system for POSIX compliance before being able to use the "Unix" trademark. (And if they did, they would presumably just state in their conformance document that you had to pay $$$ for a copy of Sun Studio.) And I can assure you that Sun Microsystems knew about POSIX. They just chose to not include everything required by POSIX.2 in their default install. - Ted