SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Michael-John Turner]

Hi,

I came across this on Lobsters[1] today and thought it may be of interest 
to the list: 
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html

It appears to be an internal SGI memo that's rather critical of IRIX 5.1.  
Does anyone know if it's true?

[1] https://lobste.rs/

Cheers, MJ 
-- 
Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/ 

SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Don Hopkins]

When I was working at UniPress in New Jersey, we had an SGI Iris named pink on which we developed the 4Sight versions of NeWS Emacs (NeMACS). 

Speaking of SGI leaks:

Those things are fucking heavy! 

It was raining torrentially outside and the UniPress office started to flood, so we had to keep taking shelves down off the wall and wedging them underneath the Iris to jack it up above the water, as it kept getting deeper and deeper.

Ron will remember the emergency bailing technique MG and I developed of repeatedly filling the shop vac with water then flushing it down the toilet. 

The Indigos were another story entirely: They couldn't touch the raw graphics performance of an Iris, since the rendering was all in software, but you could actually stuff one of them in the overhead compartment on an airplane!

And then there was the SGI Indy... They made up for being small on the outside, by being HUGE and BLOATED in the inside:

"Indy: an Indigo without the 'go'". -- Mark Hughes (?)

This legendary leaked SGI memo has become required reading for operating system and programming language design courses:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt>

-Don


> On 12 Oct 2017, at 15:16, Don Hopkins <SimHacker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDnPiXyME0 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDnPiXyME0>
> 
>> On 12 Oct 2017, at 15:04, Michael-John Turner <mj at mjturner.net <mailto:mj at mjturner.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I came across this on Lobsters[1] today and thought it may be of interest to the list: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html>
>> 
>> It appears to be an internal SGI memo that's rather critical of IRIX 5.1.  Does anyone know if it's true?
>> 
>> [1] https://lobste.rs/ <https://lobste.rs/>
>> 
>> Cheers, MJ -- 
>> Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net <mailto:mj at mjturner.net> * http://mjturner.net/ <http://mjturner.net/> 
> 

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SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Larry McVoy]

I strongly suspect it was true, Tom Davis was an SGI employee as
were the other people mentioned.  

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 02:04:43PM +0100, Michael-John Turner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I came across this on Lobsters[1] today and thought it may be of interest to
> the list:
> http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html
> 
> It appears to be an internal SGI memo that's rather critical of IRIX 5.1.
> Does anyone know if it's true?
> 
> [1] https://lobste.rs/
> 
> Cheers, MJ
> -- 
> Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Don Hopkins]

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The version of the embarrassing memo on the University of Virginia CS415 reading list that I linked to is an email response from the author Tom Davis, posted to comp.sys.next.advocacy on 25 Apr 1994, which includes his extremely interesting inline comments that he added after the memo was leaked, following up about what happened at SGI in response to the leak! 

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt>

SGI the institution was embarrassed, but I don’t think Tom Davis has anything to be embarrassed about personally: he handled it well and honestly, told the unvarnished truth to management, which had a positive effect, and his candid write-up and response now serves as a great example for students learning how things work in the real world! 

It should be required reading in all computer science programs (and management programs too)!

-Don


> On 12 Oct 2017, at 16:00, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> I strongly suspect it was true, Tom Davis was an SGI employee as
> were the other people mentioned.  
> 
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 02:04:43PM +0100, Michael-John Turner wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I came across this on Lobsters[1] today and thought it may be of interest to
>> the list:
>> http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html
>> 
>> It appears to be an internal SGI memo that's rather critical of IRIX 5.1.
>> Does anyone know if it's true?
>> 
>> [1] https://lobste.rs/
>> 
>> Cheers, MJ
>> -- 
>> Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

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SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Don Hopkins]

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https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt <https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt>
> x The window system (Xsgi + 4Dwm) is up from 3.2 MB to 3.6 MB, and
> x the miscellaneous stuff has grown as well.  As I type now, I have the
> x default non-toto environment plus a single shell and a single text
> x editor, jot.  The total physical memory usage is 21.9 megabytes, and
> x only because I rebooted IRIX yesterday evening to reduce the kernel
> x size.  Luckily, I'm on a 32 megabyte system without Toto, or I'd be
> x swamped by paging.
> x
> x Much of the problem seems to be due to DSOs that load whole libraries
> x instead of individual routines.  Many SGI applications link with 20 or
> x so large DSOs, virtually guaranteeing enormous executables.
> x
> x In spite of the DSOs, large chunks of Motif programs remain unshared,
> x and duplicated in all Motif applications.
One of the main advantages of NeWS was that all the apps shared the same user interface code. 
SGI went down that road a little bit but not far enough with 4Sight, their own merged X11 + NeWS + GL window system they did before Sun developed OpenWindows X11/NeWS.
The 4Sight window frames and desktop pop-up menu were implemented in NeWS by PostScript code running in the server, and the menus used a NeWS overlay canvas to draw the menus in a hardware overlay plane, so it didn’t have to repaint the graphics underneath when the menu popped down.
But SGI’s desktop apps and clients themselves didn’t use a NeWS user interface toolkit (except for NeMACS of course), and they eventually gave up on NeWS because Sun wasn’t being very helpful or supportive, and went down the path of Bloatif instead. 
Shared libraries weren’t universally supported, and even when they were, the ecosystem hadn’t completely converted yet. 
The SunView libraries were so big, that in the absence of shared libraries, Sun would compile all the common SunView desktop applications into one giant happy executable “tooltool", to simulate monolithic shared libraries just between those apps. The names of all the different tools were hard linked together to the same giant universal desktop mega-app clusterfuck, which would run a different main loop depending the name it was invoked with. 
-Don

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SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 04:55:27PM +0200, Don Hopkins wrote:
> https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt <https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/irix-bloat.txt>
> > x The window system (Xsgi + 4Dwm) is up from 3.2 MB to 3.6 MB, and
> > x the miscellaneous stuff has grown as well.  As I type now, I have the
> > x default non-toto environment plus a single shell and a single text
> > x editor, jot.  The total physical memory usage is 21.9 megabytes, and
> > x only because I rebooted IRIX yesterday evening to reduce the kernel
> > x size.  Luckily, I'm on a 32 megabyte system without Toto, or I'd be
> > x swamped by paging.
> > x
> > x Much of the problem seems to be due to DSOs that load whole libraries
> > x instead of individual routines.  Many SGI applications link with 20 or
> > x so large DSOs, virtually guaranteeing enormous executables.
> > x
> > x In spite of the DSOs, large chunks of Motif programs remain unshared,
> > x and duplicated in all Motif applications.
> One of the main advantages of NeWS was that all the apps shared the same user interface code. 
> SGI went down that road a little bit but not far enough with 4Sight, their own merged X11 + NeWS + GL window system they did before Sun developed OpenWindows X11/NeWS.
> The 4Sight window frames and desktop pop-up menu were implemented in NeWS by PostScript code running in the server, and the menus used a NeWS overlay canvas to draw the menus in a hardware overlay plane, so it didn???t have to repaint the graphics underneath when the menu popped down.
> But SGI???s desktop apps and clients themselves didn???t use a NeWS user interface toolkit (except for NeMACS of course), and they eventually gave up on NeWS because Sun wasn???t being very helpful or supportive, and went down the path of Bloatif instead. 
> Shared libraries weren???t universally supported, and even when they were, the ecosystem hadn???t completely converted yet. 
> The SunView libraries were so big, that in the absence of shared libraries, Sun would compile all the common SunView desktop applications into one giant happy executable ???tooltool", to simulate monolithic shared libraries just between those apps. The names of all the different tools were hard linked together to the same giant universal desktop mega-app clusterfuck, which would run a different main loop depending the name it was invoked with. 

That must have been really early on because by the time I got to Sun (4.0?
Maybe 4.1?) shared libraries worked properly.

SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Don Hopkins]

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> On 12 Oct 2017, at 16:59, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> That must have been really early on because by the time I got to Sun (4.0?
> Maybe 4.1?) shared libraries worked properly.

Yeah, I remember that being a SunOS 3.x limitation. 4.x was a whole lot nicer! 

Wikipedia says: 

SunOS 4.0: Dec 1988: New virtual memory system, dynamic linking, automounter, System V STREAMS I/O. Sun386i support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History>

Then it all went downhill from there… ;(

-Don

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/slowlaris/sunos-died.html <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/slowlaris/sunos-died.html>

The Day SunOS Died

Lyrics by N. R. "Norm" Lunde.
Apologies to Don McLean.

Remember when those guys out West
With their longish hair and paisley vests
Were starting up, straight out of UCB?
They used those Motorola chips
Which at the time were really hip
And looked upon the world through VME.
Their first attempt ran like a pig
But it was the start of something big;
They called the next one the Sun-2
And though they only sold a few
It soon gave birth unto the new
Sun-3 which was their pride
And now they're singing

[chorus]

"Bye, bye, SunOS 4.1.3!
ATT System V has replaced BSD.
You can cling to the standards of the industry
But only if you pay the right fee -- 
Only if you pay the right fee . . ."

The hardware wasn't all they sold.
Their Berkeley port was solid gold
And interfaced with System V, no less!
They implemented all the stuff
That Berkeley thought would be enough
Then added RPC and NFS.
It was a lot of code to cram
Into just four megs of RAM.
The later revs were really cool
With added values like SunTools
But then they took us all for fools
By peddling Solaris . . .
And they were singing,

[chorus]

They took a RISC and kindled SPARC.
The difference was like light and dark.
The Sun-4s were the fastest and the best.
The user base was having fun
Installing SunOS 4.1
But what was coming no one could have guessed.
The installed base was sound
And software did abound.
While all the hackers laughed and played
Already plans were being made
To make the dubious "upgrade" 
To Sun's new Solaris . . .
And Sun was singing,

[chorus]

The cartridge tapes were first to go --
The CD-ROM's a must, you know
And floppy drives will soon go out the door.
I tried to call and ask them why
But they took away my TTY
And left my modem lying on the floor.
While they were on a roll
They moved the damned Control.
The Ethernet's now twisted pair
Which no one uses anywhere.
ISDN is still more rare -- 
The bandwidth's even less!
But still they're singing

[chorus]

But worst of all is what they've done
To software that we used to run
Like dbx and even /bin/cc.
Compilers now have license locks
Wrapped up in OpenWindows crocks --
We even have to pay for GCC!
The applications broke;
/usr/local went up in smoke.
The features we've depended on
Before too long will all be gone
But Sun, I'm sure, will carry on 
By peddling Solaris,
Forever singing,

[chorus]

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SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Don Hopkins]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History>

The SunOS 3.x => 4.x transition was also the BSD 4.2 => 4.3 transition.

Sun operating system version numbers seemed to parallel the version of Unix it was based on for a while there, until it started spinning out of control and got sucked up into the System V death star. 

Sun UNIX 0.7: UniSoftUNIX v7
SunOS 1.x: 4.1 BSD
SunOS 2.x: 4.2 BSD
SunOS 3.x: 4.2 BSD + some 4.3 BSD and some System V
SunOS 4.x: 4.3 BSD + even more System V 
SunOS 5.0: SVR4

-Don


> On 12 Oct 2017, at 17:09, Don Hopkins <SimHacker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 12 Oct 2017, at 16:59, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com <mailto:lm at mcvoy.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> That must have been really early on because by the time I got to Sun (4.0?
>> Maybe 4.1?) shared libraries worked properly.
> 
> Yeah, I remember that being a SunOS 3.x limitation. 4.x was a whole lot nicer! 
> 
> Wikipedia says: 
> 
> SunOS 4.0: Dec 1988: New virtual memory system, dynamic linking, automounter, System V STREAMS I/O. Sun386i support.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History>
> 
> Then it all went downhill from there… ;(
> 
> -Don
> 
> http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/slowlaris/sunos-died.html <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/slowlaris/sunos-died.html>
> 
> The Day SunOS Died
> 
> Lyrics by N. R. "Norm" Lunde.
> Apologies to Don McLean.
> 
> Remember when those guys out West
> With their longish hair and paisley vests
> Were starting up, straight out of UCB?
> They used those Motorola chips
> Which at the time were really hip
> And looked upon the world through VME.
> Their first attempt ran like a pig
> But it was the start of something big;
> They called the next one the Sun-2
> And though they only sold a few
> It soon gave birth unto the new
> Sun-3 which was their pride
> And now they're singing
> 
> [chorus]
> 
> "Bye, bye, SunOS 4.1.3!
> ATT System V has replaced BSD.
> You can cling to the standards of the industry
> But only if you pay the right fee -- 
> Only if you pay the right fee . . ."
> 
> The hardware wasn't all they sold.
> Their Berkeley port was solid gold
> And interfaced with System V, no less!
> They implemented all the stuff
> That Berkeley thought would be enough
> Then added RPC and NFS.
> It was a lot of code to cram
> Into just four megs of RAM.
> The later revs were really cool
> With added values like SunTools
> But then they took us all for fools
> By peddling Solaris . . .
> And they were singing,
> 
> [chorus]
> 
> They took a RISC and kindled SPARC.
> The difference was like light and dark.
> The Sun-4s were the fastest and the best.
> The user base was having fun
> Installing SunOS 4.1
> But what was coming no one could have guessed.
> The installed base was sound
> And software did abound.
> While all the hackers laughed and played
> Already plans were being made
> To make the dubious "upgrade" 
> To Sun's new Solaris . . .
> And Sun was singing,
> 
> [chorus]
> 
> The cartridge tapes were first to go --
> The CD-ROM's a must, you know
> And floppy drives will soon go out the door.
> I tried to call and ask them why
> But they took away my TTY
> And left my modem lying on the floor.
> While they were on a roll
> They moved the damned Control.
> The Ethernet's now twisted pair
> Which no one uses anywhere.
> ISDN is still more rare -- 
> The bandwidth's even less!
> But still they're singing
> 
> [chorus]
> 
> But worst of all is what they've done
> To software that we used to run
> Like dbx and even /bin/cc.
> Compilers now have license locks
> Wrapped up in OpenWindows crocks --
> We even have to pay for GCC!
> The applications broke;
> /usr/local went up in smoke.
> The features we've depended on
> Before too long will all be gone
> But Sun, I'm sure, will carry on 
> By peddling Solaris,
> Forever singing,
> 
> [chorus]
> 

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AT&T taking over Sun: Panic!

[Don Hopkins]

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Here’s an old interactive joke about how the costly AT&T System V way of doing things was taking a toll on the free old BSD ways of Unix at Sun.

It was better when the <BLINK> tag used to work. But now you can just click on the non-blinking cursor.

-Don

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/panic.html <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/panic.html>

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SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo)

[Jose R. Valverde]

Talking out of memory, but I still remember hacking the system to make
it work.

We had bought two SGI systems, a large one (a Power Challenge) with
16 CPUs and 768MB and an Indy with 16MB. Each had its own version
of the system. We also had several Indigos to which I had access.

The Indy wouldn't boot correctly or fail miserably very soon after
booting after I had installed a number of FLOSS software packages 
on it. I don't remember what triggered the problem, some kind of
interaction with the hardware. So I took to the header files and
assembler code that came with the system, deduced what each parameter
meant and, from that what the original code should have looked like to
explain the behaviour, then compared with the (meager) code for the
other systems, and came up with a patch that would ensure that the
system would boot and run without crashing.

So, yes, as shipped 5.1 was unusable on an Indy. I have looked to see
if I still keep the patches around, but it was so long ago that I can't
find anything from the date (and besides, I've switched through many
other systems since).

				j

It allowed me to work fairly well until 5.3. 


On Thu, 12 Oct 2017 07:00:21 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> I strongly suspect it was true, Tom Davis was an SGI employee as
> were the other people mentioned.  
> 
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 02:04:43PM +0100, Michael-John Turner wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I came across this on Lobsters[1] today and thought it may be of
> > interest to the list:
> > http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html
> > 
> > It appears to be an internal SGI memo that's rather critical of
> > IRIX 5.1. Does anyone know if it's true?
> > 
> > [1] https://lobste.rs/
> > 
> > Cheers, MJ
> > -- 
> > Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/  
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


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