Very Computer

With Christmas just a couple of days away, I thought if all of us Solaris 2.4
x86 users had a wish list of things we wish Solaris 2.4 x86 shipped with right
out of the box, maybe Santa (Sunsoft) would hear us, hey it can't hurt ;-)

==============================================================================
                  Solaris 2.4 x86 WISH LIST for '95
==============================================================================

- PPP/SLIP            <<<< This is a MUST!!  >>>>

- WABI 2.0

- Support for SCO binaries    

- Public Domain x86 software site supported by SunSoft

- Lower priced version of Solaris x86, like UnixWare's PE version

- Netware support

- MHS Gateway support ( MHS <==> SMTP )

- Veritas-like Journaling Filesystem

- More marketing of Solaris x86 and maybe a non-developers PROMO

And to the Sunsoft x86 developers, thanks for Update4, my IDE CD-ROM now
works great!

Happy Holidays.....

--
Regards,

Quote:>- Lower priced version of Solaris x86, like UnixWare's PE version

Quote:

>- Netware support
>- MHS Gateway support ( MHS <==> SMTP )

Sounds like you want unixware after all, not solaris.

(Although one unixware box could do the mhs gateway stuff.
 Odd, though.. seeing as how solaris has a /etc/mail/mailsurr..you'd think
 it would support mhs?)

 : >- Public Domain x86 software site supported by SunSoft

 : What do you need this for? You have gcc, am I correct? so any solaris
 : source will work for you.

Any Solaris source will work?  Pull down a simple program like elm and tell me
how it goes. I had to edit the source code to get it to work on Solaris 2.4.

I have SunSoft C++/Proworks, I'm not a gcc person, but I can name dozens of
programs that I can't get to compile and work on Solaris 2.4 x86.  Also, I
have better things to do than try and port software.  A nice ftp site where
I can find the latest version of PD software ready to run on Solaris x86
would be great!  Also saves me the trouble of having to ftp to dozens of
different sites.  

 : >- Lower priced version of Solaris x86, like UnixWare's PE version

 : Tis waaay too high. They should price it the same as the sparc version
 : ($200). Although you really don't want anything like UnixWare's PE :-)

 : >- Netware support
 : >- MHS Gateway support ( MHS <==> SMTP )

 : WHY do you want this?

Because in the real world there are UNIX users and Windows/Netware users and
when I want to send e-mail to someone in the Windows/Netware world I want
to use elm not MS Mail.

Also, when you develop client/server software, the server and client will
share some of the same C++ classes, the client being Windows based the
server being Solaris UNIX based.  This means both systems need to have
access to SCCS/PVCS, at this point I want to keep the shared code on
a Netware server for the rest of the Windows programmers.  

Or say I'm running WABI and I want to share a MS Word document with others,
where's the best place to keep this file on a Netware server or on a
NFS server?  

 : Sounds like you want unixware after all, not solaris.

I've used both I know what I want, why is having Solaris work with the huge
Windows/Netware crowd such a big deal.  Like it or not, Windows/Netware is
what everyone runs, Solaris should learn to live in this world.

If not some people like myself will once again have to explain why developing
on Solaris x86 makes more sense than Windows NT.

: (Although one unixware box could do the mhs gateway stuff.
:  Odd, though.. seeing as how solaris has a /etc/mail/mailsurr..you'd think
:  it would support mhs?)

--
Regards,

Quote:>Any Solaris source will work?  Pull down a simple program like elm and tell me
>how it goes. I had to edit the source code to get it to work on Solaris 2.4.

Now, I will admit that with Solaris x86 2.1 I had *real* problems getting some
of the stuff above working, with much hacking of code required. But that was
2.1... Solaris 2.4 is heaven by comparison :) I'm also going to be compiling
sendmail 8.6.9, bind 4.9.0, wu-ftpd 2.4, pop3-svr4 and inn1.4sec. Hopefully,
these will be as easy to compiler on 2.4 as the other programs have been. With
the experiences I've had so far, I think that they may well be.

--
Simon

Quote:>expect, bash, gzip and patch. I'm just about to compile perl 5 as well.

So I don't see what people are complaining about when they can't get PD programs
to compile on Solaris 2.4. So far, Solaris 2.4 has been *much* easier to compile
stuff on than Solaris 2.1.

--
Simon

        - Public Domain x86 software site supported by SunSoft

What I had in mind was a place where the latest and greatest PD programs
could be kept for Solaris 2.4 x86. Since alot of people keep asking for
a place to put stuff, this would be a good place. Since Solaris supports
pkg* tools, some packages could even come in pkgadd format.

So even though a binary compiles, sometimes setting up config files for
the program can be time consuming.  Since the packages would be for Solaris,
this effort would have already been done.

I really meant only the binaries as most people get the latest source
for say bash, ftp it. Compile it and no longer needing the source, remove it.

Rather than ftp almost 2 MB's for bash-1.14.1.tar.Z, wouldn't it be nice
just to pull down bash at about 1/2 MB and be done?

Also, while most PD software will compile for Solaris, I have on occasion
ftp'd a version of software that was the latest on the site but
old enough to not compile easily on Solaris, which is what prompted me
to say:

: So I don't see what people are complaining about when they can't get PD
: programs to compile on Solaris 2.4. So far, Solaris 2.4 has been *much*
: easier to compile stuff on than Solaris 2.1.

Yes, I know GNU stuff will compile.  They have gone out of their way to use
the auto-conf stuff on most packages.  Getting bash to compile was cake. So
was tcsh, seyon, workman, etc.

When I said pull down a simple program like elm,  I admit I had a problem
with elm ( configuration program had a problem setting timezone offsets )
and this came out in what I wrote.

I did not mean to imply getting PD software to compile on Solaris 2.4 is
hard, certainly not harder than any other platform, just there are some
programs out there (not the really popular ones) which may need some
tweaking to get the Makefile to work or a config.h file setup properly.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is if all we want is a binary to
run on Solaris 2.4 (sparc/x86), wouldn't a ftp site be nice?

--
Regards,

Quote:

>If not some people like myself will once again have to explain why developing
>on Solaris x86 makes more sense than Windows NT.

After certain reoccurring problems with certain sites [gatekeeper.dec.com]
I stopped using them even though they were the closest local site, except
to grab very large, standard packages like the X11R6 release and/or gcc.
Even then, I would only do so when I knew the exact release number of the
software I wanted.

: With Christmas just a couple of days away, I thought if all of us Solaris 2.4
: x86 users had a wish list of things we wish Solaris 2.4 x86 shipped with right
: out of the box, maybe Santa (Sunsoft) would hear us, hey it can't hurt ;-)

: ==============================================================================
:                   Solaris 2.4 x86 WISH LIST for '95
: ==============================================================================

: - PPP/SLIP            <<<< This is a MUST!!  >>>>

Actually PPP does work it's the asy driver that has problems keeping up
with the hardware flow control. I would love to have a DTE rate of
57k to appropreaitly run a V.34 28000K modem. It can be done.

: - WABI 2.0

I thought Santa already put this present under the tree. Or at least
they annouced it was released. Damn fast and about 1000 times more
reliable than Wabi 1.1.

: - Support for SCO binaries    

This is interesting. Not that fact that you can run SCO binairies on
Solaris or Unixware binaries on Solaris but what does the word
"Support" really mean in this context?  ABI or where you thinking iBSC?
Over the years I have noticed that all the big players in the Intel
Unicies never use the term "Support" for "Committment" as one could
derive from the simple statement "Support for SCO binaries".  There
are other reasons why the x86 Solaris customers should demand applications
compiled in the native OS.

: - Public Domain x86 software site supported by SunSoft

Arrghh the word support again. Actually I think what is needed is
a few big University sites with a couple hunderd x86 Solaris systems
to push it over the edge. I'm not against the word support, I've
worked in the workstation market doing support but it really doesn't
roll off big if your an employee of company X to support pd software
when the customer is paying to have bug fixes to the real product.
And I think that is what the customer really wants when they pay
cold hard cash for the product.  Anyways the porting is not hard,
I already filled a 500meg drive of ported Solaris x86 pd software
it seems to be the distrabution.

: - Lower priced version of Solaris x86, like UnixWare's PE version

I agree with the lower price notice the big interest when Sun priced
the system low by mistake.  But I'll bet nobody wants to take the
networking out of Solaris. Or at least that is what the PE version
of Unixware does to make it cheaper. If Sun took the networking features
out of Solaris I picture a large crowd with very big bats in front of
all the doors at Sun. I could almost imagine the size of the bats the
engineers would have as they headed toward the marketing building.
I think Sun had the intention of tightly integrating the network code
into the OS and that to reverse that process now would take alot of
development investment to repackage it.  

: - Netware support

I agree, I thought there where third parties working on this?

: - MHS Gateway support ( MHS <==> SMTP )

Actually wouldn't it be easier to have the MHS mailer send to a pd
SMTP daemon on the netware side than to the SMTP daemon on the Unix?

: - More marketing of Solaris x86 and maybe a non-developers PROMO

I disagree, they need to market more to developers. Targeting
a customer base with no applications is certain to be an adverti*t
sink hole. Here is the way I see it. Solaris x86 2.1 left a bad taste
in the developers mouth when it was released. When Solaris x84 2.4
came out it hard to beleive that it is a very good development platform.
Kinda like the 70's big USA car company bad quaility days etc when
the foriegn car companies took them to the cleaners on quaility.
Than they woke up and did the Saturn bit. Problem is that alot
of the developers my have been smaller in size. And taking hits could
be deadly. The interesting thing is that the marketplace for Solaris
x86 and Solaris Sparc could be different and Sun is somehow adjusting to
that. Who knows it's just an opinion.

: And to the Sunsoft x86 developers, thanks for Update4, my IDE CD-ROM now
: works great!

It seems that SunSoft South strategy of monthly updates works quite well.
I like how they have the cadidates for the next months drivers. They
should have their own web page for customers to write in their driver
of choice and vote on the current list. And maybe a little comment
field to let the customer fill in why they want the driver. Anyways
they seem to out due themself every month.

Tip of the day, I replace my 12ms SCSI Maxtor boot drive with one of those
old 8.5ms Maxtor SCSI drives and my iozone results jumped ~1.2meg/sec
reads and writes. Zippy..

On an different subjuct would anyone with Solaris x86 2.4 like to
run the lm benchmarks and send me the results. I'll stick them
in my web benchmark page. I'd like to see the performance differences between
motherboards, cpus etc. If you don't have the compiled version
you can get it ftp://fiver.sns.com/pub/src/bench/lmbench.solaris.x86.tar.Z.
Send the result file Results/solaris/machine_name and a discription
of the hardware you ran it on, motherboard, disk, cpu, memory cache size.

---Bob

Standard Disclaimer, these are the opinions of my virtual reality.

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| Solaris x86 Corner http://www.veryComputer.com/;             |
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Quote:>: - Support for SCO binaries    

>This is interesting. Not that fact that you can run SCO binairies on
>Solaris or Unixware binaries on Solaris but what does the word
>"Support" really mean in this context?  ABI or where you thinking iBSC?
>Over the years I have noticed that all the big players in the Intel
>Unicies never use the term "Support" for "Committment" as one could
>derive from the simple statement "Support for SCO binaries".  There
>are other reasons why the x86 Solaris customers should demand applications
>compiled in the native OS.

Quote:

>: - WABI 2.0

>I thought Santa already put this present under the tree. Or at least
>they annouced it was released. Damn fast and about 1000 times more
>reliable than Wabi 1.1.

The box arrived 19th Dec. with a *VOUCHER* for 1.1 which expires 31st Dec!!!!

Harrummph!

I have sent this voucher off from the UK to the USA address (5 days + Christmas
post?) in the vain hope that:

a.) Sun will honour it, (does anyone *else* work over the Christmas break?)
b.) They will ship Wabi 2.0 instead.

I have spoken to my VAR about this. He said that on further enquiries to Sun they
said that 2.0 wasn't even out yet.

What is the truth on all of this?

Kind regards

Derek Jones

Actually Wabi 2.0 is available on the net from
Sun itself -- at least they told me how to get it.  Let me
know if you need to find out more.

Jon Snidal

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