Very Computer

[snip snip snip]

Well, I agree with you on some parts:

- Ultrix will be dead .... (in 2000, because, unless you have big money,
it is not y2k compliant)
- It is not supported

BUT: this newsgroup has become more and more hardware related

The Decstations are still great systems as a backup server, mailserver ...
NetBSD runs like a charm on them!

Frank

PS: if you dump your decstation, and live in Europe, let me know :-)

Ultrix is *not* dead. It's just not supported and sold anymore and that's
a difference. We are happily running your department mail server, web
server and FTP server on an old personal DecStation 5000/33 for years
without any problems. The machine is now up for 200+ days without
interruption. So why should we switch to something else?

And I don't even have a problem with Y2k. I don't care if the "date" and
whatever commands go crazy after Y2k as long as my applications behave
correctly. I have no doubt that Apache, sendmail 8.9.2 or popper
will continue to work properly after Y2k. Maybe the date/time format
in the log files is not correct. But who cares.

Tom
--
Tom Leitner                 Dept. of Communications, Graz Univ. of Technology,

What about the date format in the HTTP Expires: header, or the dates in
headers that sendmail puts in?

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[Ultrix after y2k]

|> What about the date format in the HTTP Expires: header, or the dates in
|> headers that sendmail puts in?

Port the 4.4BSD date(1) from NetBSD?  AFAIK the Ultrix libraries are
basically OK, it's the date command which loses.

Or even install NetBSD, and if you want to keep running the same
Ultrix binaries, run them in emulation mode.

we all know that.

Quote:> articles  on comp.unix.ultrix.   The  OS is not supported.  DEC went bunkrupt
> and  was bought by Compaq about a  year ago, people who make laptops.   There
> are fewer and fewer applications for Ultrix.  There is no  Netscape.  I could

so what?
BTW, I just installed the latest Apache on Ultrix (thanks to all the
folks who responded).

Quote:> not get PPP running on my 5000/20.  The  parts are proprietory.  That  is, if
> something  breaks,  you can only get it from   DEC  for the most  part.   The

it depends what it is that breaks (hard disks for example are easy to
replace, so are ethernet transceivers on 5000s). On the other hand, over
the last year, our institute acquired about 10 DECstations incl.
monitors for free. They make nice X terminals. They are pretty stable,
and they are easy to maintain (no upgrade hazzles :-)).

Quote:> binaries are not compatible with anything else.  The case is  too damn small.

uh, that's the case for IRIX/MIPS or Solaris/Sparc as well, and for
almost any other OS. So what?

Quote:> One can't put anything in it.   A CDROM  drive, a second hard drive, all have

I'm running a 5000 with two hard disks in it. I could add a third one,
if I had another one.

Quote:> to be external, which realy sucks.   HP-UX 10.*, Solaris and even free Unixes
> such as Linux    are  all much better than expensive,     regularly obsoleted

as I said, it's not expensive. We got almost all of it for free, and
it's easy to maintain.

Quote:> hardware and software.  I will  never invest in a proprietory solution again.

that's up to you.

Quote:> The DECstations  are so completely obsolete.  I don't even know about Alphas.

noone claimed differently. Now let's look at that 1990 PC :-)

Quote:> I never  hear about  them. Do they still exist? The last time I checked, they

we currently have 15 of them (two of which are not running due to the
lack of hard disks)

Quote:> had the same smallish case DECstation  had and were overpriced  for what they
> did.  Little bang for buck.

so why did you buy them?

Quote:

> I am going to upgrade to a Linux workstation. I think the concept behind it
> is so incredible cool.

I hope you know what you're talking about. Anyway, have fun.

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Institut fr Theoretische Physik       +49 30 314-24254, FAX -21130
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I'm wondering what exactly will happen. My guess is: nothing much. My
understanding is that, as with many UNIX systems, even more recent ones,
a few tools such as date are not fully y2k compliant. However, I believe
there won't be any problems with the DECstation hardware nor with the OS
as such.

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Institut fr Theoretische Physik       +49 30 314-24254, FAX -21130
Technische Universit?t Berlin        http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/

do you have reason to believe that there could be a problem about them?
(and I do care about correct log files, though I don't think there'll be
a problem with them)

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Institut fr Theoretische Physik       +49 30 314-24254, FAX -21130
Technische Universit?t Berlin        http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/

which other commands are affected?
Could you please point me to the respective BSD sources?

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Institut fr Theoretische Physik       +49 30 314-24254, FAX -21130
Technische Universit?t Berlin        http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/

    Most of the things fixed by the Ultrix Y2K kit
    are pretty minor -- (e.g. dxcalendar) but the two
    biggies are the C library and 'date'.

    With date you could:
       a) grab one from a free-unix and compile it
       b) use ntp
       c) make your own simple date setting program
          with settime()

    The annoying<1> thing is the bug in libc -- using '%y'
    in strftime will give you bogus results like ':0'
    instead of '00'.   You can:
       a) grab one from a free-unix and compile it
          and insert it in libc and relink all
          affected programs (as a bonus %e will
          probably work now too!).
       b) change to using 4-digit years with %Y
          and possibly recompile and relink all
          affected programs.

-------------
<1> How on earth Digital could have left such a f***ed
    up version of that routine in libc for so long is
    a complete mystery to me.

John
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http://www.cc.iastate.edu/staff/systems/john/index.html  <=- the usual crud

I would recommend "upgrading" to NetBSD. It runs without a charm, and the
gcc/egcs compiler is far better than the Ultrix one ..

Frank

Quote:> -------------
> <1> How on earth Digital could have left such a f***ed
>     up version of that routine in libc for so long is
>     a complete mystery to me.

Because now they can charge you big $$$ for the Y2K kit

There is an update for libc on ftp://ftp.service.digital.com, but I
assume it only fixed another (buffer overrun) bug. I'm wondering why DEC
cannot simply make those Y2K fixes freely available. This is one reason
for me not to buy anything from DEC (oops, Compaq that is).
--

Institut fr Theoretische Physik  +49 30 314-24254   FAX -21130  IRC kuroi
Technische Universit?t Berlin            http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/

can't you use gcc/rgcs with Ultrix as well?
--

Institut fr Theoretische Physik  +49 30 314-24254   FAX -21130  IRC kuroi
Technische Universit?t Berlin            http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/

Dunno, but the standard Ultrix one is very bad!

And, I mean, if you start upgrading your compiler, you might as well
start over with Netbsd

I know a few other places (our brother-institutes) like that. Some of them are
running the DECstations we dismissed. The reason for dismissal was a practical
one (we got some new Alpha and I could not afford to mantain THREE operating
systems, Sun, Ultrix and OSF), but I did like Ultrix.

Quote:> > - Ultrix will be dead .... (in 2000, because, unless you have big money,
> > it is not y2k compliant)
> And I don't even have a problem with Y2k. I don't care if the "date" and

Really I do not understand all this fuss about Y2K *with Unix*. The OS keeps
the time in secs since 1/1/1970, therefore it will have a problem in 2038, not
now. So only APPLICATIONS can have Y2k problem (but they can be recompiled).

We are quite happy of our Alphas (I do not understand the complaints of the
"citizen" about their casing. I do not care much what the casing looks like
(although I do not like "towers"), but about what it's inside (is the
"citizen" perhaps a supported of "Intel inside" ?). At the moment my 3 Alphas
are the fastest in you park of Suns and HPs.

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Quote:

> Really I do not understand all this fuss about Y2K *with Unix*. The OS
> keeps the time in secs since 1/1/1970, therefore it will have a
> problem in 2038, not now. So only APPLICATIONS can have Y2k problem
> (but they can be recompiled).

The problem often lies with the way that the date functions in the
C libraries and the tools supplied with the operating system work, or
rather, don't.  Are you sure that the version of NFS running on all
your machines is Y2K compliant?  

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