Very Computer

You see, it was thought that for UUCP to work correctly, you needed to
set the "system" name to that used in the other box's Systems file.  So
"uname -S" did exactly that, set both the node and the system name to
the same value, and scripts got written to either value.  What they
didn't realize is that the originators of UNIX where operating-system
centric, and so when they say 'system', they mean 'operating system',
regardless of what the UUCP system considers a "system".

Even now, one of our department servers running UnixWare (an SVR4.2)
displays the following to a "uname -a":

        machinename machinename 4.2 1 i386 386/AT

The people installing your NCR-UNIX boxes should have used the
"setuname -n" command to set the nodename.  The "setuname -s" command
can be used to correctly set the system value back to "UNIX_SV" or
"UNIX_SVR4".

Quote:>How dows the gnu software figure out which machine they are on in this
>exact same scenario?

Note this can fail, as in the SVR2.4 system I have at home (one of the
last 16-bit UNIXes) that added some SVR3-type things (like shadow
passwords and such) and Berkeley utilities and libraries.  If I had
software that look for file differences between versions, it might
mistake that system for a SVR3 system, and fail to build software (the
compiler is *VERY* SVR2 centric).

--
"It was our last, best hope for peace -- it failed.       | Scott G. Hall
Now it's our last best hope." (Babylon-5 opener)          | Lucent Technologies
----------------------------------------------------------| Bell Labs - BCS

I'm intersted in confirming the correct results for uname(1), particular
the POSIX.2 standard and on AT&T, NCR, SVR4 boxes.

I have an old draft 11 of the Posix standard which says that

        uname -s
and
        uname

should be the same and display the implementation name of the OS. For
systems like AIX, HP, and SUn, they all clearly conform and report things
like AIX, HP-UX, and SunOS.

I've seen a couple SVR4 boxes on our network at work, and these ATT/NCR
boxes came back with the machine name as if uname -s really was uname -n.

Whereas, my internet ISP has a UNIXWare machine which has always returned

        UNIX_SVR4

Question : what should shell script writers expect on ATT/NCR
boxes when they use uname -s. And shouldn't it be "UNIX_SVR4" even though
sysadm's can routinely run setuname to whatever they want?

How dows the gnu software figure out which machine they are on in this
exact same scenario?

Thanks in advance, reply by e-mail please.

- D
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There are "three absolute rights [sic] the right of personal security, personal
liberty and personal property," Sir William Blackstone.  "The protection of
these faculties is the first object of government." Madison, Federalist 10.