Very Computer

  A Unix guru of my acquaintance quoted as the reason
he cannot and does not use Linux at his work
absence of 'stream I/O' and TLI in Linux essential
for his work.  He also said most of WAN
devices  are not supported in Linux, which is another
reason he cannot use Linux at his work.

  Another remark he made about Linux is that 'ftp.cdrom.com'
has been running FreeBSD with a few SCSI cards and many hard disks
chained to them and is very stable while with similar set up,
Linux would be so unstable that he could not sleep at all
worrying about system panic. BTW, he runs Internet BBS
at his Linux Pentium box  24hours a day and seems to have
extensive experience with most incarnations of Unix on earth.
So, please, don't just assume that it's a blunt prejudice
against Linux by someone who has only used commercial Unix.

  I'm wondering whether 'stream I/O' and 'TLI' are to be
included in future release of Linux and when they'll be
if that's the case.

   Any enlightening information would be appreciated.

    Jungshik Shin

What is meant by "wan services"? This term is typically used
in connection with dos/pc networking. (?) If we could know
exactly what services he is concerned with, perhaps it would
turn out that they are indeed available.

Linux is used here and is well integrated into the existing
network of Sun, SGI, Next, mac and PeeCee systems. For the
life of me, I can't imagine what services he is thinking of.

Most tcp/ip programmers are living very full and productive lives using
good old BSD sockets. But if the man wants streams, there are streams
packages for Linux. (I don't remember where - probably tsx-11 or sunsite)

--
 Joe Sloan                 |    http://dostoevsky.ucr.edu

 Upgrade to Linux95!       |    University of California
~

Streams is an inefficient IPC mechanism that's best left in SVR4
where it belongs. The advantage of strams is its ability to stack
processing modules through messages pass in succession. For example,
terminal line discipline can be implemented as a module that sits
between a serial driver and a process. This adviantage is also the
downfall of streams; there just isn't any way of optimizing the
cumulative effects of the separate modules without merging them.

Quote:>  Another remark he made about Linux is that 'ftp.cdrom.com'
>has been running FreeBSD with a few SCSI cards and many hard disks
>chained to them and is very stable while with similar set up,

But FreeBSD also doesn't have streams, as far as I know. They are a
System V feature, not BSD. Someone flame me if I'm wrong.

Quote:>  I'm wondering whether 'stream I/O' and 'TLI' are to be
>included in future release of Linux and when they'll be
>if that's the case.

Ask on com.os.linux.development. The issue comes up once in a while.
The verdict on streams is probably "no". It's not worth it, except
as a programming exercise. Streams are elegant, but not practical.

Code that depends on the presence of streams is not portable to not only
Linux but also to many commercial UNIXes. Just about anything done through
the putmsg() getmsg() calls can be accomplished using ordinary socket
operations (which use streams, if you are on System V). the only thing
that's a little bit non-trivial is finding a replacement for
getpmsg() and putpmsg(), for priority-band messages. Socket OOB messages
are only a crude approximation.

Linux _does_ have the mechanisms that are known as "System V IPC":
shared memory segments, semaphores and message queues.
--
I have taken all the Gates out of my computer, and it still works!

LiS. Linux STREAMS  
http://ordago.uc3m.es/~LiS/

Ravi
--
Ravi K. Swamy                http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/r/rkswamy/www/

Quote:>  I'm wondering whether 'stream I/O' and 'TLI' are to be
>included in future release of Linux and when they'll be
>if that's the case.

>   Any enlightening information would be appreciated.

>    Jungshik Shin

It's being worked on:

<A HREF="http://ordago.uc3m.es/~LiS/"> Linux STREAMS</A>.  

---
#include <std_disclaim.h>

        Well... Mr. Shin brought me into this (which I think
        is not so productive discussion).

        But.... anyway..

        Say, I need T1/E1 into the back of my pc; and telephony?
        (well... I hear some OS/2 people hailing).

        Say, I have X.400 using TLI; and I want the RTS handles
        X.25, TCP/IP, Ethernet (IEEE802.3) TokenRing..using TLI
        (the beauty of the 'TLI').
        (Don't tell me there's no such system exist, since I've
        worked on one for my ex-employer - ONE - I mean 'one' -
        RTS can deal with X.25, TCP/IP (over anything),
        direct IEEE802.3 using TLI).

        Say, I have G***ma fax ; in reality, I had to settle
        down with the old XXXXing Interactive unix or Sco.
        (Unixware?? well.. tell them not to lie.)

        Say, I have VRU to working on some sorta appl. such as
        prepaid card system; I'll have to deal with SCO now...

        Well.. I'm not against Linux or any.. in fact,
        I have been a real happy user of Linux and have been
        recommending it to my friends or anyone I know.

        However, to use it on commercial appl, you just need someone
        to yell at - "this F*n' thing does not work!! fix the damn thing!"
        - then turn around and tell your boss, it's a bug on the system.

        One last thing, say I've developed nice nice real nice
        commercial value added service on Linux box; and turned my
        bid into MicroHard; do I have a chance to win the contract?

Quote:>Most tcp/ip programmers are living very full and productive lives using
>good old BSD sockets. But if the man wants streams, there are streams
>packages for Linux. (I don't remember where - probably tsx-11 or sunsite)

        Thanks for this info.; I just cannot leave w/o keep pushing
        something in :)

        O.K. I'm spoiled.
--
        *  Daeshik Kim  (a.k.a. hellcat) O: (703) 760-1780


            * http://www.wam.umd.edu/~korea

   How many is 'a few' SCSI cards and 'many' hard disks?

   I've got a Linux machine running 2 SCSI cards and six spindles
(totalling 4.5gb) right now, without any linux-related problems.
I'd say your friend is guilty of the same sort of parochialism
as you'd see coming from some of the more offensive of the linux
supporters around the linux groups.

Quote:>  I'm wondering whether 'stream I/O' and 'TLI' are to be
>included in future release of Linux and when they'll be
>if that's the case.

   There may be a project for streams going on right now.  Or,
alternatively, you could write streams, etc, yourself; with
freeware operating systems, that's one of the best ways to make
sure a feature you want will make it into the mainline system.

                 ____
   david parsons \bi/ like, say, date-parsing for at.
                  \/

        I cannot argue with the verdict; but NOT practical??

        well.. there're hundreds of vendors (if not millions) out there
        using NOT pratical streams for their products.

        I can hardly imagine X.25 w/o stream.
        TLI w/o stream??

        sunlink was using non-stream based X.25 interface long time ago
        (was it version 6? don't know what's going on with current version).

        My impression on that was non-streamio based versions were
        inferior to streamio based interface on most area.

        named stream is also one neat thing to use.

        My point is - yes Linux does not have to support those commercial
        vendors support; but things not being supported is not being
        supported period.

        Go develop yourself and use it - like someone answered - is
        not the answer to "I cannot use linux for my company because
        it does not do this and that."

        When you choose OS to be used for certain commerical development
        project, would you choose some OS without the stuff you need
        and develop one for yourself?  Well..that's out of question to me.
--
        *  Daeshik Kim  (a.k.a. hellcat) O: (703) 760-1780


            * http://www.wam.umd.edu/~korea

:       Go develop yourself and use it - like someone answered - is
:       not the answer to "I cannot use linux for my company because
:       it does not do this and that."

It is a fine response to those who believe a negligible cost POSIX
implementation must support all commercial needs.  If one wants TLI
or STREAMS, the one has the option of buying an OS with the support,
developing it for an OS that doesn't, or doing without until such
development takes place.  Whining is not a mature option.  TANSTAFL.

--
Christopher Oliver                     Traverse Communications
Systems Coordinator                    223 Grandview Pkwy, Suite 108

'tis an ill wind that blows no minds.