Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!agate!belch.Berkeley.EDU!larry
From: larry@belch.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Foard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Esix Rev D. FFS and/or SCSI -- beware
Message-ID: <1990Nov5.233851.22065@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 5 Nov 90 23:38:51 GMT
References: <1990Nov5.180148.1046@ingres.Ingres.COM>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Organization: University of California Berkeley
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In article <1990Nov5.180148.1046@ingres.Ingres.COM> seg@Ingres.COM (scott e garfinkle) writes:
>Just to warn prospective users of Esix.  First of all, their fast file
>system (the Rev. D apaptation of the Berkeley FFS) appears to be flaky.
>It will not work at all on my system.  On a friend's system (a normal RLL
>drive and 25 mHz board), it caused the loss of an entire (root) file
>system.  I have heard that others have had similar problems.  If you
>are currently using their FFS, think about it -- sometimes their fsck
>program doesn't recognize it as an FFS and proceeds to try to do an
>automatic s51k fsck!  Also, the fs is apparently not appreciably faster
>for many applications, in any case (that is, in this incarnation).
>                                                     

It could be a hardware/software compatibility problem.  I have been running
esix for a while now using the fast file system and have had no problems even
after having crashed the system a # of times (do to ethernet card troubles).
According to the people at esix it is finicky (sp?) about the RLL controller
it uses.  

My only major complaint about xenix is that the package installation and
deinstallation is to smart for its own good. I accidentally aborted 
an installation of some of the network software in the middle which
massively screwed things up, if you attempt to install the package
again it will tell you that it has already been installed and will quit,
if you try to remove it it will tell you that it has never been installed.
After screwing around for a while I finally gave up and reinstalled the
whole system. I don't understand why it won't let you install on top of
a partially installed package. I hate having to have a battle of the
wits with software (expecially when it wins :(  )