Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!hp-pcd!hpfcso!hpfcdc!rer
From: rer@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Rob Robason)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: /system/*/pif ????
Message-ID: <5570531@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Nov 90 18:40:39 GMT
References: <1150040@misty.boeing.com>
Organization: HP Fort Collins, Co.
Lines: 48

Reposted, since it appears nobody contributing to this discussion saw
this:

paul> With 7.0, HP ruined all of this.  The unsupported pifck has been
paul> replaced by a supported pdfck.  But the /system/*/pdf files are
paul> all missing.  To top it off, HP supplies /system/*/pif files full
paul> of bogus information.  If you want a "bill of materials" system,
paul> you'll have to roll your own.

jsadler> Let me guess.  a ENHANCEMENT REQUEST(aka bug report) needs to
jsadler> be generated.  The HP response (according to standard SSB
jsadler> terminlogy):  "May be fixed in future release."

No, you don't need to do that.  The PDF files will be in 8.0, completely
replacing both the pif and revlist files.

Our 7.0 release was a major effort to bring the 300 and 800 systems
closer together.  Some of that was accomplished by converging the
processes we used to produce and integrate the system.  The PDF tools
were an outgrowth of that process, used internally to check our own
consistency.  I pressed to get the PDF tools into 7.0 but was really too
late to ask that all the group that puts the bits on the release tape
switch to them, so they produced the pifs (I don't think anyone here was
aware that they were incorrect, by the way).

Anyway, as things sometimes do, it all worked out for the best:  putting
the PDF tools on the distribution provided the exposure necessary to
show up a defect in the checksum algorithm (based on a draft of POSIX.2)
that rendered the checksum almost worthless.  That has been remedied by
a change to POSIX and to the PDF tools to use a better checksum
algorithm.  Now we've had a chance to wring out the PDF tools before
asking you to rely on them.

Patched versions of the 7.0 PDF tools are available to customers on
support.  Ask for patch S300/7.0/p105 or S800/7.0/p106 depending on
which system you have.

You can easily use mkpdf to produce PDFs for the HP-UX 7.0 release with
something like (as root):

    ls /system |
    while read fileset
    do
	mkpdf -c "Fileset $fileset" /etc/filesets/$fileset /system/$fileset/pdf
    done

Rob Robason
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