Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!psuvax1!wuarchive!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: WARNING : Deinstall in SCO UNIX DANGEROUS!
Summary: do you want help, or do you want to complain?
Message-ID: <1991Mar7.065648.5137@ico.isc.com>
Date: 7 Mar 91 06:56:48 GMT
References: <9113@lkbreth.foretune.co.jp> <1991Mar06.060331.6849@kithrup.COM> <9122@lkbreth.foretune.co.jp>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 64

I step further out on a thin limb (and I'm not a thin guy:-), as I get more
fed up with the flame-every-vendor attitude of this newsgroup...

Trying to figure out why an SCO de-install zapped /usr...

> >I suspect from that that your disk actually *died*.  Not sco's fault.
> 
> 	Get real, Sean.  The disk was perfectly OK after the event,
> 	and the system was up and running (albeit crippled) for
> 	24 hours before I reinstalled...

And of course, there's no chance of a disk error, and (from some text I
deleted) no possibility that the process ran out of disk space anywhere
along the way in spite of the fact that the purpose of the de-install was
to gain some space.

There can't *possibly* be any obscure explanation which will have to be
arrived at by an extended discussion.

Yep, must be that SCO isn't smart enough to write a de-install procedure
that won't black-hole all of /usr.  Yessir!

Folks, get real!  You hit a serious problem, so you post it...fine; that
can help us all.  Then, since you are (understandably) pissed, you start
looking for a cause and a guilty party.  Still fine...if I have to restore
/usr, it's not beer time.  So someone with the vendor steps up to try to
ask some questions.  Not surprisingly, he's reluctant to assume that he and
all of his colleagues are complete idiots, so he postulates causes which
include your actions and your hardware.  Now, what do you do for this
person who's stepped forward to try to help sort it out?

You set the mertilizer on "medium well" and aim at him, of course!  If
someone pokes his head up, you lop it off.

And naturally the next step is to flame the vendors for being unresponsive
and not listening to the net!  You can't understand why engineers don't
want to take their free time to help you out when you flame them every time
they speak.

(I shouldn't be picking on this one posting, but it's hard to do a USENET
followup to a hundred articles at once.)

> 	...I had
> 	to buy everything over again even though the machine was running
> 	SCO XENIX -- no discount for upgrades...

Then there's the idea that if you ever give a vendor a dollar, they're in
your debt forever.  Let's see...an "upgrade" from Xenix to UNIX: different
license, different software, different manuals and media, different
support...what (except for the vendor) does it have in common?

The response to an attempt to open a dialogue to help someone out goes
something like this:

> 	...This is the extent of SCO tech support?  "It wasn't
> 	our problem; your hardware blew up; and you need to upgrade!"

Is Sean in SCO tech support?  I guess not.  How much did you pay for the
privilege of flaming him?  Nothing.

(If you expect something for nothing, you can at least ask nicely.:-)
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...But is it art?