Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen
From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: SCO License security - another flame
Message-ID: <3875@sixhub.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 91 00:46:32 GMT
References: <1165@pemcom.pem-stuttgart.de> <91V712w164w@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> <1991May04.194857.12216@kithrup.COM>
Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY
Lines: 62

In article <1991May04.194857.12216@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:

| Why?  The BSD FFS would have been a terrible bitch to port.  It was easier
| to make their own FFS, and later add in long filenames.  (When they release
| 3.2v3, I think I shall post a patch showing how to make the filename limit
| go from 255 to 266 8-).)

  Be still, my throbbing heart! You, too, can have filenames longer than
the files they describe! And create filesystems no one else in the world
can read. Is that part of the security package?

| >System Vr4.0, 
| 
| A piece of crap.  Buggy as hell, larger than 3.2, slow, ugly.

  Hogwash! V.4 has lots of rough edges, but for reliability it seems to
be just fine. And unlike ODT you can leave a system without a login for
a few days and not have the TCP all go away. SCO got their reputation
for reliability with Xenix, which (in standard configurations) has fewer
failure modes than a bowling ball. The UNIX has never reached the same
level of reliability, although it has lots of new features. It is larger
than 3.2, and almost as big as ODT 1.0, the kernel which made us change
floppy drives because the production kernel wouln't fit on a 1.2MB
floppy. As for slow, you should bite your tongue, I have some lovely
database benchmarks which compare V.4, ODT, ISC, and Xenix. You wouldn't
want to see them in a magazine article. V.4 has fast and slow points,
and is generally very acceptable for performance.

| >and commands like su(1) and cron(1) that work the way I expect them to.
| 
| Yeah.  You're right.  They never did anything about this.  And that SLS
| (available from sco [maybe uunet, too, I don't know]) which is corrects the
| C2 problems (they only way I notice the c2 stuff anymore is because
| passwords aren't in /etc/passwd; however, this can be a good thing)
| therefore doesn't exist.

  I have a friend who has a glass eye. He's gotten used to his
handicaps, too, and the only way he notices it is when he can't see. I
have a little utility which lets you change the password under SCO
UNIX. One I never needed with any other vendor's system. It does
something SCO never envisioned: it assumes the root user is competent
and if he wants to set the password on root to 'x' it will do it, and
not tell him it's too short, obvious, or has already been changed
recently.

  This is with the new release of ODT which has been on order for a few
months and was delivered yesterday. We didn't install the security SLS
because its supposedly there, although I probably will this week.

  I give SCO a lot of credit, but the security stuff is still there,
and still obnoxious, the three year old version of X is still worthless
for anything other than a learning tool, and the reliability is still
not as good as Xenix, which is why I haven't upgraded. 

  Maybe you should use a little moderation when you start making blanket
statements about other vendor's products, and not use terms like "crap"
quite so freely.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me