Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!husc6!necntc!auspyr!joe
From: joe@auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: UNIX - the "don't worry about it" operating system?
Message-ID: <6986@auspyr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Jul-87 13:28:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: auspyr.6986
Posted: Wed Jul  1 13:28:26 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Jul-87 02:14:10 EDT
References: <17108@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Austec, Inc., San Jose, CA. USA
Lines: 64

in article <17108@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU says:
> 
> ... Let me summarize the UNIX atttude.

Let me comment on your ''summary'' ...

> 
>      File system integrity: "Sometimes the dump tapes will be bad ... 
> 
Not to insult you, but I've NEVER had a problem with dump/restore, tar/cpio,
or even with "dd if=/dev/maindisk of=/dev/auxdisk" in 6 years UNIX Admin'ng.
And, of course, 98% of those backups were done on live file systems.

>      Spoolers: "Well, sometimes the spoolers hang up, ...
>
What spoolers hang? You mean the line printer spooler? Could it be because
the printer went haywire or someone unplugged it? Could the spooler had
been ''waiting'' on an event such as ^Q or DTR?  On BSD, lpc can solve
that problem. On SYSV, lpadmin/lpstart/lpshut can do the same. I'll give
in a bit ... once in about 45 days I need to restart SYSV printer spoolers
because of a minor IOCTL problem with the serial printers; never once
had to restart the daemons on // printers. What does TOPS do with serial
printers? 

>      Locking: "Aren't lock files good enough? 
>
What's wrong with lock files? Well, they lack some things and I wouldn't
use them for serious applications. Ever hear of flock(), semctl(), msgget(),
popen(), socket() and tons of vendor-supplied locking schemes? Sure, the
older version of UNIX lack advanced file/record locking... but that was then
is this is now.

> 
>      Security: "Well, it isn't the system's fault if the users aren't
> 	very careful about the protection modes on all their files."
>
You should add: "if the user isn't careful assigning his/her password!"
Do me a favor, name just one OS that is ''secure''. But what about file
protections? A good admin might add "umask=022" or whatever in standard
login startup scripts for a bit more default security. You sure can do 
that under UNIX; and VMS as well. Actually, with the exception of a few
known but not public domain bugs, I find UNIX security very well suited.

Nothing in your article sounded UNIX specific to me; locking, spoolers,
security, & backups are a FEW of the things that make an OS. UNIX has
these things; and with a good understanding of them (as with anything:
a car, your body, etc.) they can be used rather effectively without problem.
If you think you have better solutions to the above (there is ALWAYS a better
solution), perhaps you can suggest some and let the UNIX world digest them.
Hey! Maybe you can even jbn spoolers -- ones that keep printing even if
the printer is off; least they don't hang, eh? No more kill -9's, eh? 

It sounds to me as if, one day, out of the blue of the sky, you 
"chmod 777 $HOME" while two NFS printer spoolers were accessing the same
printer (they didn't see the NFS lock file and both became hung) then someone
''walked'' over to your directory and typed in "rm -rf ." while the admin was
making a level 0 dump on last weeks backup tapes. After confronting the
admin for a directory restoral, he said, "Of course it's complicated... 

-- 
"Need input.    Joe Angelo, Sr. Sys. Engineer @ Austec, Inc., San Jose, CA.
 More input.    ARPA: auspyr!joe@lll-tis[-b].arpa     PHONE: [408] 279-5533
 Ahhh, input!"  UUCP: {sdencore,cbosgd,ptsfa,dana}!aussjo!joe
                UUCP: {amdahl,lll-tis,imagen,necntc,dlb,sci,altnet}!auspyr!joe