Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ibmchs!auschs!sauer From: sauer@auschs.UUCP (Charlie Sauer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: IBM AIX Summary: refer to AIX Family Definition Overview GC23-2002-0 reposted older postings to comp.unix.wizards Keywords: AIX Message-ID: <1207@auschs.UUCP> Date: 1 Sep 88 15:19:45 GMT References: <17017@adm.ARPA> Organization: IBM AES, Austin, TX Lines: 174 The AIX Family Definition Overview, published in July, includes a matrix listing system calls, library routines and user commands. For each item there is an indication of whether it is present in the first release of AIX PS/2, the 2.2.1 release of AIX/RT, the first release of AIX 370, the AIX Family (some AIX products will have additional items not in the family), POSIX, SVID and BSD 4.3. I think that matrix answers most of the questions in the referenced article. Here are the repostings: From: sauer@auschs.UUCP (Charlie Sauer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: AIX facts, history and status Date: 9 Jun 88 23:14:21 GMT Organization: IBM AES, Austin, TX Keywords: AIX Since a future version of AIX will be core technology for the OSF products, I think it is useful to summarize publicly announced AIX facts and status. I am speaking for AIX, not the OSF, and I am not going to talk about the unannounced plans for AIX. Several of us in Austin have disclosed AIX technology in development to the OSF seed team, and I expect that OSF will announce OSF plans with respect to AIX technology when appropriate. AIX on the RT is now in it's fifth release, known as AIX 2.2, which is officially available on June 24. Another release on the RT (2.2.1) and AIX PS/2 are scheduled for September availability, and AIX/370 is scheduled for March availability. AIX development personnel participate actively in the POSIX committees, and AIX is committed to POSIX compliance. AIX was originally derived from SVR1 and SVR2. We have endeavored to maintain the functionality in the BA sections of SVID at the SVR2 level. There are some incompatibilities, which I personally consider minor. Evolutionary compatibility with BSD has been part of AIX development starting with the initial release. An abstract on 4.3 convergence is being posted separately. AIX also includes many components from vendors, from other universities, and from IBM development and research. There is a recent overview paper on AIX[1], but I will list a few of the areas where we have focused development and research effort: virtual memory management and mapped files. The AIX/RT pager is derived from work originally done in the CP.R project at IBM Watson Research Center. services for managing "real time" devices and applications. optimizing compiler technology based on the 801 project at IBM Research[2] and related technology, e.g., the dynamic binding code used for device handlers. internationalization. integrating SNA and related communications products with Unix. distributed system support[3]. It is our plan that AIX be consistent in both interfaces and actual source code base across the 386, RISC and 370 platforms. (There are some areas where consistency is not achievable due to hardware differences, e.g., IEEE floating point vs. 370 floating point. Given resource and schedule pragmatics, there will be functions not present in particular platforms in particular releases.) The AIX Family Definition Overview, to be published next month, summarizes the system call interfaces, library routines and commands which are common across the AIX Family. This includes the BSD compatibility described in the accompanying abstract, X11, NFS, Distributed Services, TCP/IP, etc. REFERENCES: 1. L.K. Loucks and C.H. Sauer, "Advanced Interactive Executive (AIX) Operating System Overview," IBM Systems Journal 26, 4 (1987). 2. M. Auslander and M.E. Hopkins, "An Overview of the PL.8 Compiler," Proc. of the SIGPLAN '82 Symposium on Compiler Writing, Boston, MA. 3. C.H. Sauer, D.W. Johnson, L.K. Loucks, A.A. Shaheen-Gouda and T.A. Smith, "RT PC Distributed Services Overview," Operating Systems Review 21, 3 (July 1987) pp. 18-29. - -------- From: sauer@auschs.UUCP (Charlie Sauer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Convergence of AIX and 4.3BSD Date: 9 Jun 88 23:19:33 GMT Organization: IBM AES, Austin, TX Keywords: AIX BSD 4.3 Following is an abstract of a paper we plan to write: CONVERGENCE OF AIX AND 4.3BSD Charles H. Sauer (1) Kathy A. Bohrer (1) Tom Lang (1) Conrad Minshall (2) Gary L. Owens (1) Kris Solem (3) Bruce J. Walker (4) (1) IBM Advanced Engineering Systems, Austin, TX (2) IBM Technical Computing Systems, Palo Alto, CA (3) formerly IBM Technical Computing Systems, now MIPS Computer Systems (4) LOCUS Computing Corporation, Santa Monica, CA AIX started with a number of BSD features, e.g., 4.2 signals and concurrent groups[1]. Over time, additional features associated with BSD, such as pty's, select, sockets and sendmail have been added, with new features being added in each release. Based on this experience, and experience with 4.3/RT, it appeared that fairly strict BSD compatibility could be achieved, and the authors and others set out to define such compatibility. This paper describes methodology and decisions made in defining a convergence of BSD 4.3 and AIX. This convergence will be reflected in the AIX Family products and the version of AIX to be provided to the Open Software Foundation. Among the goals of the work were POSIX compliance Base SVID functionality at the SVR2 level Compatibility with documented and undocumented BSD 4.3 characteristics and interfaces Compatibility with existing AIX interfaces Completeness - providing essentially all BSD 4.3 functions Minimal redundancy - except in a few cases where redundancy seemed inescapable, conflicts were resolved to provide a single merged definition of system call, library and command interfaces. Users and programmers should normally not be conscious of the historical basis of the converged interface. Portability - minimizing porting effort for users and applications associated with existing AIX and 4.3 implementations. In addition, many of the system administration facilities were addressed in a converged manner. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated by success with test suites originally designed for AIX/RT and 4.3/RT prior to the convergence effort. ACKNOWLEGEMENT Many others contributed to this work, including, from IBM Advanced Engineering Systems: Rob Cordell, Jim DeGroot, Patrick Goal, Carolyn Greene, Larry Loucks, Jim Mott, Mike Schmidt, Doug Steves and Ken Witte, from IBM Data Systems Division, Johnny Barnes and Heinz Graalfs, from IBM Research, Marc Auslander, from IBM Technical Computing Systems, Larry Breed, Bruce Campbell, Sanjay Challani, Tu-An Cheng, Tri Ha, Chirag Jain, Jason Kosol, Betty Lee, Derrick Mar, Teri McConnell, Lisa Repka (now with Evans and Sutherland), Laura Richardson and Dave Zittin (now with Sun Microsystems), from Lachman Associates Incorporated, Jim Norris, from LOCUS Computing Corporation, Bob Peterson, and from Sunday and Associates, Roy Gordon. REFERENCE: 1. L.K. Loucks and C.H. Sauer, "Advanced Interactive Executive (AIX) Operating System Overview," IBM Systems Journal 26, 4 (1987). -- Charlie Sauer IBM AES/ESD, D75/802 uucp: cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!sauer 11400 Burnet Road csnet: ibmaus!sauer@CS.UTEXAS.EDU Austin, Texas 78758 aesnet: sauer@auschs (512) 823-3692 vnet: SAUER at AUSVM6