Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: `uname' survey results -- bad news, it's #@!!%@# useless Message-ID: <8382@smoke.ARPA> Date: 26 Aug 88 21:49:00 GMT References: Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 19 In article eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >The upshot of all this is that uname is effectively useless. As I said when you first raised the issue. I've seen some very comprehensive attempts at auto-configuration, but they invariably fail when run in a strange environment that the author had been unaware of. For example, the BRL UNIX System V emulation for 4BSD, or some variation thereof, is fairly widely used, and there are two distinct operating environments on such systems (also on Pyramids, Apollos, Suns, and others). Plus, many of us use alternative mail systems, spooling systems, networking systems, and so forth. How is any automatic procedure supposed to figure out how to set up a specific consistent environment under such circumstances, particularly when one environment is only partial and relies on the other to fill in the gaps? I think the best practical solution to configuration is to get the system administrator (software importer) to edit a text file that describes the specific environmental characteristics. Then verify as far as possible that the configuration does indeed work..