Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!apollo!brian
From: brian@apollo.COM (Brian Holt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: why no native unix??
Message-ID: <408d3c2b.18e92@apollo.COM>
Date: 29 Dec 88 21:30:00 GMT
References: <259@olive.athertn.Atherton.COM> <4068750b.13e2d@apollo.COM> <33@draci.cs.uow.oz>
Reply-To: brian@apollo.COM (Brian Holt)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 49

In article <33@draci.cs.uow.oz> pdg@draci.cs.uow.oz (Peter Gray) writes:
>I would feel much happier about buying apollos if I did not see 
>this sort of attitude *ALL* the time from apollo staff and devotees. 
>You can not talk to these people without them trying to tell you how 
>bad UNIX is and how great Aegis is.

Sure you can!  Feel free to talk to me any time you'd like.
I may not always be able to help you, but I will certainly tell
how glad I am we are finally getting away from Aegis, and
all about the good things in Unix.

>It turns me (and a lot of other people) off. Many suppliers
>like to point out how they have improved UNIX, but apollo is the only
>one who seems to think they can single handedly improve every feature
>and rewrite every utility to be better than the original.
>
>pdg

Although I suspect we will continue to try to improve some things,
I am sure you will see more and more stuff that comes straight
off the tape.  You're right, *nobody* can single handedly improve
every feature and rewrite every utility.  (Besides, we all
know that 'cat -v' is considered harmful! :-)

Just as an example, at sr10 we made the commitment to allow
Unix users to have access to Apollo enhancements if they wanted
it, without having to use Aegis.  So how do you manipulate
Access Control Lists?  Rather than add seventeen new options
to ls and chmod and chown, we made one change to ls (ls -l now
shows you a '+' if there is an extended ACL, just like AT&T
suggested to the POSIX security committee), and added some
new commands in /usr/apollo/bin (lsacl, cpacl, chacl).  In
fact, chacl's syntax is just a superset of chmod, so it should
be pretty easy to pick up.  Of course, if you don't want ACL's,
then just ignore them and the Unix permissions will work the
way you expect them to.

I've probably gone on too long, but as a Unix hacker, I'm
sort of proud of what we've got now.  And no, I don't have
Aegis installed on my node.  In fact, I don't even have
the DM...

		=brian

-- 
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(Copyright 1988 by author. All rights reserved.  Free redistribution allowed.)