Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bywater!scifi!njs
From: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: Why I feel AIX is not usefull (Does this belong here?)
Summary: Yes, it probably does.
Message-ID: <549@scifi.UUCP>
Date: 1 Mar 89 16:05:55 GMT
References: <2036@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Reply-To: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich)
Organization: Nick Simicich, IBM Research
Lines: 88

In article <2036@nmtsun.nmt.edu> peter@hydrovax.nmt.edu writes:
 (.....)
>Our upgrade to 2.2.1 failed miserably due to several bad disks. It was
>nice of IBM to come out and rectify the situation, but we still had 
>down time due to it. The version that they DID install would not execute
>shell scripts or binaries properly because for some reason it sets the
>current working directory to '/' (yes root). Make fails because my files
>are not in '/'.  I have very recently installed a new version (more disks 
>borrowed from IBM). It seems to be ok now. When Make *could* find the files
>that I was compiling, it didn't work on any imbedded commands. It would
>either fail without explanation or give an error number that wasn't in the 
>manual.

Hmmm...what is your default shell?  I've seen this when people try to
do Makes and don't specify SHELL=....  Probably, though, this is
something that used to work, and it is a bug.
 
 (.....)
>The system doesn't provide job control or sockets, which is more a drawback
>of sysV than AIX specifically. The console mimics job control using the
>utilities found in the Useability Services, but it is a poor substitute
>and only good for the person using console. 

As someone else pointed out, sockets are part of AIX.  Most of the
TCP/IP user programs are socket based these days, many run under
inetd, and so forth.  

>VS/FORTRAN has bugs. Again I do not want to cite an example until I can
>bring verified source code to post. I haven't looked under 2.2.1, but the 
>fortran compiler has a poorly written shell script for a front end. It's the 
>three pass variety and ALWAYS linked (even if there were warnings and/or 
>errors) when it was finished. We re-wrote it, but it is a pain none the less. 
>Our earlier version of the OS came with F77. This one doesn't. IBM says
>we have to purchase it now.  The VS/FORTRAN does have its saving graces. 
>VAX mode (although buggy) has drastically reduced the time it took to port 
>some applications from the VAX.

Under AIX, as far as I know, Fortran was always extra cost.  We're
glad to hear that it has bugs, as if it didn't, software engineers the
world over would have to rethink their assumptions. :-)  I can only
encourage you to contact the defect support people and complain.  It
is certain that you will get more attention than I would.

 (.....)

>There are no man pages, and I have yet to get the 'help' command to yeild
>anything resembleing an informative answer. Mostly all I get is a '... not
>found' message. 

Man pages cost $50/machine extra, from what I remember.  Contact your
salesman. 

>UUCP is broken. Anything I try to run says that it wants some earlier 
>version of the VRM. A lot of files referenced in the manual aren't even
>there. I *know* it's installed properly because I went back and did it again.

In 2.2, the old UUCP was replaced with HoneyDanBer UUCP.  If you have
an old manual, well, lots of the files (L.sys) won't be there.  I had
a real early copy of 2.2, and got HDB UUCP working by using the
Nutshell handbooks.

 (.....)

>In the same room with the RT is a VAX 11/730 running MORE/BSD 4.3. The RT
>runs circles (many many circles) around that machine speed wise, but our
>programmers claim they get better productivity from the 730 even though it's 
>slow. BSD came with C, PASCAL, Fortran, Ingres, and a host of tools that make 
>life easy. AIX requires that we purchase each of these, yet is more expensive
>for the basic system than my entire BSD distibution. The BSD versions of
>the compilers all work and work well. The IBM compilers are buggy and hard
>to use.

There are two C compilers for AIX.  Portable C is free, the other C
compiler costs money.  I do everything with Portable C, personally.

 (.....)
>There is a list of problems sitting on my desk. I will document them better
>and email them to anyone who's interested.

I encourage you to call defect support with information about these
problems, where the problems are defects.  Where they are not defects,
but design problems, I encourage you to report them to your branch
folks, so that they will know what you need, and can feed your
requirements back into the process.


-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)