I haven't participated in a lenghthy email fest since I gave away that VAX
6000/530 on this list in 2000.
On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Stan Sieler wrote:
> QEDIT...it's been the editor of choice on the HP 3000 for 20+ years.
> (Also runs on HP-UX)
> (There's QEDIT for Windows, which works with the HP 3000 / HP 9000,
> but I haven't warmed up to it yet.)
> (The reason I like QEDIT is that I can mix line-mode style editing
> with visual editing, something few other editors can do well.)
I was limited to software supplied with the machine which seemed
inadequate compared to VMS and even in the case of EDITOR to vi. I will
look into this suggestion...
I am no great fan of vi, but HP must have agreed the file corruption issue
was a problem since apparently they fixed it in 7.0.
If QEDIT is not supplied by HP then I did not have it, nor probably would
most new admins.
By this measure many of Unix's problems go away by adding third party
software. VMS has fewer problems which need 3rd party correction other
than disk caching and defragmentation. The supplied utilities are very
robust.
> > - Patches are not generally available for download and can not (until the
> > recently released current version??) be installed from CDROM.
>
> Not really...itrc.hp.com has them. You can grab "patchman" from HP's
I stand corrected.
> > - Although the program "mail" is shipped in the POSIX environment, there
> > is no MTA to actually send any mail off the system without installing
> > sendmail.
>
> Mail isn't part of the Unix *operating system*, although it's usually
> bundled with various Unix *products*. There are several Unix-style
> mailers available for MPE. I frequently use MAIL from Telamon (ftp.telamon.com),
> because it works well.
Yes, I suppose it is. But I have this functionality out of the box on VMS
or Unix but not on MPE without a 3rd party product. But why offer "mail"
as a product in the POSIX environment but then no transport agent?
> > - The facility to automatically reboot without operator intervention at
> > the system console is a separately sold option. (see Autorestart/IX)
>
> So?
Having this option is more robust. It is not a separately purchased item
on most OS's and would seem to be a fundamental feature by most modern
standards.
> BTW, if you want to trigger a reboot remotely, that ability has been
> available for about 15 years ... not well known, perhaps.
Indeed, not to me. I will have to dig further. It seems odd to have an
unsupported workaround for this fundamentual function, and not necessarily
due to purported stability problems of other OS's.
> > - I can change between OpenVMS/Tru64/Linux/Windoze at will with firmware
> > settings on my Alphas. I need HP field engineer & his magic number
> > generator to do the same between HPUX and MPE.
>
> And you want to .... why? :)
Many of my work machines have run various combinations of Unix or VMS as
workload required. In most cases we were able to get free temporary
licenses from DEC/Compaq before our permanent license transfers took
effect all with no additional vendor intervention. At Y2k test time this
was an especial advantage. Although some of my 2100's came with Windows
installed I did not do anything with them other than install over it so
predictably that was the least useful. :-)
Nowadays you can run Unix and VMS on the same machine at the same time and
allocate CPU's around as needed provided your iron is big enough.
> BTW, can you say "fsck". An MPE user doesn't know that that word is...
> a typoed version of f*ck ... which is what's said when a Unix user
> has to run it.
I see these complaints repeatedly and they tend to apply to extremely old
versions of Unix, and no version of VMS.
UFS/HFS on unix, where fsck was a swear word is long gone or at least
should be by now. At one time file system stability was a advantage of
MPE or VMS.
> (My partner has spent all day trying to resurrect a client's HP-UX system
> that had 3 disk drives fail this weekend... after the drives were replaced,
> HP-UX notes that 3 volumes are missing from some volume groups, and
> 3 unknown problems are present ... 8 hours of fighting HP-UX and SAM later,
> well...they're still fighting, so there's no resolution yet.)
While maybe not in your case, this can from be a familiarity issue with
the commands and how they work. Don't use SAM as a crutch. Just as on
MPE, staying current with patches is important.
Also, this sounds like a LVM issue rather than a vxfs issue (if your
customer has a version of unix which supports vxfs) and if we are going to
quibble over products they are separate and can be used separately.
> > - User licensing & hardware very strictly tied.
>
> So? That's not an *operating system* issue, that's a *product* issue!
True. It was a product decision which has made MPE operating system less
versatile. I can run a shitload of people on a DS10 if I want and it's
still fast. It's a small system like a 918.
I appreciate the fact my 3000 does not frequently bother me. Neither do
my VMS machines.
Your comments about system availability, scalability, access to kernel
debugging information and programming in privileged rings, ease of
management, and advantages over unix could be taken almost word for word
from advocates of OpenVMS, and in many cases of System 390, AS/400,
Tandem, et al. as evidenced by Usenet.
It would still be a shame if VMS succumbed to NIH at HP.
Paul
Received on Tue Sep 04 2001 - 17:54:35 BST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0
: Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:34:23 BST