*BSD News Article 47615


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From: dobrien@seas.gwu.edu (David O'Brien)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD...
Date: 30 Jul 1995 20:28:24 GMT
Organization: George Washington University
Lines: 99
Message-ID: <3vgq18$6vk@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>
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Peter da Silva (peter@nmti.com) wrote:
: > >Yeh. How *do* you set up a printer in Windows so it prints a banner page?
: > >I'm still trying to figure this out. If I install the ".SEP" files they
: > >provided the printer spits out an error message and dumps the job.

: > I dont consdier banner pages in the same league as not being able to
: > print at all.

: You don't have 100 people's printouts coming out on the same printer.

Agreed!  And how do you keep MS in their infinate wisdom from NOT
pre-pending ^D to every PS print job in MS-Windows.  That CtrlD option
doesn't do jack!

: > >I'm still working on getting network backup of my NT server up.

: > We had no problesm with this ( I didnt do it myself the sysadmin
: > did) so I dont know how much effort was required, either in
: > time or acuired knowledge,  but it took only a few minutes
: > to set the backup to the UNIX server.

: Well, get your sysadmin to drop me a line. The NT backup software ONLY
: supports directly connected tape devices, totally incompatible with our
: centralized backup scheme.

Actually it *can* be done.  You need the full-fledged version of
ntbackup.  ntbackup is a braindead version of Arcadia's Backup Exec.
Only problem is it cost $1000 for the package that works with my NT
server and tape drives.  But still having problems getting it run from
"cron" reliably.  Man what I wouldn't give for cron and shell scripts to
run NT backups from.  My Unix backup scheme took me 1 hour to fully
setup.  My NT backups (for the whole domain)... Well that is still
on-going.

: > The config
: > files, *.ini, are there if you want to get in and 
: > hack them with notepad or whatever.

: Not in NT. A lot are hidden in the resource database, and others aren't
: visible at all.

And the one's that are there, are named at least as weird as anything
I've ever seen in Unix.


: > I have not had much to do with NT but I have heard this
: > before. The error logging is supposed to be preety good
: > if you turn on all the options. But I'll take
: > your word that it is not as good as reported.

: I've got all the options I can find turned on and I still get "Can't
: initialize subsystem", without even the name of the subsystem it couldn't
: initialize. "Perror" is a better interface than that!

You forgot to mention just how "lovley" the Event Viewer is.  It gives
much more cryptic things than "my_app: init failed: timeout on device:
/dev/my_device with error code: 56".  And it displays each entry in a
stupid little popup box that is about 30 chars wide and 6 rows.  I've
got a 1024x768 display.  I think I can see a little more of the message
at one time MS idiots.  How about a "full screen" button for that box???
Want to print out a few security events to show the boss and CYA when
you come down on that problem user?  Nope, can't print out an event, no
pull down choice for it.  Just do a screen capture and print it you say?
Nope, remember your 30x6 view of the world?


: > Huh what the hell does that mean ???

: It means either the device isn't connected, or it's not properly configured.
: It tells you what the device is, and where it's connected. And it implies
: that there's a hardware document over on the shelf that'll explain error
: code 56.

: That's loads better than "something's wrong but I'm not saying what".

: > A popup dialog with a help button and decent human
: > readable help text and suggestions is obviously preferred.

: Not if the popup dialog with a help button and decent human readable text
: and suggestions lead you down a dead end.

Exactly.  For those that aren't, us sysadmin's are paid to fix problems.
That way, you don't have 100 people that need to be an expert on these
things.  Messages like this one point us in the right direction.  NT's
messages point you to hell.


: Oh, I found one of my problems. I used blind testing.
: A UNIX box would have told me the problem immediately.

Yea, just try setting up services (aka daemons) on NT.  There is no
documention from MS on how they invoke them or the environments they
enherit.  Seems like much of what we do around my workplace with NT is
all trial and see the responce.  Unix has much better docs than this.
And if you make the right choice :-) of FreeBSD, you can even varify
with the source.

-- David O'Brien	(obrien@sea.legent.com)
	Death to NT!!!!