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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!sirius.ctr.columbia.edu!wpaul From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul) Newsgroups: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD (or something else?) Followup-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Date: 6 Apr 1997 20:07:13 GMT Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research Lines: 92 Message-ID: <5i8vph$kj4@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> References: <332c9a76.3278270@news.adelaide.on.net> <5i1216$gc4$1@news3.realtime.net> <33457087.6003026@news.sprynet.com> <5i2ahu$1mi@twin.wasatch.com> <5i3f1a$nc5@hermes.synopsys.com> <5i78ee$bcs@twin.wasatch.com> <3347c5d8.749407980@news.diac.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sirius.ctr.columbia.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au alt.os.linux:19879 comp.os.linux.misc:168316 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38587 Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se, Sitaram Chamarty (sitaram@diac.delete.com) had the courage to say: : bobh@wasatch.com (Bob Hauck) wrote: : >The grain of truth in what you're saying is that if Linux had some : >nice GUI configuration utilities it would be more approachable for : >newbies. I'm all for that, and several groups are working on it : >(e.g. the Control Panel in Red Hat). Just don't take away the text : >configuration option! Anybody who suggests building a Registry for : >Linux should be shot. Ditto FreeBSD. :) : I agree. On that note, has anyone used SAM (HP-UX) or SMIT (AIX). I : haven't used much of either, but it seems to me in this case a : commercial Unix has the lead over us (whether Linux or FreeBSD). : Anyone who knows more about SAM or SMIT care to comment? Do they even : qualify for this discussion? I've used both SAM and SMIT (on HP-UX 10.x and AIX 4.1.5). It is important to note that both programs come in two flavors: GUI and text based. (I haven't used the text based SAM very much though; one time I brought it up by accident when I forgot to set my DISPLAY variable :). As a matter of preference, I tend to use the text based version of SMIT (smitty) over the GUI one. Both do the same things, but the GUI one feels a bit clunky to me (the only real difference is that the GUI one gives you nice overlapping windows and a little animated man 'running' whenever a command is in progress (he falls down on his face if the command fails too :)). The main reason I tend to use smitty on AIX has to do with the fact that AIX has a bunch of extra 'ls,' 'ch,' 'mk,' and 'rm' commands that you don't normally find on other UNIX variants. For example, there's lslv, lsvg, lsps, lsdev, chdev, rmdev, mkatmpvc, rmatmpvc, and so on and so on. In some cases, these commands are really just wrappers around other commands (but they're executables, not shell scripts). Trying to keep them all straight in your head is a chore, but smitty knows what to do with them, so if you're in a rush it can be a great help. I hope that eventually I'll master enough of this stuff that I can handle the underlying things by myself of course. (It should also be noted that smit can be extended. SMIT has, for example, sections for configuring network interfaces. Normally you'd probably have a menu for ethernet. But what if you add an ATM interface (as we have)? You could handle this by making the network configuration menus 'generic' so they can handle any kind of interface, but SMIT doesn't do that. Instead, when you install the software to support the interface, the ODM database is updated with new device-specific menus for SMIT, and the interface selection menu is updated to include the new device. This way SMIT can grow to accomodate new hardware.) SAM is another matter. The main thing I've used SAM for is reconfiguring the HP-UX kernel (the default data and stack segment sizes are too small for us). The kernel configuration procedure changed between HP-UX 9 and HP-UX 10, and rather than re-learn how to do it (again, I was in a rush), I used SAM. I've also used it for setting up logical volumes and filesystems, and for creating printer queues. But that's about all; pretty much evrything else I do by editing the usual configuration files. (The one thing I've used SAM for on HP-UX 9 is creating serial port device nodes in /dev. This is because I couldn't find a man page or config file that explained how to calculate the correct major and minor numbers to use with mknod. How SAM does it I don't know, but it does.) One major difference between SAM and SMIT is that SAM does not directly handle installing new software: for that you have a seperate utility called swinstall. SMIT on the other hand has a software installation menu built in which allows you to select installation media and choose packages to install. For the most part, both SAM and SMIT are big wrappers around lower level system commands. This can be either a blessing or a curse depending on how you look at it (once I replaced 'lpstat' in HP-UX 9 with a BSD version, and the printer configuration menu in SAM stopped working because it didn't understand the format of the new lpstat's output). I think it would be difficult for someone to write an equivalent tool for FreeBSD or Linux what wouldn't be more than an overbuilt config file editor. The only reason I would want such a utility would be to make it easier to set up PPP or SLIP connections (both client and server) so as to cut cown on the number of 'Help! I'm trying to connect to my ISP with PPP and it doesn't work!' messages on the newsgroups and mailing lists. -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ============================================================================= "Now, that's "Open" as used in the sentence "Open your wallet", right?" =============================================================================