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From: engel@numerik.math.uni-siegen.de (Michael Engel) Subject: Re: decstation 5000/133: linux/MIPS, OpenBSD/pmax or NetBSD/pmax Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.ultrix Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.ultrix References: <867662387.22833@dejanews.com> <33b787ba.0@rainbow.hrz.uni-siegen.de> <5pd48e$e4i$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU> X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] NNTP-Posting-Host: hilbert.numerik.math.uni-siegen.de Message-ID: <33babc1b.0@rainbow.hrz.uni-siegen.de> Date: 2 Jul 97 20:37:47 GMT Lines: 105 Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.sovam.com!sovam!demos!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!rainbow.hrz.uni-siegen.de!hilbert!engel Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:6199 comp.unix.bsd.misc:3632 comp.unix.ultrix:29052 Jonathan Stone (jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU) wrote: : [ Note: (1) comp.os.linux.advocacy, trimmed from Newsgroups: line : (2) Disclaimer: I'm the primary maintainer of NetBSD/pmax, : I try to be fair here in comparing OpenBSD and NetBSD, but : I don't pretend to be impartial. ] Heavens, I didn't want to start that old Net vs. OpenBSD dispute again ! :-) I know that all BSD implementations as well as Linux are admirable for the things they achieved. We are happily running a VAX with NetBSD 1.2, some DECstations with OpenBSD and some Linux PC's here as well as some commercial Unixes ... all do their job _very_ well, especially the free OS's ! : In article <33b787ba.0@rainbow.hrz.uni-siegen.de>, engel@numerik.math.uni-siegen.de (Michael Engel) writes: : > Hi, : > : > The largest difference between NetBSD and OpenBSD on the DECstation is that : > NetBSD lacked support for shared libraries last time I checked. : Not so. : How recently did you check? That hasn't been true for a *long* time. Yes, this is now rather a long time ago. We did the transition to OpenBSD on the DECstations about 9 months ago, if I'm not mistaken. : It's true that the NetBSD 1.2 distribution didn't support shared : libraries. However, NetBSD/pmax snapshots have had shared library : support for over a year, and the snapshots are recommended over the : 1.2 distribution (which is now very old). OK, sorry for that, I'll stand corrected ! I didn't want to offend anyone with that ... : NetBSD 1.3 will be out this summer-ish; it will have; : * shared libraries (of course) : * X11R6.3 clients and X11R5 Xserver : * ext2fs support, in case you really want to share disks with Linux. This is especially nice, since it will make our Linux port to the MIPSels easier ! [more enhancements deleted] [...] : > Commercial software is : > not available for any of the three. OpenBSD claim to have an Ultrix binary : > compatibility mode, but we weren't able to get the kernel compiled with : > compatibility enabled. : I don't think that's a fair description of the facts. AFAIK, : OpenBSD's Ultrix compatibility mode is derived from the Ultrix : emulation code I wrote for NetBSD. If Ultrix emulation doesn't work : on OpenBSD, that sounds to me like a good reason to choose NetBSD instead;). Hey, I just said _I_ didn't get it to work :-). By no means did I want to imply it didn't work - I probably just was too clueless with BSD-style kernel configuration (though I've learned something on that in the meantime ...) ... [...] : Even the LBL : multicast toolset for Ultrix works, which is pretty impressive, : considering that IPmulticast support for Ultrix was third-party kernel : patches. Yes, I know the multicast patches. _This_ is really impressive ! : > Note that the installation of either NetBSD or OpenBSD is by far not as : > easy as Ultrix installation, but you get advantages like NFS V3 etc ... : True, unfortunately. The PROMs in DECstations give much less help to : an OS installation than, say, Sparcstations. And nobody has yet : written really nice low-level installation tools for DECstations. And the lots of bugs in the different PROM revisions don't make life easier. I have two otherwise identical DS2100 here, one with PROM rev. 7.0, the other with 7.01. The one with 7.0 is unable to boot kernels of more than 1 MB in size via tftp, the 7.01 PROM works well ... : Installation of either NetBSD and OpenBSD is very similar. In fact, : significant portions of the OpenBSD installation guide are copied : verbatim from the NetBSD 1.2 release documentation, complete with the : typos and spelling errors ;). I was also amused when I realised that ;-) ... [...] Btw., do you have _any_ documentation on the Personal DECstations and the 5000/1xx systems lying around ? We could use some of that for our Linux port for the DECstations. He have the documentation for the 2100/3100 and 5000/200 from gatekeeper, but that's all. Maddog Hall has been busy searching for these documents (thanks again, Maddog, if you read this !), but so far wasn't able to find them ... So, if you don't mind sharing some documentation, this would be of great value for us ! We are probably going to get some information on the DS5000/1xx from a DEC engineer who worked on these machines; we would certainly be happy to share this information with the Net- and OpenBSD developers ! regards, Michael Engel (engel@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de)