A/UX gripe

[Alexis Rosen]

kaufman at neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) writes:
>Some comments on multiple HFS partitions:
>In article <1991Mar15.224133.7433 at nas.nasa.gov> lumpkin at amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Forrest E. Lumpkin) writes:
>>I also wrote:
>->2) Will the bugs in the installation software be resolved. With the present
>->   software intelligent use of dp is required unless one is setting up
>->   a one A/UX partition (/) hard disk arrangement?
>
>>To which Kent Sandvik replied:
>
>->This is a scary area, where the installation program can't guess
>->all the possible arrangements that the administrator would wish
>->to have. I've tested both CMS and Silverlining for A/UX disk
>->partitioning, and even if their interfaces are bizarre, they do
>->their job quite well.
>>---stuff deleted-----
>->Otherwise HD Setup with Apple harddisks asks for a rich set of
>->possible A/UX setups before the installation. The installation
>->software is quite different compared with the old A/UX 1.1
>->installation program.
>
>>To which Alexis Rosen replied:
>
>->This is the real problem. It is disgraceful that HD Setup won't partition
>->3rd party drives. I wouldn't mind if it could put drivers on them too, but
>->that's not so critical. But Apple refuses to sell reasonably large disks,
>->and sticks us with the archaic and arcane dp. I was under the strong
>->impression that this was going to change in 2.0.1, but if I did hear such
>->a commitment, it wasn't kept. What happened to "easy to use" and "great user
>->interface"?
>
>You don't have to know the magic SCSI commands to set up partitions on a
>disk.  You only have to know GetCapacity, Read, and Write.  There is no
>reason HD Setup could not set up partitions on a disk formatted (and driven)
>by other software.
>
>>Come on folks at Apple. ONE OF AN OPERATING SYSTEM'S MAIN FUNCTIONS IS TO
>>EFFICIENTLY MANAGE FILES AND FILE STRUCTURES. UNIX is very popular because
>>[...] Even modifying HS Setup to allow multiple HFS
>>Partitions per physical device would be a help. But no - it seems Apple is
>>intent on putting on several layers of frosting before they have finished
>>baking the cake.
>
>Moved and seconded.
>
>Marc Kaufman (kaufman at Neon.stanford.edu)

Marc's point is exactly the one I was making. I should have been more explicit.

So let me put it even another way.

IF DP CAN DO IT WHY CAN'T HD SC SETUP???

(I feel much better now... :-)

Please, you guys, you've done a terrific job on A/UX. As of last week, when I
got 2.0.1, it got a lot better. Why defend one of the few indefensible points?
If some marketing geeks are laying down the law here, just say so and forget
it. But if this decision was made on the technical issues, it badly needs
rethinking. Today.

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis