A/UX gripe

[Matthias Urlichs]

In comp.unix.aux, article <1991Mar22.064217.16497 at panix.uucp>,
  alexis at panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes:
< 
< With that said, be advised: Clear the Decks. I just spent 4 days with about
< 15 hours of sleep, 5 meals, and one shower, trying to install A/UX 2.0.1.
< Today I'm recovering, and tomorrow, perhaps with some emotional detachment,
< I'll try to post a description of what went wrong so that others don't get
< burned too. But if I'm not so detached I'm sure you'll all understand. :-)
< 
Heh -- I had a day-long fight with the floppy upgrade last week.

It seems that the CommCard I'm using installs some directories in /etc/*.d,
and for some of these *.d's the install scripts assume that they contain
regular files only.
The effect of this was that the newly generated kernel ended up without any
modules like, for instance, file systems. Fun.

The installer insisted on not having any file systems mounted, being in
single-user mode, overestimating the required free space, and replacing
/bin/ksh before starting the actual installation.
The above may be a good idea for your average A/UX, but I can do without
these restrictions if I know what's going on on my system.

(NB: Customarily you test for single-user mode by saying "set `who -r`" and
 examining $3, not by counting how many processes are active.
 NB2: Why does "who -a" hang? Terminally. Not even kill -9 removes it.)
This is in contrast to the installation from CD-ROM, which (at least under
2.0) seriously underestimated how much space it was going to need.

I also wonder why the installation stuff insisted on "updating" things like
log files or /etc/passwd. Couldn't they just ignore these?

< BTW, A/UX 2.0.1 itself is excellent (modulo a few bugs which were supposed
< to be fixed...). It's just the installer I hate. I may be imagining things
< but it seems to me that the speed of drawing operations on the console is
< drastically enhanced. Now that it's finally up I'm quite happy with it.
< 
They seem to have discovered that offscreen drawing and multiline scrolling
can and do make one helluva difference. THANKS.


Now for the bugs that are still there:
- Kernel memory management once triggered a panic.
- About once a week, the pty stuff barfs and starts losing characters in a
  pseudo-random manner. Under the CommandShell, life start to get interesting
  that way... A reboot is necessary to recover from this.
- It's not compatible with System 7.0.  ;-)
-- 
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs at smurf.sub.org -- urlichs at smurf.ira.uka.de     /(o\
Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49-721-621127(0700-2330)   \o)/