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Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#211

Post by stcroixx »

tbrownaw wrote: post #39
stcroixx wrote: post #14

I worked on a system deployed on AIX for a few years. We used it to distribute batch workloads in parallel across a cluster of machines - no other software and OS did such a thing, maybe still doesn't. The machines themselves were PowerPC RS6000's which only ran AIX. The company already had a close relationship with IBM because they'd been running mainframes for decades. They made tons of money so saving money on lic…

> distribute batch workloads in parallel across a cluster of machines - no other software and OS did such a thing, maybe still doesn't What am I missing? One of my college courses ages ago was about working with MPI which we got to run on the hpc cluster. The last time I needed to run N copies of something I asked kubernetes to do it. The time before that, I asked $cloud_vendor for N identical VMs with the same cloud…

MPP was the acronym for the pattern. It let us take a binary executable which would normally just be a single PID on one node and it would distribute the PID and all its resources including files across however many nodes you had configured. The software that managed this was heavily dependent on RISC processor architecture which basically meant only AIX RS6000. Googles solution is designed for commodity processors. The modern equivalents let you do something sort of similar, but you have to design for that and as far as I know you’re not sharing resources like open file handles across the cluster. We took C programs and ran them as is.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#212

Post by throwawayacc3 »

Annatar wrote: post #170
mrweasel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough Solaris isn't certified. At a previous employer we would run a large number of Oracle installations on Solaris, on Oracle hardware (SPARC64). I don't think that uncommon.

Solaris is UNIX 03 certified. Solaris is actually a reference implementation platform for: - TCP / IP; - NFS; - POSIX; - XPG4; - XPG6; - SVR4.

>Solaris is actually a reference implementation platform for:

Was actually. It is no longer a reference platform for TCP/IP, NFS, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#214

Post by treadmill »

29athrowaway wrote: post #204
PreInternet01 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question, although the basic answer should be obvious: the users still need access to the data! So, the question becomes more like "why not upgrade", or more specifically "why not migrate the data to something that is not so shockingly obsolete", since it's probably clear that there is no real upgrade path here (both SCO and the vendor of the accounting system are long gone). Usually with systems of this vintage…

Maybe it's a multi-step migration. From the highly obsolete format, to a stepping stone in-between which can be converted to a modern format.

With the constraints described by OP, converting to a stepping stone would still require you to fully reverse engineere the binary format.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#216

Post by agsnu »

pavlov wrote: post #152
humanistbot wrote: post #43

I'd argue Mac OS X is proprietary UNIX, but I'll admit to that being a bit pedantic.

In the spirit of pedantry, I’ll point out it’s actually called macOS these days. The ‘X’ and capitalization went away when they finally bumped the version number to 11.

Actually, it was changed to macOS in 2016 for 10.12 Sierra, to align the branding across Apple's various platforms (iOS/macOS/tvOS/watchOS).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#217

Post by zeruch »

rolenthedeep wrote: post #129
zeruch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a vendor that SW was a customer, and we were asked about integrating with some SW systems...what you are describing resonates

Was it EDI? I had a problem with a vendor where my store ordered something in 2015, marked it as not received, then received it later and sold it without correcting inventory. The vendor went into a cycle of refunding and re-billing my store for that part every few months for years . Fortunately both our books came out even in the end, but Jesus what a stupid thing to happen.

It was ultimately all of SW. Before the Valspar purchase, SW used SugarCRM, and my team there (TAMs) were with the account and regularly out in CLE. I really like the team there from SW. One of the best customers I ever dealt with overall.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#218

Post by ralphc »

Not lately, at a previous job we worked with Linuxes, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX and Linux on 390 mainframes.

The reason I'm chiming in is to give my advice to those still dealing with these; learn vi, at least enough to edit config files. It's the only editor you can find on all of these, and you often can't install your own software.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?

#219

Post by vladak »

mrweasel wrote: post #201
Annatar wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solaris is UNIX 03 certified. Solaris is actually a reference implementation platform for: - TCP / IP; - NFS; - POSIX; - XPG4; - XPG6; - SVR4.

Didn't Oracle stop paying for the certifications a few years ago? Solaris certainly was certified at some point.

Yep. Two of my local colleagues were actively working with Open Group until then, fixing UNIX compliance bugs, running the test suites, producing the reports etc.
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