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- From: tmatimar@empress.com (Ted M A Timar)
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- Subject: Unix - Frequently Asked Questions (6/7) [Frequent posting]
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-
- Archive-name: unix-faq/faq/part6
- Version: $Id: part6,v 2.1 92/12/04 07:43:57 tmatimar Exp $
-
- These seven articles contain the answers to some Frequently Asked
- Questions often seen in comp.unix.questions and comp.unix.shell.
- Please don't ask these questions again, they've been answered plenty
- of times already - and please don't flame someone just because they may
- not have read this particular posting. Thank you.
-
- These articles are divided approximately as follows:
-
- 1.*) General questions.
- 2.*) Relatively basic questions, likely to be asked by beginners.
- 3.*) Intermediate questions.
- 4.*) Advanced questions, likely to be asked by people who thought
- they already knew all of the answers.
- 5.*) Questions pertaining to the various shells, and the differences.
- 6.*) An overview of Unix variants.
- 7.*) An comparison of configuration management systems (RCS, SCCS).
-
- This article includes answers to:
-
- 6.1) Disclaimer and introduction.
- 6.2) A very brief look at Unix history.
- 6.3) Main Unix flavors.
- 6.4) Unix Standards.
- 6.5) Identifying your Unix flavor.
- 6.6) Brief notes on some well-known (commercial/PD) Unices.
- 6.7) Real-time Unices.
- 6.8) Unix glossary.
- 6.9) Acknowledgements.
-
- If you're looking for the answer to, say, question 6.5, and want to skip
- everything else, you can search ahead for the regular expression "^6.5)".
-
- While these are all legitimate questions, they seem to crop up in
- comp.unix.questions or comp.unix.shell on an annual basis, usually
- followed by plenty of replies (only some of which are correct) and then
- a period of griping about how the same questions keep coming up. You
- may also like to read the monthly article "Answers to Frequently Asked
- Questions" in the newsgroup "news.announce.newusers", which will tell
- you what "UNIX" stands for.
-
- With the variety of Unix systems in the world, it's hard to guarantee
- that these answers will work everywhere. Read your local manual pages
- before trying anything suggested here. If you have suggestions or
- corrections for any of these answers, please send them to to
- tmatimar@empress.com.
-
- 6.1) Disclaimer and introduction.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- The following is offered with no guarantee as to accuracy or
- completeness. I have done what I can in the time available and
- it still is very much work in progress. I hope to keep improving
- this summary. Comments welcome: lew@bnr.ca. Acknowledgements
- at the end.
-
- First a short definition. By Unix we mean an operating system
- typically written in C, with a hierarchical file system,
- integration of file and device I/O, whose system call interface
- includes services such as fork(), pipe(), and whose user
- interface includes tools such as cc, troff, grep, awk, and a
- choice of shell. Note that UNIX is a registered trademark of USL
- (AT&T), but will be used here in its generic sense.
-
- Most Unices (the more common plural form) are derived more or
- less directly from AT&T code (some code from the first C version
- is presumably still left in most), but there are also clones
- (i.e. Unix-compatible systems with no AT&T code).
-
- In addition, there are also Unix-like environments (e.g. VOS)
- sitting on top of other OSs, and OSs inspired from Unix (yes,
- even DOS!). These are not covered here. Little on real-time
- Unices yet (although more is planned).
-
- Unix comes in an incredible variety of flavors. This is to a
- large extent due to availability of sources and the ease of
- porting and modifying Unix. Typically, a vendor of Unix will
- start with one basic flavor (see below), take ideas/code from the
- other major flavor, add and change many things, etc. This
- results in yet another new Unix flavor. Today, there are
- literally hundreds of Unices available, the closest thing to
- standard Unix being (by definition) System V.
-
- This answer was put together mostly from information on the net
- and email. Some specific sources are also mentioned in the
- appropriate sections.
-
- 6.2) A very brief look at Unix history.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- Unix history goes back to 1969 and the famous "little-used PDP-7
- in a corner" on which Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie (the R in K&R)
- and others started work on what was to become Unix. The name
- "Unix" was intended as a pun on Multics (and was written "Unics"
- at first -- UNiplexed Information and Computing System).
-
- For the first 10 years, Unix development was essentially confined
- to Bell Labs. These initial versions were labeled "Version n" or
- "Nth Edition" (of the manuals), and were for DEC's PDP-11 (16
- bits) and later VAXen (32 bits). Some significant versions
- include:
-
- V1 (1971): 1st Unix version, in assembler on a PDP-11/20.
- Included file system, fork(), roff, ed. Was used as a text
- processing tool for preparation of patents. Pipe() appeared
- first in V2!
-
- V4 (1973): Rewritten in C, which is probably the most
- significant event in this OS's history: it means Unix can be
- ported to a new hardware in months, and changes are easy. The
- C language was originally designed for the Unix operating
- system, and hence there is a strong synergy between C and Unix.
-
- V6 (1975): First version of Unix widely available outside
- Bell Labs (esp. in universities). This was also the start of
- Unix diversity and popularity. 1.xBSD (PDP-11) was derived
- from this version. J. Lions published "A commentary on the
- Unix Operating System" based on V6.
-
- V7 (1979): For many, this is the "last true Unix", an
- "improvement over all preceding and following Unices"
- [Bourne]. It included full K&R C, uucp, Bourne shell. V7 was
- ported to the VAX as 32V. The V7 kernel was a mere 40
- Kbytes!
-
- Here (for reference) the system calls of V7:
- _exit, access, acct, alarm, brk, chdir, chmod, chown,
- chroot, close, creat, dup, dup2, exec*, exit, fork, fstat,
- ftime, getegid, geteuid, getgid, getpid, getuid, gtty,
- indir, ioctl, kill, link, lock, lseek, mknod, mount,
- mpxcall, nice, open, pause, phys, pipe, pkoff, pkon,
- profil, ptrace, read, sbrk, setgid, setuid, signal, stat,
- stime, stty, sync, tell, time, times, umask, umount,
- unlink, utime, wait, write.
-
- These Vn versions were developed by the Computer Research Group
- (CRG) of Bell Labs. Another group, the Unix System Group (USG),
- was responsible for support. A third group at Bell Labs was also
- involved in Unix development, the Programmer's WorkBench (PWB),
- to which we owe, for example, sccs, named pipes and other
- important ideas. Both groups were merged into Unix System
- Development Lab in 1983.
-
- Work on Unix continued at Bell Labs in the 1980s. The V series
- was further developed by the CRG (Stroustrup mentions V10 in the
- 2nd edition of his book on C++), but we don't seem to hear much
- about this otherwise. The company now responsible for Unix
- (System V) is called Unix System Laboratories (USL) and is
- majority-owned by AT&T.
-
- But much happened to Unix outside AT&T, especially at Berkeley
- (where the other major flavor comes from). Vendors (esp. of
- workstations) also contributed much (e.g. Sun's NFS).
-
- The book "Life with Unix" by Don Libes and Sandy Ressler is
- fascinating reading for anyone interested in Unix, and covers a
- lot of the history, interactions, etc.. Much in the present
- section is summarized from this book.
-
- 6.3) Main Unix flavors.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- Until recently, there were basically two main flavors of Unix:
- System V (five) from AT&T, and the Berkeley Software Distribution
- (BSD). SVR4 is essentially a merge of these two flavors. End
- '91, OSF/1 from the Open Software Foundation was released (as a
- direct competitor to System V) and may (future will tell) change
- this picture.
-
- The following lists the main releases and features of System V,
- BSD and OSF/1.
-
- System V from AT&T. Typical of Intel hardware. Most often
- ported Unix, typically with BSD enhancements (csh, job
- control, termcap, curses, vi, symbolic links). System V
- evolution is now overseen by Unix International (UI). UI
- members include AT&T, Sun, ....
- Newsgroup: comp.unix.sysv[23]86. Main releases:
-
- - System III (1982): first commercial Unix from AT&T
- - FIFOs (named pipes) (later?)
-
- - System V (1983):
- - IPC package (shm, msg, sem)
-
- - SVR2 (1984):
- - shell functions (sh)
- - SVID (System V Interface Definition)
-
- - SVR3 (1986) for ? platforms:
- - STREAMS (inspired by V8), poll(), TLI (network software)
- - RFS
- - shared libs
- - SVID 2
- - demand paging (if hardware supports)
-
- - SVR3.2:
- - merge with Xenix (Intel 80386)
- - networking
-
- - SVR4 (1988), mainstream of Unix implementations, merge of
- System V, BSD, and SunOS.
- - From SVR3: sysadmin, terminal I/F, printer (from BSD?),
- RFS, STREAMS, uucp
- - From BSD: FFS, TCP/IP, sockets, select(), csh
- - From SunOS: NFS, OpenLook GUI, X11/NeWS, virtual memory
- subsystem with memory-mapped files, shared libraries
- (!= SVR3 ones?)
- - ksh
- - ANSI C
- - Internationalization (8-bit clean)
- - ABI (Application Binary Interface -- routines instead of traps)
- - POSIX, X/Open, SVID3
-
- - SVR4.1
- - async I/O (from SunOS?)
-
- - SVR4.2 (based on SVR4.1ES)
- - Veritas FS, ACLs
- - Dynamically loadable kernel modules
-
- - Future:
- - SVR4 MP (multiprocessor)
- - Use of Chorus microkernel?
-
- Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Typical of VAXen, RISCs,
- many workstations. More dynamic, research versions now than
- System V. BSD is responsible for much of the popularity of
- Unix. Most enhancements to Unix started here. The group
- responsible at UCB (University of California at Berkeley) is
- the Computer System Research Group (CSRG). They closed down
- in 1992. Newsgroup: comp.unix.bsd. Main releases:
-
- (much reorganized wrt dates and releases, hope it's converging)
-
- - 2.xBSD (1978) for PDP-11, still of significance? (2.11BSD
- was released in 1992!).
- - csh
-
- - 3BSD (1978):
- - virtual memory
-
- - 4.?BSD:
- - termcap, curses
- - vi
-
- - 4.0BSD (1980):
-
- - 4.1BSD (?): base of later AT&T CRG versions
- - job control
- - automatic kernel config
- - vfork()
-
- - 4.2BSD (1983):
- - TCP/IP, sockets, ethernet
- - UFS: long file names, symbolic links
- - new reliable signals (4.1 reliable signals now in SVR3)
- - select()
-
- - 4.3BSD (1986) for VAX, ?:
- - 4.3 Tahoe (1988): 4.3BSD with sources, support for Tahoe
- (32-bit supermini)
- - Fat FFS
- - New TCP algorithms
- - 4.3 Reno (1990) for VAX, Tahoe, HP 9000/300:
- - most of P1003.1
- - NFS (from Sun)
- - MFS (memory file system)
- - OSI: TP4, CLNP, ISODE's FTAM, VT and X.500; SLIP
- - Kerberos
-
- - 4.4BSD (will we ever see it?) for HP 9000, Sparc, 386, DEC, Tahoe:
- - new FS organization, new process internals, new virtual
- memory based on Mach 2.5
- - POSIX compatibility
- - OSI (based on ISODE), X.25
-
- The Open Software Foundation (OSF) released its Unix called OSF/1
- end of 1991. Still requires an SVR2 license.
- Compatible/compliant with SVID 2 (and 3 coming), POSIX,
- X/Open, etc.. OSF members include Apollo, Dec, HP, IBM, ....
-
- - OSF/1 (1991):
- - based on Mach 2.5 kernel
- - symmetric multiprocessing, parallelized kernel, threads
- - logical volumes, disk mirroring, UFS (native), S5 FS, NFS
- - enhanced security (B1 with some B2, B3; or C2), 4.3BSD admin
- - STREAMS, TLI/XTI, sockets
- - shared libs, dynamic loader (incl. kernel)
- - Motif GUI
-
- - Future:
- - OSF/1 MK (mikrokernel) based on Mach 3.0
-
- This list of major flavors should probably also include Xenix
- which has been the basis for many ports. Derived from V7, S III
- and finally System V, it is similar externally but significantly
- changed internally (performance-tuned for micros).
-
-
- Two very good books describe the internals of the two main flavors.
- These are:
- - System V: "Design of the Unix Operating SYstem", M.J. Bach.
- - BSD: "Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix Operating System",
- Leffler, McKusick, Karels, Quaterman.
- For a good introduction to OSF/1 (not quite as technical as the
- previous two), see: "Guide to OSF/1, A Technical Synopsis",
- published by O'Reilly. On SunOS, "Virtual Memory Architecture in
- SunOS" and "Shared Libraries in SunOS" in Summer 1989 USENIX
- Proceedings.
-
- A good set of articles on where Unix is going is "Unix Variants"
- in the Apr 92 issue of Unix Review. Other good sources of
- information include the bsd-faq file, and many of the newsgroups
- mentioned in the text.
-
- 6.4) Unix Standards.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- This section briefly describes the more important standards
- relevant to Unix.
-
- - IEEE:
- - 802.x (LAN) standards (LLC, ethernet, token ring, token bus)
- - POSIX (ISO 9945?): Portable Operating System I/F (Unix, VMS
- and OS/2!) (only ? have been finalized at this point)
- - 1003.1: library procedures (mostly system calls) -- roughly V7
- except for signals and terminal I/F (1990)
- - 1003.2: shell and utilities
- - 1003.3: test methods and conformance
- - 1003.4: real-time: binary semaphores, process memory
- locking, memory-mapped files, shared memory,
- priority scheduling, real-time signals, clocks and
- timers, IPC message passing, synchronized I/O,
- asynchronous I/O, real-time files
- - 1003.5: Ada language bindings
- - 1003.6: security
- - 1003.7: system admin (incl. printing)
- - 1003.8: transparent file access
- - 1003.9: FORTRAN language bindings
- - 1003.10: super computing
- - 1003.12: protocol-independent I/Fs
- - 1003.13: real-time profiles
- - 1003.15: supercomputing batch I/Fs
- - 1003.16: C-language bindings (?)
- - 1003.17: directory services
- - 1003.19: FORTRAN 90 language bindings
-
- - X/Open (consortium of vendors):
- - X/Open Portability Guides (XPGn):
- - XPG2 (1987), strong SV influence
- Vol 1: commands and utilities
- Vol 2: system calls and libraries
- Vol 3: terminal I/F (curses, termio), IPC (SV),
- internationalization
- Vol 4: programming languages (C, COBOL!)
- Vol 5: data management (ISAM, SQL)
- - XPG3 adds: ?
- - XOM series of interfaces:
- - XOM (X/Open Object Management) generic I/F mechanisms for
- following
- - XDS (X/Open Directory Service)
- - XMH (X/Open Mail ??)
- - XCM (X/Open Consolidated Management) (not yet approved?)
-
- - AT&T
- - System V Interface Definition (SVID)
- - SVID1 (1985, SVR2)
- Vol 1: system calls and libraries (similar to XPG2.1)
- - SVID2 (1986, SVR3)
- Vol 1: system calls and libraries (base, kernel extensions)
- Vol 2: commands and utilities (base, advanced, admin, software
- development), terminal I/F
- Vol 3: terminal I/F (again), STREAMS and TLI, RFS
- - SVID3 (19??, SVR4) adds
- Vol 4: ?? &c
- - APIs
- - Transport Library Interface (TLI)
- - ACSE/Presentation Library Interface (APLI)
-
- 6.5) Identifying your Unix flavor.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- This section lists a number of things you can look at in
- attempting to identify the base flavor of your Unix. Given the
- significant exchange of code and ideas between the various
- flavors and the many changes made by vendors, any statement such
- as "this Unix is an SVR2" is at best a statistical statement
- (except for some SVRn ports). Also many Unices offer most of
- both worlds (either mixed as in SunOS or strictly separated as in
- Apollo?). So this section is perhaps not very useful...
-
- The list of features in previous sections can also help. For
- example, if a system has a poll(2) but no select(2), it is highly
- probable that it is derived from SVR3. Also the name of the OS
- can provide a clue, as well as the logon message (e.g. SGI's
- "Irix SVR3.3.2") or the output of "uname -a" command. Available
- commands can also provide hints but this is probably less
- reliable than kernel features. For example, the type of terminal
- initialization (inittab or ttys) is a more reliable indicator
- than the print subsystem.
-
- Feature Typical in SVRx Typical in xBSD
-
- kernel name /unix /vmunix
- terminal init /etc/inittab /etc/ttys (only getty to 4.3)
- boot init /etc/rc.d directories /etc/rc.* files
- mounted FSs /etc/mnttab /etc/mtab
- usual shell sh, ksh csh, #! hack
- native FS S5 (blk: 512-2K) UFS (blk: 4K-8K)
- file names <= 14 bytes file names < 255 bytes
- groups need newgrp(1) automatic membership
- SVR4: multiple groups
- print subsystem lp, lpstat, cancel lpr, lpq, lprm (lpd daemon) ??
- terminal control termio, terminfo, termios (sgtty before 4.3reno)
- SVR4: termios (POSIX) termcap
- job control >= SVR4 yes
- ps command ps -ef ps -aux
- string fcns memset, memcpy bzero, bcopy
- process mapping /proc (SVR4)
-
- 6.6) Brief notes on some well-known (commercial/PD) Unices.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- (I am not at all satisfied with this section, unfortunately I
- have neither the time nor the documents to make it much better
- (wrt contents). Should only list Unices known by a reasonably
- wide audience. Small and non-US Unices welcome, e.g. Eurix. In
- need of reformatting)
-
- This section lists (in alphabetical order) some of the better
- known Unices along with a brief description of their nature.
-
- AIX: IBM's Unix, based on SVR2 (later up to SVR3.2?) with varying
- degrees of BSD extensions, for various hardwares. Proprietary
- system admin (SMIT). Both 850 and Latin-1 CPs. Quite
- different from most Unices and among themselves.
- Newsgroup: comp.unix.aix.
- - 1.x (for 386 PS/2)
- - 2.x (for PC RTs)
- - 3.x (for RS/6000), paging kernel, logical volume manager, i18n;
- 3.2 adds TLI/STREAMS
- - there is also a version for S/370 mainframes (as task under VM)
- Was to have been base for OSF/1 until Mach was chosen instead.
-
- AOS (IBM): 4.3BSD port to IBM PC RT (for educational institutes).
- Don't confuse with DG's proprietary OS of same name.
-
- Arix: SV
-
- A/UX (Apple): SV with Berkeley enhancements, NFS, Mac GUI. System 6
- (later System 7) runs as guest of A/UX (opposite of MachTen).
- Newsgroup: comp.unix.aux.
- - 2.0: SVR2 with 4.2BSD, system 6 Mac applications.
- - 3.0 (1992): SVR2.2 with 4.3BSD, system 7 applications.
-
- BOS for Bull's DPX/2 (680x0)
- - V1 (1990): SVR3 with BSD extensions (FFS, select, sockets),
- symmetric MP, X11R3
- - V2 (1991): adds job control, disk mirroring, C2 security,
- DCE extensions
-
- 386BSD: Jolitz's port of Net2 software. Posix, 32-bit, still in alpha.
-
- BSD/386 (80386): from BSDI, with source (augmented Net2 software)
- Newsgroup: comp.unix.bsd.
-
- Chorus/MiXV: Unix SVR3.2 (SVR4) over Chorus nucleus, ABI/BCS.
-
- Coherent (80286): Unix clone compatible with V7, some SVR2 (IPC).
- V4.0 is 32-bit. Newsgroup: comp.os.coherent
-
- Consensys: SVR4
-
- CTIX: SV-based, from Convergent
-
- D-NIX: SV
-
- DomainIX (Apollo): dual Unix over Apollo Domain operating system
-
- DomainOS (Apollo): BSD 4.2? with System V? (strict differentiation?)
- - 10.x
-
- DVIX (NT's DVS): SVR2
-
- DYNIX (Sequent): 4.2BSD-based
-
- DYNIX/PTX: SVR3-based
-
- Esix (80386): pure SVR4, X11, OpenLook (NeWS), Xview
-
- Eurix (80?86): SVR3.2 (german?)
-
- FTX: Stratus fault-tolerant OS (68K or i860-i960 hardware)
-
- GNU Hurd (?): vaporware from the Free Software Foundation (FSF):
- Unix emulator over Mach 3.0 kernel. Many GNU tools are very
- popular (emacs) and used in the PD Unices.
-
- HP-UX (HP): old from S III (SVRx), now SVR2 (4.2BSD?) with SV utilities
- (they have trouble making up their minds).
- - 6.5: SVR2
- - 7.0: SVR3.2, symlinks
- - 7.5
- - 8.0: BSD based? for HP-9000 CISC (300/400) and RISC (800/700)
-
- Interactive SVR3.2 (80x86): pure SVR3. Interactive has been bought
- by Sun; will their system survive Solaris?
-
- Idris: first Unix clone by Whitesmith.
- - 4D
-
- Irix (SGI): SVR3.2, much BSD. Newsgroup: comp.sys.sgi.
-
- Linux (80386): PD Unix, SVish. Available with sources.
- Newsgroup: comp.os.linux
-
- MachTen, Tenon Intersystems: runs as a guest of System 6, no memory
- protection, 4.3BSD environment with TCP, NFS.
-
- MacMach (Mac II): 4.3BSD over Mach 3.0 microkernel, X11, Motif, GNU
- software, sources, experimental System 7 as Mach task.
-
- Mach386: from Mt Xinu. Based on Mach 2.5, with 4.3BSD-Tahoe
- enhancements. Also 2.6 MSD (Mach Source Distribution).
-
- Microport (80x86): pure SVR4, X11, OpenLook GUI
-
- Minix (80x86, Atari, Amiga, Mac): Unix clone compatible with V7.
- Sold with sources. Being POSIXified (sp?). Newsgroup: comp.os.minix.
-
- MipsOS: SVish (RISC/OS, now dropped, was BSDish)
-
- more/BSD (VAX, HP 9000/300): Mt Xinu's Unix, based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe.
- Newsgroup: comp.os.xinu?
-
- Net/2 tape (from Berkeley, 1991): BSD Unix, essentially compatible with
- 4.3BSD, includes only sources free of AT&T code, no low-level code.
- See 386BSD and BSD/386 above.
-
- NextStep (Next): BSD over Mach kernel, own GUI. 386 version coming?
- - 1.0
-
- NEWS-OS (Sony)
- - 3.2
-
- OSF/1 (DEC): DEC's port of OSF/1
-
- PC-IX (IBM 8086): SV
-
- SCO Xenix (80x86):
-
- SCO Unix (80x86): SVR3.2
-
- Solaris (Sparc, 80386):
- - 1.0: essentially same as SunOS 4.1.1, with OpenWindows 2.0 and
- DeskSet utilities.
- - 1.0.1: SunOS 4.1.2 with multiprocessing (kernel not multithreaded);
- not for 386
- - 2.0: will be based on SVR4 (and have symmetric MP), will include
- support for 386; with OpenWindows 3.0 (X11R4), DeskSet, ONC, NIS.
- Compilers unbundled!
-
- SunOS (680x0, Sparc, i386): based on 4.3BSD, includes much from System V.
- Main Sun achievements: NFS (1984), SunView (1985), NeWS
- (1986, postscript imaging, now in OpenWindows), OpenLook GUI standard,
- OpenWindows (NeWS, X11, SunView!). Newsgroup: comp.sys.sun.*.
- - 3.x: SV IPC package, FIFOs
- - 4.0.3: lightweight processes, new virtual mem, shared libs
- - 4.1: STREAMS & TLI, 8-bit clean?, async I/O, ms-dos file system
- (continues as Solaris -- see above).
-
- UHC (80x86): pure SVR4, X11, Motif
-
- Ultrix (DEC): based on 4.2BSD with much of 4.3.
- Newsgroup: comp.unix.ultrix.
- - 3.1, 4.0
-
- UNICOS (Cray): Newsgroup: comp.unix.cray
- - 5.x, 6,x, 7.0
-
- UTEK (Tektronix)
- - 4.0
-
- Xenix (80x86): 1st Unix on Intel hardware, based on SVR2 (previously on
- S III and even V7). Newsgroup: comp.unix.xenix.
-
- 3B1 (680x0): SV-based, done by Convergent for AT&T.
- Newsgroup: comp.sys.3b1.
-
- 6.7) Real-time Unices.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- This information is fragmentary. I doubt all of following are Unices --
- input is welcome.
-
- RTU (Concurrent), for 68K boxes
-
- Stellix (Stardent); it's Unix, but is it real-time?
-
- Velocity (Ready Systems):
-
- VxWorks (Wind River Systems): BSDish, no termcap.
- Newsgroup: comp.os.vxworks.
-
- pSOS??
-
- 6.8) Unix glossary.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- This section provides short definitions of various concepts and
- components of (or related to) Unix systems.
-
- Chorus: message-passing microkernel, may form basis for a future release
- of SV. Chorus already have SVR4 running on top (binary-compatible).
-
- DCE (Distributed Computing Environment, from OSF): Includes RPC (Apollo's
- NCS), directory service (local based on DNS, global on X.500), time,
- security, and threads services, DFS (distrib. file system), ....
- OS-independent.
-
- DME (Distributed Management Environment, from OSF): future.
-
- FFS (Fast File System): alias for UFS (BSD name)
-
- Mach: modern kernels from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) on which many
- Unices and other OSs are based (e.g. OSF/1, MacMach, ...):
- - 2.5: monolithic kernel with 4.2BSD
- - 3.0: microkernel with BSD Unix server in user space (and other OSs,
- e.g. MS-DOS)
- Newsgroup: comp.os.mach
-
- MFS: Memory File System
-
- NFS (Network File System): contributed by Sun to BSD, stateless server
-
- ONC (Open Network Computing): from Sun(?), includes RPC, name service
- (NIS aka YP), NFS, ... (found in many Unices, other OSs).
-
- RFS (Remote File System): SV, stateful server, incompatible with NFS
-
- RPC (Remote Procedure Call): high-level IPC (inter-process communication)
- mechanism. Two flavors.
- - ONC: Over TCP or UDP (later OSI), uses XDR to encode data.
- - DCE: has a different RPC mechanism (based on Apollo's NCS)
-
- S5 FS: System V's native file system, blocks 512 to 2K.
-
- sockets: BSD interface mechanism to networks (compare TLI).
-
- STREAMS: a message-passing kernel mechanism, initially in SVR3, which
- provides a very good interface for protocol development.
-
- TLI (Transport Library Interface): SV's interface to transport services
- (TCP, OSI). UI has also defined an APLI (ACSE/Presentation Library
- Interface)
-
- UFS (?): BSD's native file system, blocks 4K to 8K, cylinder groups,
- fragments.
-
- XTI (X/Open Transport Interface): TLI with enhancements
-
- 6.9) Acknowledgements.
-
- From: "Pierre (P.) Lewis" <lew@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 15:29:00 +0000
- Version: 2.0
-
- (in addition to references): pat@bnr.ca, guy@auspex.com,
- pen@lysator.liu.se, mikes@ingres.com, mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu,
- root%candle.uucp@ls.com, ee@atbull.bull.co.at,
- Aaron_Dailey@stortek.com. Many thanks!
-