[Info-vax] Current VMS engineering quality, was: Re: What's VMS up to these

[Bob Eager]

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:39:12 -0700, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> On 2012-03-16 16.48, Bob Eager wrote:
>> On Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:43:26 +0100, Fritz Wuehler wrote:
>>
>>> Johnny Billquist<bqt at softjar.se>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2. Unix distributed networks using ethernet and shared disks is not
>>>> robust at all. You must be totally uninformed if you claim this. Have
>>>> you ever used a machine with an NFS root? Any time the server
>>>> stopped, rebooted, or whatever, all clients *freeze*. Not even
>>>> rebooting, unless you press the power switch. You just sit there
>>>> waiting for the NFS server to wake up again.
>>>
>>> Correct. This just happened to me (facepalm) today on a modern Linux
>>> system 2.6.29.something kernel. I didn't think and took my NFS box
>>> offline and when my Linux client couldn't get to the mounted share
>>> ..........................
>>
>> So, that's a Linux problem.
> 
> No. That is a general problem with all Unix systems, and is not specific
> to a certain implentation, but an effect of the whole design of Unix and
> NFS. There is no Unix anywhere that will behave any different.

Despite the fact that they have radically different source code and 
implementation? I think not.

I say it again. UNIX is not an operating system. There is no one uNIX.

>>> Solution: reboot NFS box. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Can't the UNIX
>>> idiots *ever* do anything correctly?
>>
>> UNIX is not an operating system. It's a specification, and that
>> specification doesn't include NFS anyway. Sweeping generalisations
>> don't help. Some systems conforming to 'UNIX' work OK in this
>> situation, and some don't.
> 
> No. Not a single Unix behaves "OK" in this situation. They can't. It's a
> part of the basic design of the whole system. Or perhaps rather, a part
> of the effects of the basic design, as I'm sure they didn't
> intentionally design it with this effect in mind. But it an effect of
> the design.

Which part? Explain.

> Show me a single Unix system that does not work this way. I'd be very
> interested in digging into that to see what they have done to change
> this in that case.

Work which way? You are just saying 'NFS doesn't work properly'. Which 
part of the operating system, exactly, are you blaming which bahaviour on?

>>>> 4. Unix does normally not crash, but instead freeze. And not only if
>>>> the network goes down, but also if the single machine serving the
>>>> disk goes down.
>>>
>>> Exactly what happened.
>>
>> On *your* system.
> 
> On *every* system. This story is as old as NFS itself. Long before Linux
> even existed.

So, it's a problem with NFS. Not UNIX.

>>>>   Also, if anything in the server configuration changes, all clients
>>>> needs to be rebooted, no matter if the server comes back, since NFS
>>>> don't allow any recovery in that case. And we are talking about very
>>>> ungraceful rebooting here. No controlled take down. You'll have to
>>>> reach for the reset or power switch, since controlled shutdown is
>>>> impossible.
>>
>> On *your* system.
> 
> Again... See above...
> 
>>>> Oh, and by the way, these issues are not only relevant to machines
>>>> having an NFS root. The same is true for any use of NFS. It's just
>>>> that since the quoting reach back to "one common system disk", it
>>>> boils down to the NFS root in Unix land.
>>
>> If you can define UNIX land to be all systems conforming to teh spec.
>> You can't.
> 
> You need to improve your knowledge of Unix systems... ;-)
> 
>>>> Go back to playing with Windows, and stop posting to this newsgroup,
>>>> since you obviously have little to contribute anyway. And VMS and DEC
>>>> bashing in general is not classified as "contributing".
>>
>> Interesting that VMS bashing is not allowed, but UNIX bashing is (by
>> some people's rules, anyway). Free speech?
> 
> Last I looked, this was comp.os.vms. Feel free to bash VMS all you want
> on comp.os.unix. :-)

I don't read it. Anyway, that's a childish approach.

>> You have...lots of UNIX-spec systems out there.
> 
> All of them behaving the same way, yes...
> 
> I know way more Unix that I'd ever want to. I've hacked the innards of
> the BSD4.3 Reno kernel, lots of NetBSD whacking, and lots of Linux
> whacking. All in the kernel. And I cannot count how much stuff I've done
> at the user level of different Unix systems.
> 
> Oh, and I have even less clue about how much I've hacked the 2BSD kernel
> and userland. After all, if it is a PDP-11, it can't be all bad. :-) But
> 2BSD don't have NFS.

Too early for that; NFS came later. And I was hacking UHNIX kernel back 
in the Sixth Edition days..

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