[Info-vax] Beyond Open Source

[David Froble]

John Reagan wrote:
> On Monday, May 11, 2015 at 7:51:26 AM UTC-4, Neil Rieck wrote:
> 
>> I heard (third hand) about problems using Linux on multi-CPU x86-64
>> where one cpu will occasionally "get locked into a tight loop" and
>> no one knows how to fix it. The customer who continually
>> experiences the problem contacted "the curator" only to be told
>> that the problem might have something to do with the quality of the
>> code generated by the gcc compiler. Huh?
> 
> That feels more like a system spinlock problem or somebody decided to
> "write their own".  gcc doesn't know from spinlocks.  There are
> system calls to manage them.  Such bugs are hard to track down on any
> platform.  We've had them on OpenVMS in the past.  It doesn't appear
> to be wide-spread since a Google search on several terms didn't find
> anything.
> 

It doesn't really matter how wide-spread a problem is, if it is YOUR 
problem.

Now, if you're playing some game you can say "what the hell, it's a nice 
day, I'm going outside to enjoy it".

If you're trying to run a business, you really don't want to count on 
voodoo.  Any problems are usually serious, to you.  Yes, there are some 
who don't care about glitches, but for most, that's not so.

When something happens on one of my weendoze systems I just know I'll 
never determine the reason.  Unless of course I've tripped over the 
power cord and pulled it out .... again ....   First response might be 
Weendoze 2000 and Weendoze XP are no longer supported.  Yeah, I know, 
old versions of VMS aren't supported either.  But when those versions of 
weendoze were supported I still would never determine the cause of a crash.

One thing with VMS.  If you got a good crash dump (is there such a thing 
as a GOOD crash dump?) and get it to the right people, there is a good 
chance the problem will be diagnosed.  It just seems that VMS people 
cared enough to do so.  I doubt Microsoft ever gave a damn ....

Don't know if there is such a thing as "Linux people" that could give a 
damn ..