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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.418 SVr4 includes hooks for a DOS bridge that allows you to run DOS applications under UNIX (the two products that actually do this are DOS Merge and VP/ix). Most vendors do not include either of these with the base system, however. All these systems support up to 1024x768 by 256 color super-VGA under X. The 640x480 by 16 colors of standard VGA is no problem; everybody supports that compatibly. However, X servers older than the Roell or X11R5 version (that is, MIT X11R4 or anything previous) are hard to configure for the clock timings of your controller and monitor scan frequency unless you have one of the standard combinations USL supports or your vendor has configured for it. There are a couple of known hardware compatibility problems the USL code doesn't yet address. See the KNOWN BUGS section near the end of this document. III. FEATURE COMPARISON To interpret the table below, bear in mind the following things: All these products except BSDI/386, Mach386 and SCO ODT are based on the SVr4 kernel from UNIX Systems Laboratories (USL), an AT&T spinoff. Thus they share over 90% of their code and features. Product differentiation is done primarily through support policy, bug-fix quality and add-on software. The `USL support?' column refers to the fact that USL support is a separate charge from the source license. With the former, a porting house gets access to AT&T's own OS support people and their bug fix database, and the porting house's bug fixes can get folded back into the USL code. These systems come either in a "crippled" version that supports at most two simultaneous users, or an unlimited version. Generally the vendors do allow you to upgrade your license via a patch disk if your requirements, but this invariably costs slightly more than the base price difference between 2-user and unlimited systems. The "run-time" system in the price tables below is a minimum installation, just enough to run binaries. The "complete" system includes every software option offered by the vendor; it does *not* bundle in the cost of the Prentice-Hall docs offered by some vendors as an option. You may well get away with less, especially if you're willing to do your own X installation. The `Upgrade plan' section refers only to upgrades from previous versions of the same vendor's software. The numbers under support-with-purchase are days counted from date of shipment. The intent is to help you get initially up and running. The engineer counts below are as supplied by vendors; .5 of an engineer means someone is officially working half-time. The `Uses USENET' column is `yes' if there is allegedly at least one person in the engineering department who reads USENET technical groups regularly and is authorized to respond to USENET postings reporting problems. The `DOS Bridge' row gives the version number of DOSMerge supplied with the system, if any. DosMerge 2.0 has roughly the caoabilities of DOS 3.0, though it is reported to be quite flaky and hard to configure. DOSMerge 2.2 has the capabilities of DOS 5.0. A dash `-' means the given feature or configuration is not offered. A `yes' means it is currently offered; `soon' means the vendor has represented that it will be offered in the near future. A `no' means it's not offered, but there's some related information in the attached footnote. Vendor SCO Cons Dell Esix MST uPort UHC BSDI Mach386 Base version: 3.2.2 4.0.3 4.0.4 4.0.4 4.0.3 4.0.4 4.0.3 BSD Mach USL support? ?? ?? y y n y ??(a) n n System price: Run-time 2-user 595 - - 384 249 500 695 - - Unlimited 1295 - - 784 449 1,000 1,090 - - Complete 2-user 3090 995 995(b) - 799 3,000 1,990 - - Unlimited 4290 1195 1295(b) 1,607 999 3,500 2,385 995(c) 995(d) Printed docs? y(f) - y(e) y(e) - y(f) y - - Upgrade plan? From SVr3.2 y - y y - y - - - Future SVr4s ?? - (h) (g) - (h) - - - Support W/purchase: 30 (i) 90 (j) 30 30 30 60 30 800 number? y - y - - - - - - By contract y n(k) y n(j) y y y y y Support BBS? y y - y - y soon - y FTP server? y - y y - - - y y Read USENET? y ?? y y - y n(l) y y # Engineers: Support: 60+ 1 5 2 2 4 2 1.5 1 Development: 55+ ??(m) 10 ~20 3 6 27 6.5 5 Distribution media: 3.5" 1.44MB y y(n) - y y y y - y 5.25" 1.2MB y y(n) - y y y y - y 60MB ctape y y - y y y y - - 125MB ctape - - - - y - y - - 150MB ctape - - - - y y y y - 250MB ctape - - y - - - - - - 2GB DAT - - y - - - - - - Via network? - - y - - - - - - X options: X11/NeWS R3 - - - y - - y - - MIT X11R4 y(o) - y - - - - - y AT&T Xwin 3 - - - - y - - - - AT&T Xwin 4 - - - y - y - - - Roell X386 - - - - y - y - - X11R5 - y y - - - - y soon Open Look - - 4i 1.0 2.0 4i 4i - - Motif 1.1.4 1.1 1.1.4 1.1.0 1.1.2 1.1.3 1.1.3 (p) soon X.desktop 3.0 - - - - 3.0 2.0 - - Also included: DOS bridge? 2.2 - 2.2 - - soon - soon - SLIP? y - y y - y soon y y(q) PPP? y ?? - n(r) - - soon soon n (a) UHC had a support contract at one time but may have let it lapse. I expect to have better information on this soon. (b) This price is for customer-installed UNIX. If it's factory-installed on Dell hardware, it's $500 less. (c) $995 is for credit-card CDROM orders; POs are $50 more; QIC-150 is $50 more. Educational site licenses are available for $2K each. (d) Previous issues alleged that "No unlimited licenses have been sold yet." Feedback from the net indicates that all MtXinu systems now being sold are unlimited. (e) Extra-cost option. (f) With complete system only. (g) Small media charge. Note: if you upgrade from a 2-user to multi-user ESIX, you pay full price. (h) Free with support contract, charge otherwise (charge ~$500). (i) 90 days or until product is installed successfully. (j) Unlimited free phone support. (k) Charges by the half-hour phone call. (l) UHC says they used to be net-active and want to be again when they can afford the man-hours. (m) Consensys explicitly refuses to release this information. (n) There's an $80 media charge for the diskettes equivalent to the normal 60MB distribution tape. (o) SCO's own X11R4 implementation. (p) Motif for BSDI is available from a third party. (q) At present, you must buy Mach386 Autosupport to get SLIP. (r) Mark Boucher <marc@cam.org> has written a PPP driver for ESIX The SCO information is included by popular demand for comparison purposes. In the price figures, the `runtime' system is SCO UNIX 3.2v4; the `complete' system is ODT with development tools. In general, the SVr4 market breaks into two tiers. The bottom tier is Consensys and MST; low-ball outfits selling stock USL with minimal support for real cheap. The top tier is Dell, Esix, Microport and UHC; these guys are selling support and significant enhancements and charge varying premiums for it. Your first, most basic buying decision has to be which tier best serves your needs. One further note: it *is* possible to buy some of these systems at less than the list the vendor charges! I found some really substantial discounts in one mail-order catalog ("The Programmer's Shop"; call 1-(800)-421-8006 to get on their mailing list, but be prepared to wade through a lot of DOS cruft). IV. VENDOR REPORTS Vendor reports start here. Each one is led by a form feed. NAME: SCO Open DeskTop VENDOR: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. 400 Encinal Street PO Box 1900 Santa Cruz,CA 95061-1900 1-(800)-SCO-UNIX (sales) 1-(800)-347-4381 (customer service and tech support) info@sco.com --- product info by email, sales requests support@sco.com --- support requests (support contract customers only) SOFTWARE OPTIONS: SCO's package and option structure is (excessively) complicated. At the moment the `bundles' to keep track of are: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO UNIX networking bundle, consisting of: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO TCP/IP 1.2.0 SCO NFS 1.2.0 SCO Open Desktop 2.0: SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2 Version 4.0 SCO TCP/IP 1.2.0 SCO NFS 1.2.0 LAN Manager Client, PC-NFS daemon, PC-Interface server X (X11R4 server/clients, Motif 1.1.4, X.desktop 3.0) DOS Merge (2.2) Note that Ingres (the database) has been removed from the ODT bundle since 1.1. There is a special Ingres price for ODT customers, and Ingres has committed to offering a 50% discount till the end of '92. ADD-ONS: There are piles of them. I was most impressed by the docs for the CodeView debugger and MASM assembler, but the presence of ISAM support would probably be more significant to the ordinary commercial user. SCO bundles with X also include 18 clients (what in marketingese are called ``personal productivity and groupware accessories and controls'') which include: mail, help, edit, paint, term, print, login, clock, color, session, mouse, lock, and admin (official names all prepended with "SCO") as well as DOS, load, and calculator clients. SUPPORT: You get 30 days of free phone support with purchase. ODT support is $895 per year. SCO has BBS coverage and a local support operation in the UK as well as the US; BBS coverage only Germany. Local support is, in theory, to be provided by distributors. FUTURE PLANS: IPX/SPX (Novell networking support) will be added soon. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. SCO provides a Hardware Compatibility Guide with its software. COMMENTS: The docs are impressive; you could get a hernia trying to lift them all. TECHNICAL NOTES: There's an `MPX' kernel available from SCO that supports multiprocessing. Though this is a 3.2 kernel, SCO has added support for SVr4-like symbolic links and long filenames to Version 4. SCO has a standard driver announcement protocol which allows the utility hwconfig(C) to print out detailed configuration info on hardware attached to the machine. SCO's cross-development and DOS emulation support is unusually rich. It includes lots of system utilities for I/O with a DOS filesystem, as well as cross-development libraries and tools in the Development System. Microsoft Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.0 applications are supported (in real mode), and future releases will support Windows 3.1 and associated applications. Graphical MS-DOS applications are supported in CGA graphics mode within an X window, and VGA graphics are supported in full-screen mode. KNOWN BUGS SCO tar(1) chokes horribly on long filenames and symbolic links. This is scheduled to be fixed in the next maintenance supplement, MSv4.2. WHAT THE USERS SAY: XENIX is the UNIX port hackers love to hate, but at 70% of the market SCO must be doing something right. In general, SCO UNIX and XENIX are reputed to be a very polished and stable systems. Unfortunately, they also drive developers crazy because of numerous tiny and undocumented divergences between the SCO way and the USL-based releases. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: The SCO support system is heavily bureaucratized and prone to thrash when processing questions of unusual depth or scope. While probably adequate for the random business luser, hackers are likely to find the contortions required to get to a master-level developer very frustrating. SCO in general has the fairly serious case of corporatitis you'd predict from their relatively large size --- no-comment policies and compartmentalization out the wazoo. On the other hand, they sent me an unsolicited free copy, and I got huge amounts of useful technical and hardware-compatibility info "unofficially" from SCOer Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>. Gee. Maybe I should flame vendors more often... :-) NAME: Consensys UNIX Version 1.3 VENDOR: Consensys 1301 Pat Booker Road Universal City, TX 78148 (800)-387-8951 {dmentor,dciem}!askov!root Note: Consensys is now shipping an early version of Destiny (SVr4.2) out, but I don't have full information yet. It's said to be considerably improved over this 4.0.3 product. If any Consensys user out there would care to help me update this entry for the 4.2 product, I'd much apperciate it! Consensys doesn't like me any more... SOFTWARE OPTIONS: None. ADD-ONS: Basically this is a stock USL system with the stock USL bugs, except the installation sequence has been improved considerably. Good tools for configuration management and system administration on a network of Consensys machines are included. SUPPORT: You get free phone support until your system is installed, to a maximum of 90 days. After that they charge per half-hour of phone time. They like to do support by fax and callback. They have 1 (one) support tech. Ask for Reuben. They have a support BBS at (416)-752-2084. Knowledgeable customers report they're good about supporting the bits they wrote (see below) but terrible at dealing with generic SVr4 problems. FUTURE PLANS: They haven't settled on an upgrade policy yet. There are plans for a disk array product. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: See the appendix for details. Though most reports say the Consensys PowerPorts board is fine for UUCP use, at least two USENETters have reported problems with interactive sessions; see below. TECHNICAL NOTES: The X stuff is straight off the MIT X11R5 tape, patchlevel 8. KNOWN BUGS: This port probably uses the stock USL 4.0.3 libraries. Thus it probably has the known bug with sigvec() and may have the rumored bug in the BSD- compatibility string functions. One `Andy', mailing from <hooplet@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> says "You should also blast Consensys for advertising that they provide DOS file system utilities. They do, but they were written for DOS 2.0! They do NOT work for DOS 5.0..." Syd Weinstein <syd@dsinc.dsi.com> reports: "The most major [bug in the PowerPorts support] is delays in various output codes.... Even if not using the multi-screen stuff, a clear to end of line escape code, and some others, cause noticable delays in the output. (About 0.1 seconds). It makes running Elm a real bitch". He is in touch with Consensys about this. It has been reported on USENET (by Gerry Swetsky <lisbon@vpnet.chi.il.us> among others) that if you drop off of a PowerPorts line without manually closing all your sessions, the unclosed sessions may be accessible to the next person to pick up the line. Gil Kloepfer, Jr. <gil@limbic.ssdl.com>, managing the Houston UNIX User's Group's system, says that during interactive use the board frequently does not handle typeahead properly (this may be related to Syd Weinstein's problems with EOL delay). He also says he hasn't been able to bring up stable UUCP with the board. Jim Bray <bray@wcuvax1.wcu.ed> adds " Let me throw in a few more specifics. In version 1.3, /usr/lib/tapecntl is a symlink to itself (it actually existed in 1.2), and /usr/sadm/sysadm/menu/backup_service/extended /usr/sadm/sysadm/menu/restores/extended are both symlinks to their parent dirs. I was able to get nfs and rfs working with version 1.2, altho' it was done by sort of shaking things around until they worked for no clear reason. I have just finished removing and reinstalling them to try yet again to get the 1.3 versions working, but whether I try the v4net crap or the sysadm crap, neither of them work now. In general, removing and reinstalling network packages never works. It might work if I reinstalled the whole system, but I think a Linux or 386BSD useable on my Gateway 486/EISA/SCSI systems will come along fairly soon. Once anything has gone wrong with the nfs/rfs stuff, it seems to be fixable only by a system reload. When I originally brought 1.3 up on one of our machines, the other was still running 1.2. BOth rfs and nfs had been working. The 1.3 v4net code does a lot of remote-execing, and it attempted to rexec things that exist in 1.3 but not 1.2: in other words: 1.3 is apparently not backwards-compatible. This probably made a hopeless mess of the nfs/rfs databases at that point." COMMENTS: Their UNIX product is an outgrowth of their main line of business, selling serial boards. It is easy to configure the OS to support the board. WHAT THE USERS SAY: I've spoken with one experienced wizard using Consensys and seen a detailed email report from another. They're happy, although they both warn that newbies should probably *not* try this at home :-). On the other hand, Consensys has a dismal reputation on USENET; horror stories of nonexistent followup on bugs abound. They'll need to work hard to shuck their take-the-money-and-run image. Better followup on the reported serial-port board bugs would be a big help. Unfortunately, Consensys's favored response seems to be to deny that they have a problem. One customer (J.J. Strybosch, <jjs@ubitrex.mb.ca>) reports that Consensys charged his credit card for more than they quoted him. If you deal with them, watch your credit card statement carefully. REVIEWER'S IMPRESSIONS: These guys have the toughest support policy of any vendor and obviously don't want to hear from you once you've gotten past initial boot. A Consensys marketroid that I spoke with twice while gathering this information offered to send me an evaluation copy of their system. They were clearly hoping for some good publicity if I like it. However, I doubt they like me that well any more... Consensys explicitly refuses to say how many development engineers they have on staff. In this and some other matters (such as the way they deal with allegations of PowerPorts problems) they've adopted a corporate style that appears defensive, evasive, secretive, and not conducive to trust. I couldn't make their V.P. of sales understand that this appearance is a serious liability in dealing with UNIX techies and distinguishes them from the competition in a distinctly negative way. NAME: Dell UNIX System V Release 4 Issue 2.2. VENDOR: Dell Computer 9505 Arboretum Road Austin TX 78759 (800)-BUY-DELL (info & orders) (800)-624-9896 (tech support: x6915 to go straight to UNIX support) info@dell.com --- basic Dell info support@dell.com --- support queries SOFTWARE OPTIONS: Basically, there aren't any. You get the development system with all the trimmings for a lower list than anybody else in the top tier. Whaddya want, egg in yer beer? ADD-ONS: Dell bundles a DOS bridge (Locus 2.2, supporting DOS 5.0) with their base system. They also include cnews, mmdf, perl, elm, bison, gcc, emacs gdb, Tex, network time protocol support, and other freeware, including a bunch of nifty X clients! Also included: the Xylogics Annex server for TCP/IP network access. FrameMaker is also included, but runs in demo mode only until you buy a license token from Unidirect. SUPPORT: Dell *does* support their UNIX on non-Dell hardware. They are quite definite about this. They will deal with software problems reported from non-Dell hardware, but you're on your own when dealing with hardware incompatibility problems unless you can reproduce the problem on a Dell PC. However, it is also policy that if you lend them the offending hardware, they will work with the vendor to come up with a fix. You get 90 days of free phone support on a toll-free number, starting on resceipt of your registration card (no card, no support). Yearly service contracts range are $350 per year for the limited license, $500 for the unlimited. There are 6 engineers in their first line and 4 in their second-line support pool. Dell accepts software problem reports from anyone, Dell or non-Dell hardware and whether or not they have a support contract. If you don't have a support contract, don't count on getting a reply acknowledging the report. Dell maintains a pair of Internet servers (dell1.dell.com and dell2.dell.com) which hold patches, updates and free software usable with Dell UNIX. About upgrades, Dell says "If you have a support contract, the upgrade is free, unless we've added something with significant royalty burden to us. We may make a charge at that point. We didn't when we added Graphical Services 4.0 at the introduction of Dell UNIX 2.1. If you don't have a contract, then the cost is basically Media+Royalty+Admin+Shipping." FUTURE PLANS: X.desktop 3.0 will be supported soon. NeWS isn't going to happen at all; they couldn't get it to work reliability. Dell has demonstrated a 486 port of NeXTSTEP at trade shows. Dell is going to move to Solaris someday. However, policy is that they're not going to phase out SVr4 until at least a year after their first *reliable* version of Solaris, in order to provide an upgrade path. TECHNICAL NOTES: The big plus in the Dell code is that they've fixed a lot of the annoying bugs and glitches present in the stock USL tape. The installation procedure has been improved and simplified. You can install Dell UNIX through your network from another Dell box once you've booted the hardware with a special disk provided. Both benchmarks and anecdotal reports make them significantly faster than a stock USL system. Interestingly, Dell's manager for UNIX development tells me this is all due to bug fixes and careful choices of some OS parameters. A source at Dell has asked me to point out that Dell's SLIP can be set up, configured, and stopped while UNIX is running; some other versions (such as SCO's) require a reboot. However, others claim that SCO's can actually be reconfigured without a reboot and that the SCO *manuals* are at fault here for misleading people. Dell device drivers are *very* unlikely to work on other SVR4 versions. Dell includes some kernel extensions (not required, so other SVR4 device drivers should work) to make life in support a little easier. A program called showcfg will list all recognised device drivers and the IRQ, I/O address, shared memory and so on. The device driver has to register this info. Dell has told USL how to do this, it's up to them when or even if they want to use this in a future release. Dell device drivers are also auto configuring, for the most part. Check out /etc/conf/sdevice.d/* and see how most of the devices are enabled, but with zeroes in all fields for IRQ, I/O and memory. Those are autoconfiguring drivers. Dell thinks that this makes life much easier; you only need to set one of the configurations that they probe for! The device registration helps this, by eliminating possible overlapping memory or I/O address usage. (On the other hand, idconfig(1) is no longer helpful, when I/O, IRQ and mem are all zero). The 2.2 release adds a utility `setcfg' which can be used to remove unneeded drivers, shrinking the kernel. Dell UNIX also has drivers for the Dell SmartVu found on some machines (a little four character LED display on the front panel). By default this shows POST values, then disk accesses, finally "UNIX" when running and "DOWN" when halted. You can write to the device. Dell's SCSI tape driver includes ioctls to control whether hardware compression is used. Some Dell systems have a reset button. On the Laptops these are wired directly to the CPU. On the desktop and floor-standing systems Dell UNIX can catch the interrupt; it's used to do a graceful (init 0) shutdown. Other UNIXes will do a processor reset when the button is pushed. About 95% of 2.2 was built using GNU cc for a significant performance improvement over pcc. KNOWN BUGS: Uucico fails when sending more than 12 files to another machine. Fixed in 2.2; a patch is available free from Dell for earlier versions. Performance monitoring of uucp transfers doesn't work. Creating /var/spool/uucp/.Admin/perflog results in uucico logging statistics to the file correctly. However, using uustat -tsysname results in either a memory error or you just being returned to the shell with no output. This bug is known to Dell and being worked on now. Merge is seriously buggy in many areas. It takes ages to start up in an xterm and then sometimes crashes in the process. Attempting to use its simulated expanded memory results in the system becoming slowly corrupted which later results in virtual terminals disappearing and the system gradually locking up. Really fun stuff! And it can only cope with 1.44M discs. These are generic Merge problems, not really Dell's but Locus's fault. There are some dropped stitches in the supplied USENET tools. The nntp server has been compiled for a dbm history file while c-news has been compiled for dbz. With nntpd this only shows on the ARTICLE <message-id> command which either returns that the article with that id can't be found or crashes the server. Also, they forgot to include the nntpd manual page or nntpxfer. A Dell source thinks these things have been corrected in 2.2. Dell's device driver autoconfiguration doesn't properly set up the mouse port on the ATI Graphics Ultra card. You need to either remove all other mouse drivers or use the DOS install program to manually force the mouse IRQ to 5. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY: Dell doesn't maintain a list of non-Dell motherboards and systems known to work. And they're not willing to talk about the list they don't maintain, because it would amount to endorsing someone else's hardware. Dell promises that you can bring its UNIX up on any Dell desktop or tower featuring a 386SX or up (it's hard to get the product on to the notebooks). Notebooks can't drive a QIC tape and there aren't drivers for the pocket Ethernet or token-ring adapter. Jeffrey James Persch <using a friend's account> reports that he couldn't get the X supplied with Dell UNIX 2.1 to work with a Microsoft bus mouse hooked to the mouse port on a Compaq 486/33M or Systempro. Andrew Michael <Andrew.Michael@brunel.ac.uk> says "If you're buying Dell UNIX for non-Dell hardware, first try booting the Dell floppy on it. From experience, some BIOS ROMs cause Dell SVR4 to lock up at the point where it tries to talk to the hard disk. If it gets to the point where it asks you whether you want to install or not you can be pretty sure that all is well. An AMI or Phoenix BIOS is OK; be careful of anything else." See the appendix for more. COMMENTS: Dell sells hardware, too :-). They are, in fact, one of the most successful clonemakers, and will cheerfully sell you a Dell computer with SVr4 pre- installed. Their systems are expensive by cloner standards (with as much as a $1000 premium over rock-bottom street prices) but they have a rep for quality and reliability their competition would probably kill for. You can get Dell product information by sending an email request to info@dell.com. WHAT THE USERS SAY: Most people who've seen or used it seem to think pretty highly of the Dell product, in spite of minor problems. A user in England observes: "Dell is the only firm that I found supplying Unix at the real monetary exchange rate, not the usual computer pounds=dollars nonsense. In the UK the 2 user version costs 699 pounds, which is pretty close to the US price in dollars. For those of us who don't live on the left-hand side of the pond (there are a few of us!) that's a distinct advantage." He adds "Dell's UK support is pretty good. Not as good as Sun, but then you don't pay as much! From previous experience, SCO support in the UK is, well, pretty non-existent."