Re: Old 386s, Solaris x86, SCO, NT

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "John" == John Little <gaijin@example.com> writes:

    >> I really can't tell the difference,

What I had in mind here was at the user level or daily sysadmin
level.  Once you get into system configuration and programming, things 
are going to change.  But I don't have access to the sysadmin
functions or directories on anything except my own Linux systems (and
_everybody's_ DOS, Mac, and Windows 3.1/95 systems, of course :-P).

    >> So, what _is_ the difference?

    John>    However, specific to printing, Solaris uses the dreaded
    John> lpNet and lpsched rather than BSD's lpd.

Is this a change from SunOS?

SunOS Release 4.1.3-JLE1.1.3 (SHAKO1) #4: Fri Jul 9 14:31:35 JST 1993
＊＊＊＊＊　　おしらせ　　＊＊＊＊＊

shako1:~ => ps -aux | grep lpd
root       213  0.0  0.0   52    0 ?  IW   Dec 14  0:00 /usr/lib/lpd
turnbull 15360  0.0  0.1   28  232 pb S    12:04   0:00 grep lpd
shako1:~ =>

    John> Having more than a trivial number of printers to handle
    John> (here at work we have hundreds) causes the SVR4 printer
    John> processes to go out to (a long) lunch. Different commands
    John> use different options to specify standard arguments (now
    John> let's see, is it "-p", "-P" or "-d" to specify the
    John> printer?). Yuk!

This is admittedly ridiculous.  The only reason to love Xt is that all
of the usual switches are built in standard.  Is it really that hard
to change the printing system interface?  (Obviously if you're
managing "hundreds of printers," it's an administrative nightmare, at
least until you install a package management system and create a new
package, and even then it's a substantial cost.  But does the OS put
up obstacles to changing on a single machine?  The "shako" system
described above only has about two dozen printers in printcap, half of
them relics of a time when professors couldn't afford workstations so
used X terminals and printers in their offices.)

Steve

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com

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