Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 06:41:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Pechter <pechter@pechter.dyndns.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: dhh@androcles.com Subject: Linux and FreeBSD dual universe Message-ID: <200005281042.GAA54833@bg-tc-ppp32.monmouth.com>
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> Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 09:42:51 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "Duane H. Hesser" <dhh@androcles.com>
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD kernel as a replacement for Linux kernel
>
> Anyone remember the old Pyramid OSX 'universe' command?
>
> In the mid-80s, when the "System V" versus "BSD" dichotomy was in
> full bloom, Pyramid delivered a system with two "universes" available.
> A user could specify 'universe bsd' and work in a pure BSD environment;
> 'universe att' placed you in a pure S5 environment (of the time).
> A user in the BSD environment could "cross the line" by issuing a
> command like "att ls", or even "att cc ....". The universe was
> marked by a flag which affected the interpretation of "conditional
> symbolic links". A separate syscall was available to create
> conditional symbolic links.
Boy was it slick and useful.
It got wierd with bsd ps -axu | att cut -f1 -d\ | ucb more ...
It got very wierd when you went about 8 levels down
att
ucb
att
ucb
att
ucb
att
ucb
ls
Would get strange results at times... but for most work and scripting it
was quite useful to have both sets of tools available (and THREE
versions of UUCP -- BNU/HDB, SysV, 4.2/3 BSD). Getting the three to
cooperate was fun. Most people just went with one. I actually had two
with different configs running at the same time for the hell of it...
> How about a 'FreeBSD' universe and a 'Linux' universe?
OK -- now will someone do the hard part -- conditional symlinks.
The ucb (bsd) ones used a hidden directory /usr/lib -> /usr/.ucblib
the att ones used /usr/lib -> /usr/.attlib...
The same worked with /usr/bin -> /usr/.attbin or /usr/.ucbbin and /bin
and /lib etc...
> Of course, you need a "complete" set of utilities for each universe
> (for some definition of "complete").
YES!!!!
And there's now a fair set of AT&T utilities out there including
ksh93...
Sound like a nice idea that might make running things like the
WordPerfect Office2000 suite easier...
Of course Pyramid went the rest of the route and added a choice of SysV
or BSD init versions along with the applicable getty stuff.
Bill
--
bpechter@monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
| Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
| BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?
--
bpechter@monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
| Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
| BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?
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