[nylug-talk] Is there any overlap in the NYC Linux community with Solaris?

[H. G.]

On 5/16/07, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle at coredump.us> wrote:
>
> .....
>    The device names on Solaris -- gads.  Linux's use of "/dev/hda#"
> or "/dev/sda#" may not be standard BSD type names, but I sure as heck like
> it
> a lot more than names like "/dev/c0d0t0s1".  The latter seems user
> hostile.
>
This was exactly the point I was alluding to when I mentioned "playing
Whack-A-Mole".

There is no consistency; in FreeBSD for example, all your ATAPI disks would
reside under
/dev/ad*.  Same point made above for Linux.  Solaris' device naming scheme
has you scratching
your head.  If it hasn't already been done already, this could be fixed with
dev aliases.  (I'm pretty
sure it shouldn't be a big deal in Solaris to have aliases created in /dev
that reflect your device type,
no?)  One shouldn't have to be trying to guess whats where and whos who by
prtconf-ing and iostat-ing.

Peter C. Norton wrote:
> The current package format is brain-dead, and
> it's very common for people to manually work around it because,
> unfortunately, they need to know better than the pkg* tools because it
> doesn't work too well.

*groan*
If I remember correctly, the way the "official" package format worked was
that packages were stored as
"tape-like" stream-of-byte archives.  As if you just catted all the files
for the installation into one big file.
Hows that for a package format?

No meta-data.
No place to store relevant information.
Which is why you can't keep that format if you wanted to implement a
dpkg-like system.  It would have to
be embedded in or replaced with debs altogether, so far as I can tell. (Feel
free to correct me.)

Peter C. Noron wrote:
> ... Tried to rely on getting something through the automounter? ...
Yep.  Sun's automouter is pretty "fun".
**< starts muttering Bene-Gesserit mantras in an attempt to maintain
composure >**