Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!gatech!ukma!nrl-cmf!ames!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!xadmx!lazear@gateway.mitre.org From: lazear@gateway.mitre.org Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: GCOS field Message-ID: <17692@adm.BRL.MIL> Date: 2 Dec 88 19:21:36 GMT Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL Lines: 11 GCOS stands for GE Comprehensive Operating System, which changed to General Compre. OS when Honeywell bought out GE's old 600 computer line long ago. GCOS remains the Honeywell OS of (their) choice. The GCOS mainframes required some user ID stuff when remote jobs were submitted and the GCOS field in the passwd file was a repository for that info. The "Programmer's Workbench" version of Unix made extensive use of this for submitting jobs to the Murray Hill facility, I believe. Walt (Lazear@mitre.org)