Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!hoptoad!uunet!littlei!percival!qiclab!neighorn From: neighorn@qiclab.UUCP Newsgroups: alt.flame Subject: Re: A new oxymoron: "Stable Microport system" Message-ID: <881@qiclab.UUCP> Date: Sun, 6-Dec-87 14:59:32 EST Article-I.D.: qiclab.881 Posted: Sun Dec 6 14:59:32 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 16:51:06 EST References: <445@nuchat.UUCP> <389@ddsw1.UUCP> Reply-To: neighorn@qiclab.UUCP (Steve Neighorn) Organization: Qic Laboratories, Portland, Oregon. Lines: 62 Keywords: Microport, bugs, crashes, fed up, argh! In article <389@ddsw1.UUCP> karl@ddsw1.UUCP (Karl Denninger) writes: > >2) NEVER make a file-system with over 100K blocks on it, in fact, the actual > limit is probably lower..... this prevents fsck from killing your disk if > you should panic and reboot while unattended (you will panic if you run > Microport, trust me....) Tell me about it! I used Microport 2.2 on a 80386 system (V/386 wasn't out yet) with a Maxtor 1145 hard disk. I had a /usr partition of 190,000 blocks and a root partition of 20,000 blocks. I can't tell you the number of times I was bitten by the fsck error: losing 100 megabyte file systems, losing the ability to even boot the system at all. It was very frustrating, and my only recourse was to back up the important parts of the system nightly. To my knowledge, Microport never fixed this in 2.2. Their only suggestion after admitting a problem existed at all was to make the /usr partition smaller, and add a /usr2 partition. >We're shopping for a 80386 Unix -- will be buy (and resell) yours? Somehow >I doubt it. If we do, we'll need something concrete to protect ourselves -- >like a 90-day evaluation during which we can test, retest, and check -- and >only THEN cough up the cash. Then again, I doubt that this much trouble is >worth it -- SCO Xenix V/386 is only a few hundred more, and Interactive and >Bell Tech both have ports for sale which are competitive with yours..... Microport's V/386 should not be clumped in with the 286 product. I have been running V/386 since the 18th of October and I have not had a single system lock-up/crash/panic/etc due to the OS. At one point I had 35 days of continuous uptime between power outages. Right now, a who -Ha reveals Nov 4 as the last system boot. > >SCO can ship product within 72 hours. You take 2-3 weeks, EVERY TIME. You >are *always* backordered, out of stock, or just plain slow. V/386 arrived in our mailbox in 2-3 days, shipped blue label UPS. >By the way, we're using Televideo Tele-cat 286 and Tele-386 hardware with >your 80286 product -- the Telecat is listed as a SUPPORTED system -- meaning >that it supposedly passed QA/QC. Did it really ever receive any of either? The V/386 installation asks whether the system is a Tele-386, and I assume uses a hard disk driver that matches the drive interface card found in the Televideo. I have not tested this, though. >This entire situation is even more ludicrous when one considers that it is >not impossible to produce a decent Unix for small systems. We've just >obtained SCO Xenix/386 -- and it's REALLY NICE. No panics, no surprises, no >glitches, no nothing -- except solid performance. > >And before someone screams "your hardware is broken, that's why Microport >blows up" remember that this same hardware is now running Xenix V/386 -- >with ZERO problems. Again, flames for 286 Microport should not be automatically transferred to V/386. They are different products. V2.2 had some real problems, the biggest in my case being the 'fsuck' stuff. V/386 runs like a champ, so far, and I have been able to keep the flame thrower stowed away since I installed it. -- Steven C. Neighorn !tektronix!{psu-cs,reed,ogcvax}!qiclab!neighorn Portland Public Schools "Where we train young Star Fighters to defend the (503) 249-2000 ext 337 frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada"