fp on feebsd

[Enrique Arredondo]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Vermillion" <fp at wjv.com>
To: "filePro List" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: fp on feebsd


> press any key to reboot  -oops- Enrique Arredondo said on Tue, Sep 14 
> 09:30
>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Walter Vaughan" <wvaughan at steelerubber.com>
>> To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
>> Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 7:01 AM
>> Subject: Re: fp on feebsd
>>
>
>> >Enrique Arredondo wrote:
>> >
>> >>Do you know if I install the freebsd ver 5.13 on my server I can use my
>> >>second processor ? Would filepro for SCO unix work with no 
>> >>modifications
>> >>?
>
>> >>Thanks
>
>> >If you send fpTech a small fee (25%? IIRC), they'll send you a licensed
>> >native freeBSD version of filePro. That version will run quite happy on
>> >a dual processor system and appears to be happy if you enable
>> >hyperthreading as well and give yourself 4 virtual processors.
>> >
>> >As Bill stated, you will want to run 4.10-Release FreeBSD as your OS.
>> >The thing about freeBSD is that 4.10 will probably stay current with
>> >security errata till at least the 2010's. My guess is that a huge
>> >percentage of the web hosting companies in the world today will be
>> >running 4.11 or later years from now.
>
>> >On linux, a dual processor system with SCO binaries filePro
>> >seems to lock on to one CPU, while on FreeBSD with native
>> >binaries, filePro binaries have no qualms about jumping from
>> >one CPU to the other. I have not tested native FreeBSD filePro
>> >binaries on a dual processor freeBSD-5.3, which is supposed to
>> >be the fastest SMP *nix when finished.
>
>> >So to answer your second question... Yes if you are talking about your
>> >application (data, processing tables), or I'm guessing not if you want
>> >to run native SCO version of *clerk and *report programs on freeBSD
>> >(things that count number of concurrent users typically failed).
>> >--
>> >Walter
>
>> I installed the 5.3 just for testing purposes and it seems it's
>> ready .
>
> I've only been running BSD almost exclusively for 9 years and I
> surely don't think 5.3 is ready.
>
> If you took the default install you now have a UFS2 file system -
> which used 256 byte inodes and not 128 byte inodes.  If anything
> uses those it will surely fail.
>
> And probably everything desinged for SCO will not understand
> the UFS2 filesystem. Though it is an extension of UFS - from which
> the SCO AFFS, HTFS, et al descended from, there are major
> differernces.
>
> 5.3 is going to be stable soon - within a few weeks at the most -
> BUT many of the standard utilties aren't updated to handle
> the extremes of 5.2.
>
>> I tried the SCO binary's and it fail catastrophically as
>> expected (I couldn't resist not trying it). Is there a way of
>> getting an evaluation version of filepro for FREEBSD so I try a
>> couple of things before paying the big bucks ?
>
> That is quite predicatable.  I suspect if your binaries were SCO
> Unix and the FreeBSD was 4.10 or earlier it would run.  I've seen
> it run on about a 4.8.
>
>> How do you normally shutdown FREEBSD ? I tried "shutdown -g0
>> -y" but didn't like it. So I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL and it did
>> the forced shutdown automatically.
>
> man shutdown would have told you.
>
> Flags to shutdown are h, p, r, k, o, and n.
>
> To restart    shutdown -r now|time
>
> Now or time applies to all.
>
> There are many differences between System V Unix systems
> and BSD systems.  When I first moved to BSD it was like going back
> to my first Unix like OS - as the BSD was almost identical
> to Xenix 1.x from the old Radio Shack 16s - which mean you could
> compile almost eveything by setting the program compile flags
> to CSRG - Computer System Research Group - the people who developed
> BSD.  By the time the 6000 came out and later versions of Xenix
> for the 16, it was System III based and the commands were more
> like those you'd see on SCO.
>
> I'd really suggest getting rid of the 5.x as it is so different
> from the past version that if you aren't familiar with the 4.x
> you may be hopelessly lost - at least for awhile.
>
> It's 64-bits almost all the way.  Disk limits are far beyond
> anything you can assemble today.   That means a file
> size is 2^72 - which is 2^64 blocks * 512 bytes block.
>
> But many things are still 32 bit mode - so fsck fails at
> 2TB. du and df have some problems.  All of this from a document
> dated jsut 4 days ago.
>
> Put in the 4.10 and so as Walter suggests - upgrade.  However
> do try your SCO on the 4.10.  The chance are good that it will
> work.
>

I installed 4.10 and then *fp 4 OSR5* and didn't work (same thing as 5.13 I 
wasn't expect it to work anyway), then I tried *fp 4 LINUX* and got some 
errors about "syscall setfsuid16 is obsolete" but it works 50%. The Linux 
binaries seem at least to be displaying the right screen format for 
clerk,etc... I think I have to go to eBay and buy the evaluation version for 
filepro on FreeBSD :-)

With all these exercises I've been researching with so I can migrate away 
from OSR506 to the 3 possible distros 1.-OSR 507 2.-suse Linux 9.1 
enterprise 3.-FreeBSD 4.1/5.13, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to 
jump from OSR5 to Linux because most of the commands behave the same. I'm 
sure that FreeBSD now is the best of them all but I need to learn the new 
commands.

Going from OSR 506 to OSR 507 is paying again for all licenses, and even if 
I want to reinstall OSR506, my license certificates belong to earlier 
versions that were upgraded to the latest 506, so I have to reinstall the 
old crap to get the current crap if not I can't use the licenses.

anyway, I'll keep Researching on FreeBSD and Suse.

The good thing about all these mambo mambo is that filepro is fully 
compatible on database/processing so I have to only worry about the OS.