From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Nov 3 21:24:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id VAA11339 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 3 Nov 1997 21:24:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [207.141.254.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA11333 for ; Mon, 3 Nov 1997 21:24:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com) Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (mail.futuresouth.com [207.141.254.21]) by shell.futuresouth.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA22782; Mon, 3 Nov 1997 23:24:31 -0600 (CST) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 23:24:31 -0600 (CST) From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Dave Marquardt cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, wade@optionomics.com Subject: Re: RS6000 In-Reply-To: <85iuu9cwtk.fsf@localhost.zilker.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On 3 Nov 1997, Dave Marquardt wrote: > Wade writes: > > I currently own an 8 year old rs6000, and was wondering if there was any > > way in the world to get FreeBSD to work on it? Maybe this is a silly > > question but I just thought I would ask. I dont have the original UNIX > > release tapes that came with it and at the moment its a door stop. > > No, FreeBSD only works on Intel x86 processors, now POWER or PowerPC. > Maybe NetBSD or OpenBSD works on the RS/6000, but I don't really > know. There's also this operating system called AIX that IBM sells > that works just fine on RS/6000 :-). I beg to differ ;) I admin'ed an RS/6000 running AIX, and it was the single worst experience of my life (except that one drinking game...) Half of /etc was symlinks into /var, /, /bin and even /usr/sbin and other weird places. The command syntax was horrible, and the crontab command didn't work; I had to kill cron, edit the files, and restart cron to get anything to work right. the smit utility has the weirdest backup format I've ever seen, which we couldn't get to restore for the life of us when the drive died and we had to try to reinstall from backups. Various things randomly died and broke, including adduser deciding to refuse to copy skel files, and in fact apparently commiting the skel files to /dev/nul.... I could go on for hours. This machine was aptly named cheese, and after the hard drive died, it has been commited to oblivion, the monitor converted into a fishtank, and yes, it is used as a doorstop. A friend of mine (Ben; he's on this list) said a friend of his who run such a system rename the OS to ACHES. I agree totally. > > -Dave (an IBM AIX developer) > -Matt (an ex-AIX admin) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* | FreeBSD; the way computers were meant to be | * "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is * | that I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet."| * fullermd@futuresouth.com :-} MAtthew Fuller * | http://keystone.westminster.edu/~fullermd | *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*