From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 7 14:37:05 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA21361 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 14:37:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA21347 for ; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 14:37:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id MAA18190 for ; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 12:35:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA10568; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 13:27:20 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199611072027.NAA10568@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Welcome to POSIX... To: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 13:27:20 -0700 (MST) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Jake Hamby" at Nov 7, 96 10:54:27 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I now have a copy of the NIST POSIX conformance test suite, or > NIST-PCTS:151-2. Right now I'm running it on a Solaris box so I can be > familiar with it before I try FreeBSD. > > I should note, though, two things: First, this is a test for FIPS 151-2, > and not strictly POSIX.1 (it's POSIX.1 with a few additional tidbits). > Second, this test suite does _NOT_ require TET to be installed, as Terry > had mentioned. Perhaps I have a different test suite from what Terry > was thinking of? If so, is that other test free as well? I already answered this. I made a mistake; the TET is required for my FABIO test suite which I have been working on. I plopped the thing into the same framework and call it from a TET environment. It was my setup, not the test itself, which required TET. I made the mistake because I was running both PCTS and SVID against UnixWare back at Novell. SVID requires TET (so does the X11 validation suite). > I received the test suite from Martha Gray at NIST, and as Terry > mentioned, it does not yet have the proper legal notices for a more > wide-spread distribution. However, as I've already discovered at least > one Linux distribution which claims to be POSIX.1 and FIPS 151-2 > conformant already (Linux-FT from Lasermoon), I'm going to hurry and post > up my finding ASAP (it's only a matter of time before RedHat, e.g., get > tested for POSIX, and we don't want to be left in the dust :-) The Linux distributor bought the suite. They ran the suite and hacked the OS iteratively to make it conform. Then they paid over $50,000 to an accredited testing lab to run the suite for them, and sign off on a conformance certificate. You personally running the test is meaningless. You can claim compliance (in a sort of carefully worded way), but not conformance. To be able to claim conformance requires certification, which requires $$$. The only thing this changes is that now you can do precertification testing without purchasing the suite. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.