.0 of Unix, determined by the SURPRISES WITH SCO UNIX/386 serial number and activation key, was set up to support only two users at a time. But the initialization file started BY SIMSON L. GARFINKEL login programs for 12 termi- nals: instant lock-out. I called SCO and got a new t's really hard to write good software, and the people at The numb er and key that solved my problem. Santa Cruz Operation have earned a well-deserved reputa- tion for their excellent ports of Unix software to industry- A FAS TOPERATING SYSTEM standard 286 and 386 platforms. When I heard that SCO was This Unix is fast. offering AT&T Unix System V release 3.2, it was enough to Beiing a true 386 operating system, convince me to replace my old 286 box with an AST Premium Unix, unlike 16-bit DOS, lets my cornm- 386C computer so I could run the new operating system. puter run at its full speed. By virtue of I was in for a lot of surprises. being Unix, it lets me take advantage of Si UnixSystem For nearly two months I've wrestled with SCO's System more than 15 years of operating system - I. V/386 release 3.2. The verdict from the front lines is that while techmology, such as posted disk writes, /386~s~ the operating system may be a good product for Unix system strean,s support, and some exception- real Unix hackers or product developers, it is not yet ready for the ally powerful (and efficient) program- general Unix community. mer's tools. for PCs, Unix System V/386 is real Unix on a PC. It is also real SC() has added a lot of functionality System V, which I don't like because it is filled with many to AT &Ts vanilla Unix. First is SCO's but it's still arbitrary restrictions. Niceties such as file names longer than "multiscreen" system, which turns my etWare® 14 characters, symbolic links, and job control are missing or keybo ard and console into 12 virtual ter- John T. Mc( buggy only partially implemented in the current release, 3.2. AT&T minal s. Simply by pressing Alt with a h Adam T. F plans to incorporate these and other features from Berkeley functiion key, I switch to another virtual of Business Unix in its release 4.0. SCO plans to have them in 3.2 by the termirial with its own login: prompt. second half of 1990, according to David R. Bernstein, SCO's Multis,creen is not a window system, but intained are manager of Unix product marketing. I haveea dozen 80 x 25 terminals at my :lude unders instant disposal. And they are all vely are's® undoc INSTALLATION IS LESS THAN SMOOTH fast, thanks to SCO's amazing screen lities, implenrr My first surprise with Unix System V/386 was its size: the I/O dirivers. ,Ns, refining operating system comes on 29 1.2-Mbyte floppy disks. This C2-l4evel security is another feature SCO ich more! takes up 73.5 Mbytes of hard drive, including swap space - has brought to System V/386 release lok only and that's without application software. 3.2. We believe security is not an add- When I started, I already had a 30-Mbyte DOS partition on on; it is an integral part of the system," my 210-Mbyte SCSI hard disk. SCO's installation procedure says EBernstein, adding that B1 security. AN Troul was very careful to prevent me from overwriting it. I patiently with access control lists and mandatorv andbook fed my computer the disks as they were requested. Then came accesss control parameters, will be avail- Mark A. Mill a media error on disk B6 -I had a bad distribution disk. I able siometime this year. continued the installation anyway to see what would happen. SC() has made it very easy to relink dressed are The install program crashed in a few minutes because I was the Urnix kernel and add new device driv- h troubleshc missing important files (on disk B6) that are required to set up ers. Feor example, you only have to type N architectu a password for the root user. Without a password for root, I mkdexv streams, and the streams pack- hernet, and was locked out of my new Unix system. age is automatically compiled and linked ok & Disk (A In two days I received a good B6 disk from SCO. But when I into tIhe kernel, and the new kernel is ok only tried to reinstall V/386 - Surprise!- the boot program dis- ready to boot. covered a valid Unix operating system on the hard disk and But my favorite SCO enhancement to ueprint tried to run it. Unfortunately, it was the Unix operating system Unix is native support of DOS file sys- Craig Chaik I had made but couldn't use. tems. 'The kernel implements a file sys- I couldn't find any instructions on what to do in this situation, ter switch that allows non-Unix file twork admir even from SCO's technical support. I was finally reduced t systenns (such as networks and write- Id and insta deleting the Unix partition and starting over. But you need once optical disks) to be linked into the )les, configL Unix to delete Unix partitions. The only way I could find to Unix kernel and accessed transparently. 'dware and salvage my hard disk was to perform a low-level format. - A DO!S switch lets me mount my entire itinuing sup With the new B6 disk and the newly formatted hard disk, the DOS partition. I like this much better kcontaining installation went smoothly until I tried to log in.-My version than he DOS disk utilities because the k & Disk (A ok only · *-AV W(MaTAT1ONJ 78 JUNE 1990 & _i:['.011 0[3l:l I switch allows Unix programs to access the editor, but there is apparently no way I've scanned the documentation, but I DOS files transparently. The DOS utili- to restart it. Furthermore, the console is can't figure out how to rebuild the data- ties are still available if you want them. The left in raw mode with echo turned off. base to restore consistency. And since I only bug I have found with the DOS file When I discussed the problem on the can't edit the files by hand without shut- system is that 'sh' does not do wild-card phone with SCO, I was told to type Ct r 1- ting myself out, I'm effectively barred matching, although 'csh' does it just fine. Jstty saneCtrl-J to restore the con- from adding new users (or changing ex- sole (which it did). But this command isting ones) on my system, now that the SYSTEM V LACKS JOB CONTROL is neither elegant nor intuitive, which 'tcb' is corrupted. Berkeley Unix has the ability to suspend means that it is a potential problem for the process that you are running and non-gurus. TWO COMPILERS FOR FLEXIBILITY return control to the shell, restart a sus- The Unix/386 development system comes pended process, or start up a new pro- SECURITY CAN BE DANGEROUS with two C compilers: Microsoft's com- A friend at Wang Laboratories described piler (named 'cc') and the AT&T System C2 security under Unix as "running with V compiler (named 'rcc'). a loaded gun pointed at your head." For The Microsoft compiler generates example, if the system discovers that an Xenix-format object files that are A friend at unauthorized change has been made to automatically converted to Unix COFF the password file, it will assume that the (Common Object Format Files) through Wang Laboratories system has been compromised and not a program called 'cvtomf. There are sev- let anybody log in. eral bugs in the included 'cvtomf that described C2 security Editing the password file, changing a prevent it from converting large object user's login shell, and other functions files with debugging information. How- must be done through the new system ever, SCO was happy to send me a fixed under Unix as administration shell, 'sysadmsh'. Unfor- version of 'cvtomf. tunately, 'sysadmsh' sometimes leaves I used both cc and rcc to compile the "running with a the trusted computing base files incon- Free Software Foundation's program- sistent with the password and group files. mer's editor, 'gnuemacs', and the FSF's loaded gun pointed I didn't believe my friend until I tried to C compiler, 'gcc'. Generally, rcc emitted add a new account to my system on the code that was smaller and faster than cc. morning I was finishing this review. I got (gcc's code was smaller and faster yet. at your head." messages telling me the file control data- Unfortunately, since gcc requires include base was inconsistent. files in order to operate, you must pur- cess. The only limit on the number of processes is the system-wide process limit. System V doesn't provide this. In- stead SCO implements a travesty of pro- f you want to ask SCO for technical support after you've gotten your Unix up and cess control abstraction called the Shell running, be warned that you'll have to pay for it. Layer Manager ('shl'), which allows the "We sell our software through anetwork of distributors, resellers, and. VARP,-:. :. user to spawn multiple shells; each shell, says Jeff Hill, SCO's manager of services marketing. "One of the things that we feel is in turn, is used to run a single user very important is that the resellers and VARS who sell our software to end users program.