Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.corp.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!neteng!lm From: lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community" Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Date: 28 Mar 1997 05:43:25 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 77 Message-ID: <5hflpt$a3t@fido.asd.sgi.com> References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5gn3ig$83d@flea.best.net> <5goqrq$5ak$1@news.clinet.fi> <5hd29s$e7t@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5heptl$8ir@flea.best.net> Reply-To: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: neteng.engr.sgi.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38227 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6540 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29592 Matt Dillon (dillon@flea.best.net) wrote: : :In article <5hd29s$e7t@fido.asd.sgi.com>, : :Larry McVoy <lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com> wrote: : :... : :>one smart cookie, I'd love to hire him. Ditto for the FreeBSD team. : :>But make no mistake there is more to an OS than a simple minded file : :>system or a context switch. SGI's OS scales to 100s of CPUs, supports : :>more devices, and has more stuff that people with $$$ want. This is : :>serious software with serious people working on it. Do you want IRIX for : :>a desktop to read news? Hell no, install Linux or FreeBSD or whatever : :>on your 386 and you are done. If you have real work to do you may find : :>that you have to pay for your tools. : :>-- : :>--- : :>Larry McVoy lm@sgi.com http://reality.sgi.com/lm (415) 933-1804 : IRIX scale to 100s of cpus ? Not in its current incarnation. You are right, in the 6.4 release it falls over at about 64 cpus. 6.5 fixes that. : There : is nothing magical about XFS and there is nothing magical about striping It's magical only in that we do it well. It's fine to say that it is no big deal. It actually is a big deal. It's hard to do it well and if it wasn't hard how come FreeBSD doesn't do it? : the machine down, it also gets *real* confused on reboot). If you mean that it notices that the mirror is screwed up and wants you to fix it, I disagree. If you have more problems then that, tell me what they are and we'll fix 'em. : nothing magical about doing 500 MBytes/sec of disk throughput in a I was hoping you would say that. Show me a FreeBSD box that can do 100MB/sec. I'll bet you a quarter you can't. : virtually nobody on this earth who needs 500 MBytes/sec of disk throughput : from a UNIX box). That's funny. We have customers that disagree. One of them is looking over your shoulder, in fact. Smile. I'm working on a system that will be sustaining over 1GB/sec of NFS I/O. That's 1GB/sec through the file system and the network. Oh, and just so you don't think that's where it stops. There are over 20 of these suckers running 24/7. It's around 28GB/sec of NFS/BDS/XFS I/O, sustained. Oh, yeah, did I mention that they are all randoms? No sequential? Check back with me when you can play with the big boys. : essentially a single program in an SMP configuration. But there : IS something to be said for keeping utility programs up to date, fixing : serious bugs, and keeping the friggin kernel up to date. We're working on it. I think we'll have an answer on the utilities that will make you happy in about 9 months. It includes you getting source. : There is : something to be said for using modern paging algorithms and for paying : attention to degenerate conditions and cascade failures. There is : something to be said for paying attention to SECURITY. What I see when : I look at IRIX is an extremely hacked circa 1985 sysV kernel that needs : a serious workover. It needs a rewrite. We have a lot of people here that actually want to make things better. I'll make you a challenge: you come up with a test case that reproduces some bad ju ju in IRIX that works fine in FreeBSD. For each of those, we'll fix it or tell you why it can't be fixed. I'll personally buy you dinner or whatever for each of the ones that we can't fix just so you aren't wasting your time. Don't like those rules? Come up with some you do. I'm willing to play. -- --- Larry McVoy lm@sgi.com http://reality.sgi.com/lm (415) 933-1804