http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:09:21 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/22411/Hewlett_Packard_Superdome_Demo_Day/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22411/Hewlett_Packard_Superdome_Demo_Day/ I had the pleasure earlier this month of attending a demo day at HP's Cupertino campus to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the Superdome server, see what's new in the high-end server market and learn about what's going on with HP-UX. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:44:51 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) General Unix 30 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/22248/HP-UX_Gets_Biannual_Face-Lift/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22248/HP-UX_Gets_Biannual_Face-Lift/ "Hewlett-Packard is rolling out Update 5 for the HP-UX Unix operating system that runs its Itanium and PA-RISC lines of Integrity and HP 9000 servers, keeping to its pattern of two updates per year for its flagship operating system. As has been the case with the prior HP-UX updates, the changes are important to existing HP-UX shops, but they're probably not going to cause a stampede of buyers for HP-UX systems. It's no different with the updates to IBM's AIX or Sun Microsystems' Solaris Unixes do." Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:54:47 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 6 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/22141/UNIX_Network_Performance_Analysis/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22141/UNIX_Network_Performance_Analysis/ Do you know what to do when the performance of your UNIX network and the speed at which you can transfer files or connect to services suddenly comes to a stop? How do you diagnose the issues and work out where in your network the problems lie? This article looks at some quick methods for finding and identifying performance issues and the steps to start resolving them. Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:31:17 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 0 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/22031/Unix_Celebrates_40_Years/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22031/Unix_Celebrates_40_Years/ "The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new - largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore's Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines. Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod. Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before." Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:37:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jordan Spencer Cunningham) General Unix 19 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News kernpanic http://www.osnews.com/story/21759/35_Years_of_the_UNIX_Time-Sharing_System/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21759/35_Years_of_the_UNIX_Time-Sharing_System/ "Earlier this year, people in many places wrote about the 40th anniversary of the moment Ken Thompson sat down and started to work on UNIX (which is actually in August). In fact, UNIX celebrates another birthday this year, even though on a slightly smaller scale. In July 1974, exactly 35 years ago, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson published the first version of their seminal paper The UNIX Time-Sharing System in the Communications of the ACM." Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:19:55 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/21617/Unix_Turns_40_Past_Present_Future_of_a_Revolutionary_OS/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21617/Unix_Turns_40_Past_Present_Future_of_a_Revolutionary_OS/ Gary Anthes offers an overview history of Unix forty years since Ken Thompson banged out the first version in assembly language for a wimpy DEC PDP-7 minicomputer, spending one week each on the operating system, a shell, an editor, and an assembler. Also included in the package are a year-by-year time line of its evolution, and profiles of Unix giants David Korn, Rick Rashid, and Gordon Bell. Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:50:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 29 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News snydeq http://www.osnews.com/story/21467/Knee_Deep_in_UNIX_Network_Analysis/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21467/Knee_Deep_in_UNIX_Network_Analysis/ You can find out a lot about your network by using a variety of different tools. Understanding the layout of your network, and where packets are going, and what people are doing is important. This tutorial examines techniques for monitoring the traffic and content of your UNIX network and how to read and diagnose problems on your network. Mon, 11 May 2009 08:20:37 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 4 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/21320/HP-UX_11i_v3_Update_4_To_Be_Released_Tomorrow/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21320/HP-UX_11i_v3_Update_4_To_Be_Released_Tomorrow/ Even though the old-world UNIX operating systems, like IRIX and HP-UX, have been steadily losing ground to Linux for a long time now, they do still get updated and improved. HP-UX 11i v3 is supposed to get update 4 tomorrow, with a host of new features that won't excite you if you're used to Linux, but they're still pretty useful for HP-UX users. Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/21261/Solutions_for_Tracing_UNIX_Applications/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21261/Solutions_for_Tracing_UNIX_Applications/ Take a look at some systems that enable you to trace the execution of applications and work out what they are doing without having to make any modifications to the source code, and even without having to stop and restart the application. See how with tracing alone, you can find and diagnose problems with just a few commands. Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:05:15 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/21197/_Why_Unix_Matters_to_IT_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21197/_Why_Unix_Matters_to_IT_/ InfoWorld's Tom Yager writes in favor of Unix in IT, which has been increasingly losing ground to Linux. "Unix matters for a reason that escapes analysts' notice," Yager writes. "It's that little circle with the R in it." Asking whether IT would rather have a vendor's promise to interoperate with competitors' systems, or a contract obliging them to, Yager stresses the importance of The Open Group's registered trademark of the Unix 03 spec. "The trademark provides IT organizations that need to be sure, without need for digging, that Unix means something, and it does. It means that Unix enterprise solutions work and work together, without regard for the brand on the hardware" -- a guarantee of interoperability that is the "product of cooperation among Unix vendors, IT operations, universities, and professional organizations." Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:34:22 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) General Unix 11 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News snydeq http://www.osnews.com/story/21115/Benjamin_Franklin_on_Systems_Administration/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21115/Benjamin_Franklin_on_Systems_Administration/ The man has been dead for over two hundred years, but no one can deny his genius when it came to coming up with clever quotes that people would be repeating centuries after his death. Though nobody living in the 18th century could foresee the computer technology we benefit from today, Franklin's wise words can be applied to really any aspect of life, and Martin Streicher has applied ten of Franklin's famous quotes to the area of UNIX systems administration. Read the full article for some helpful hints in administration all sparked from our dear friend Franklin himself, covering everything from security to the wisdom in frugality. Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:42:06 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jordan Spencer Cunningham) General Unix 0 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/21023/Designing_a_UNIX_File_System_to_Improve_Performance_Security/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21023/Designing_a_UNIX_File_System_to_Improve_Performance_Security/ UNIX's method of handling file systems and volumes provides you with an opportunity to improve your systems' security and performance. This article addresses the issue of why you should split up your disk data into multiple volumes for optimized performance and security. Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:29:54 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 11 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/20962/Stayin_Alive_with_GNU_Screen/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20962/Stayin_Alive_with_GNU_Screen/ If you've spent hours on a task, such as debugging an application, it can be maddening to lose your work in an instant. This article shows you how to keep your shell and your work alive, even across multiple sessions and dropped connections using GNU Screen. Screen is a remarkable tool that you will quickly find invaluable in any work you perform on the command line. In fact, use it once, and you will wonder how you ever lived without it. Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:32:49 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 16 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/20898/Synchronizing_UNIX_Files_with_Optimized_Security/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20898/Synchronizing_UNIX_Files_with_Optimized_Security/ There are many tools available that allow you to synchronize files across UNIX directories, but doing it effectively, and securely, takes a little bit more effort. This article looks at solutions for synchronizing files across UNIX filesystems and different computer systems securely, and at solutions that allow you to synchronize encrypted versions of your files for the purposes of backup. Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:43:58 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 0 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News http://www.osnews.com/story/20793/Protothreads_for_UNIX/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20793/Protothreads_for_UNIX/ Protothreads are a type of extremely lightweight threads - each protothread requires only two bytes of memory - that are usually used for embedded firmware programming, where memory is at a premium. Protothreads combine the low overhead with event-driven programming with the algorithmic clarity of threaded programming. Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:16:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Unix 16 http://www.osnews.com/topics/22 News anonymous