Unix Archive

Unix Turns 40: Past, Present, Future of a Revolutionary OS

Submitted by snydeq 2009-06-04 Unix 29 Comments

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.

Knee Deep in UNIX Network Analysis

Thom Holwerda 2009-05-11 Unix 4 Comments

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.

HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4 To Be Released Tomorrow

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-16 Unix 40 Comments

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.

Solutions for Tracing UNIX Applications

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-06 Unix 9 Comments

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.

Guest post by snydeq 2009-03-25 Unix 11 Comments

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."

Benjamin Franklin on Systems Administration

weildish 2009-03-10 Unix No Comments

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.

Designing a UNIX File System to Improve Performance, Security

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-23 Unix 11 Comments

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.

Stayin’ Alive with GNU Screen

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-11 Unix 16 Comments

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.

Synchronizing UNIX Files with Optimized Security

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-02 Unix No Comments

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.

Protothreads for UNIX

Submitted by anonymous 2009-01-18 Unix 16 Comments

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.

Submitted by weildish 2008-12-17 Unix 16 Comments

IBM's primer to Cygwin. Cygwin is a UNIX-like environment for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Cygwin includes a real UNIX shell, a Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) emulation library, and thousands of UNIX utilities ported to Windows. Learn how to drop to Cygwin and use its UNIX-like command line to manipulate the system.

Debunking the “2x Ram as Swap Space” Rule

David Adams 2008-11-20 Unix 37 Comments

Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions. Now, many admins (both Windows and Linux/UNIX) follow an old rule of thumb that your swap partition should be twice the size of your main system RAM. Let us say I’ve 32GB RAM, should I set swap space to 64 GB? Is 64 GB of swap space really required? How big should your Linux / UNIX swap space be?

More Details on HP’s Virtualization Efforts

David Adams 2008-10-29 Unix 1 Comment

OSNews recently ran a story on UNIX virtualization functionality which was a bit shallow on technical details. HP's Christophe de Dinechin (who had already begun working on virtualization at HP when we interviewed him several years ago, but couldn't talk about it then) contacted us to tell us he'd gone into more technical detail on his blog here and here saying, "They are a bit long, and probably boring to a general audience, but since your readers are generally more interested in OS technology than the average population, I thought I'd bring these to your attention."

A Comparison of Virtualization Features of HP-UX, Solaris & AIX

Adam Scheinberg 2008-10-15 Unix 20 Comments

This article explores the virtualization features available to administrators across several UNIX hardware platforms. Discover what they have to offer and how their features compare to PowerVM.

Submitted by M-Saunders 2008-09-11 Unix 12 Comments

A lazy sysadmin is a good sysadmin. Time spent in finding more-efficient shortcuts is time saved later on for that ongoing project of "reading the whole of the internet", so try Linux Format's 10 handy tips to make your admin life easier.

Speaking UNIX: More Shell Scripting Techniques

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2008-09-10 Unix 14 Comments

How could someone make a more powerful editing tool than vi, you may ask? The answer is Vim, and this article provides details on the many enhancements that have made Vim a highly used and acceptable editor in the world of UNIX and Linux.

Speaking UNIX: An Intro

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2008-07-03 Unix 8 Comments

The IBM AIX operating system has kept to what's important: stability, functionality, robustness. And it has done it by keeping a strong command-line interface (CLI). If you never learned to use the CLI or need a refresher on its basics, read on.

Submitted by jmalasko 2008-06-26 Unix 5 Comments

The AIX operating system and other UNIX-like operating systems need a way to communicate with the kernel. This is done through the use of a shell. The Korn shell is the default shell used with AIX. Discover how to automate many tasks and save a great deal of time by writing your own Korn shells scripts.

Submitted by diegocg 2008-06-23 Unix 12 Comments

HP has announced that they will open source the AdvFS under the second version of the GPL. AdvFS is a mid-90's file system that is used by the Tru64 UNIX operating system. The Wikipedia page on AdvFS provides the necessary background information and feature set of the AdvFS file system.

Discover How a UNIX Machine Boots

Submitted by IdaAshley 2008-05-17 Unix 25 Comments

Ever wonder what makes a computer tick or how a UNIX server does what it does? Discover what happens when you push the power button on your computer. This article discusses the different boot types, managing the AIX bootlist and the AIX boot sequence. After reading this article, you will better understand what exactly happens when your server starts.