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BSD Operating Systems News

Informix Native FreeBSD Port 94

Posted by Nik from the NP:-Fugazi dept.
AC wrote in to say, "It seems that Informix are considering a port to FreeBSD. Cindy Munns at Informix has written to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc asking for people interested in a port to e-mail her with your name, your company, the number of users, and so on." I've seen this message, but it doesn't seem to have hit Deja yet. However, I've tracked down a variant from Cindy in comp.databases.informix. Informix for Linux already works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI, but it's great that they're considering a native version. And remember, there's no point mailing them if you're not genuinely interested...
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Informix Native FreeBSD Port More

Informix Native FreeBSD Port

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  • If only more companies would start going around asking alternative OS users if they would like a port.........

  • Cool... (Score:4)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @07:00PM (#1266391)
    This shouldn't take too much work, right guys?

    (remember "I just typed 'make'"? ;)

    Linux could use to learn a thing or two from this... Wouldn't it be great when people said "We're considering doing a Linux port of XYZ Commercial Software", it ran on platforms besides x86? Now, a lot of apps do, but there's nothing wrong with a few more.

    Being locked permanently into x86 binary compatibility would suck (although the Crusoe sounds pretty cool here), just as being locked into Linux binary comatibility would suck.

    It reminds me of a fortune (the specs are somewhat dated, but multiply by the relevant ones by 16 or so and bear with me):

    Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
    a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
    storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
    voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
    What's the first question that the computer community asks?

    "Is it PC compatible?"

    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • A Step in the Right Direction (Score:3)

    by xenotrope ( 86854 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @07:00PM (#1266392)
    I'm glad someone's starting to test the BSD waters. Far too many companies are ignoring the popular UNIX variants and just putting all their efforts into Linux. I'm all for diversity among operating systems, and so I notice there is simply too much attention given to one platform. Finally, someone's starting to notice the world doesn't revolve around either Linux or Windows.


    ---

  • The best part about commercial software providers wanting to port to FreeBSD is that it makes porting to Darwin and MacOS X from there practically trivial, especially for server apps.

    This can only be a Good Thing. I truly believe that "Unix for the masses" -- both in terms of actual ease-of-use and total installed base -- is going to come from Apple first; then GNU/Linux and the BSD's will rapidly improve on what they've accomplished, and Global Domination will come that much sooner.

    --
    Anonymous cowards are working on a massively multiplayer persistent shared immersive reality based on open standards and globally distributed free servers.

  • Re:Cool... (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I completely agree.

    But maybe that's because I just said this.

    Posting mistake?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Considering that BSD has 14 years on Linux, seems to me more that Linix the newcomer recently fragmenting the market.

  • A question for the gurus... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How compatible are BSD and Linux at the source code level? What about the BSDs themselves? Do they all support the same basic interfaces and drivers?

    Does anyone have experience with porting large amounts of software from Linux to BSD or vice-versa?

  • Fragmentation (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @07:30PM (#1266402) Homepage
    How does BSD "steal from linux"? Anyone selling non-free BSD software will probably port it to linux, because the linux market is so much bigger. On the other hand, any free software which is written for BSD can be adapted to Linux.

    Free unices are (pretty much) source-compatible. By expanding the free unix market, BSD attracts more free software development, which *helps* linux.
  • As long as something is written portably, there will not be any portability issues. I know this sounds obvious but to most developers, it isn't.

    As for among the BSDs, there is a high degree of *binary* compatibility in addition to source.

  • Re:A question for the gurus... (Score:4)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @07:40PM (#1266407) Homepage
    OpenBSD and NetBSD are almost exactly the same OS, but configured differently.
    They are more similar to FreeBSD than any of the three are to Linux.

    BSD /dev is quite different to Linux. BSD doesn't have /proc.

    The biggest cause of differences is differing versions of the standard C libraries. All GNU/Linuxes, and GNU/HURD, use glibc. BSD has its own libc. This means that a fair few standard functions work quite differently. In particular, GNU extensions, like the %a flag for scanf, will be missing from BSD.

    Porting between unixes is often a matter of spending a bit of time tweaking bits of code here and there. Porting to/from something else, like Mac, Windows or VMS, is usually a major task and probably requires a complete rewrite. But of course this depends upon the program. hello-world.c will work anywhere.
  • I forgot to say: I've never done any nontrivial BSDLinux porting, so this is all stuff I've picked up second hand.
  • Wow, what an unusual reason to change OS. Which BSD are you using? How do users of other BSDs react? D'ya still use GCC?
  • Actually better and more effective solution is that those alternative OS users will go around and ask companies to port stuff. Why wait for them to come up with the idea. If there is demand, supply will come.
  • There are prominent BSD developers who actively encourage people to develop for Linux first, as there is a large test-bed. Linux software can run on BSD fine, and if the developers like they can then go back after the testing and redevelop specifically for BSD.

    There's nothing -horribly- wrong with this. Most of the BSD groups like having a small really tight OS. Other cool software can be added after the main BSD install.

    A big reason why they do this, is Linux is really popular, and the particular developers we're talking about probably wouldn't bother to dev. software specifically for BSD first.
  • The best part about commercial software providers wanting to port to FreeBSD is that it makes porting to Darwin and MacOS X from there practically trivial, especially for server apps.

    You might want to rephrase that as "at least for server apps"; GUI apps are probably unlikely to port very well at all (unless the OpenStep folk turn themselves into the OpenCocoa folk, complete with a Display PDF implementation - and perhaps unless an OpenCarbon group starts up as well).

    (That's probably what you meant, but people sometimes seem to move from "Darwin has a BSD API and a lot of BSD code" to "therefore it's easy to port MacOS X applications to BSD" or "...to UNIX".)

  • BSD /dev is quite different to Linux. BSD doesn't have /proc.

    Gee, don't tell my FreeBSD partition that:

    % uname -sr
    FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE
    % ls -l /proc
    total 30
    dr-xr-xr-x 13 root wheel 512 Feb 16 22:46 0
    dr-xr-xr-x 13 root wheel 512 Feb 16 22:46 1
    dr-xr-xr-x 13 root wheel 512 Feb 16 22:46 121
    dr-xr-xr-x 13 daemon wheel 512 Feb 16 22:46 130
    ...

    It doesn't have a /proc exactly like Linux's, but that's a different matter (and one might consider that a feature, not a bug; it's perhaps nice to have most system information readable and writable through the file system, but whether stuff unrelated to processes belongs under /proc rather than on some other pseudo-file-system, or whether it should be in a form designed for humans to read rather than for programs and shell scripts to read, is another matter).

  • Difference between BSD and Linux? (Score:3)

    by mschmitt ( 2947 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @09:06PM (#1266425)
    The Mainstream media havent discovered *BSD yet, simple as that. Driven by all the coverage and the "Windows alternative" hype, Linux distributors have done their best to make Linux installable by means of of 5 mouse clicks. They are leaving your disk cluttered with hundreds of packages that you just dont need, running dozens of processes you dont know, and start up in a twisted fashion noone can comprehend. To turn such a Linux box into a respectable server, youll have to work your way through all those SysV-Init scripts, which are being filled with variables from nebulous places, to finally disable the daemons you dont need. When youve done that, a fresh FreeBSD install will look so clean to you, it will instantly turn you into a believer.

    Linux may make a nice Workstation, but on the server side, Ive made the change to BSD:
  • You might want to rephrase that as "at least for server apps"; GUI apps are probably unlikely to port very well at all (unless the OpenStep folk turn themselves into the OpenCocoa folk, complete with a Display PDF implementation - and perhaps unless an OpenCarbon group starts up as well).

    (That's probably what you meant, but people sometimes seem to move from "Darwin has a BSD API and a lot of BSD code" to "therefore it's easy to port MacOS X applications to BSD" or "...to UNIX".)

    Yes, that's true, I did mean it in the context of command-line utils and daemons. However, there are people (including John Carmack) working on an X Server port for Darwin. From there it shouldn't be impossible to run X apps on OS X.

    As for going in the reverse direction, I agree that the GNUStep project doesn't look as though it will match the new Cocoa api's, especially the Quartz ones, any time soon. But you never know...

    --
    Anonymous cowards are working on a persistent shared immersive reality, based on distributed free servers and freely-available standards-based clients.

  • I see it this way: It shows how pathetic the Linux world of 150+ distros is. They can't agree on what a "common Linux binary" yet every X86 based Unix was able to come up with a Linux compatibility mode that works.

    And, when the Linux community gets done with the in-fighting over a common binary, BSD/SCO/Sun will be there with a mode to run them.

    How did we end up with a Linux binary as the 'compatibilty standard'?
    86Open [telly.org] was an attempt to create a standard X86 op-cde unix binary. And, lo and behold, the in-fighting killed that. Most of the people involved in the project came out with a Linux compatiblity mode.

    The people asking for shrink-wraped binaiers need to ask for binaries that work EVERWHERE, not just RedHat. Because people are content to accept redhat only binaries, RedHat has no desire to change this.

  • Re:BSD should stop playing rebel hippie and go Lin (Score:3)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @09:29PM (#1266430)
    And Linus says fragmentation is OK.

    He said that at LinuxWorld.

  • Its up on the Internet....you just need to know where to look.

    The SGI people had it up at LinuxWorld.
  • It is good to have compatability with 'legacy' Operating systems. Note that Windows-NT also has compatability for DOS, and runs most windows-3 applications, etc.

    This provides a 'migration path'.
  • Porting between FreeBSD and other Unixes is easy, differences are minor.

    Sometimes porting between Linux and other Unixes is more difficult, because Linux uses GNU libc, a baroque /proc, sometimes strange (deviant) filesystem-layout. It has some incompatible extentions. It greatly depends on the program's author: if he has general UNIX experience then usually the program is portable. If he only knows Linux and doesn't give a damn about the rest of UNIX, probably his program is Linux specific and is harder to port.

    It is sad to see so much UNIX ignorance and lack of appreciation for portability and standards amongst some Linux people these days.
  • As a workstation, BSD is also fine. It has mostly the same apps, and those lacking run well under the Linux emulator (even vmware).

    Still, having native applications is even better, and thus it would be great if Informix would port their (excellent) RDBMS to native FreeBSD. Next to a decent Java2 implementation an RDBMS is the most serious thing lacking at the moment.
  • There are prominent BSD developers who actively encourage people to develop for Linux first, as there is a large test-bed. Linux software can run on BSD fine, and if the developers like they can then go back after the testing and redevelop specifically for BSD.

    Hell yeah, that's the official line preached by Jordan Hubbard himself! The problem comes when the software developers start shoving out Linux-specific things like kernel modules. =(
  • What a scandalous twisting of history.

    FreeBSD and BSD in general is much odler than Linux.

    Both Linux and FreeBSD use lots of GNU stuff. However, FreeBSD doesn't use much Linux-specific (i.e. non GNU) stuff. OTOH, Linux uses lots of BSD stuff such as drivers, networking tools etc. If anyone has stolen from anyone, Linux stole from FreeBSD, not the other way round.

    I prefer not to think in terms of stealing however. It is just reuse. It is very wise of Linux to reuse things that already exist instead of reinventing the wheel.

    Also, UNIX prospers for 30 years now and has grown so string because there are different version competing with each other. It is the evolutionary approach. If only one single UNIX would survive, I'm sure it would die soon because of incest.

    This thinking like "unify, conquer the world, fighting for domination" etc is 100% contradictory to the UNIX way, and is typical for Linux newbies/fanatics. It only hurts the "good cause".
  • It's comments like that from Linus that lead to Distro Hell, along the road paved with AOL CDs.

    I'm not trying to start an argument here, but there are two equally valid schools of thought... (a) that fragmentation is good, (b) that fragmentation is bad.

  • That's why no one gives you mod points. :)

    I'm talking about binary compatibility. I think it's on topic, and apparently a couple of people have found it interesting. I think I sufficiently developed my analogy, and explained why binary compatibility (for the OS or the hardware platform or both) can be a bad thing.

    About that last part, I completely agree. There's nothing wrong with moderating my posts, but I would rather get replies instead. And the only replies I've gotten have been Anonymous (which would have been understandable, if a moderator wanted to reply) and they were either unintelligible (repeated part of my post, and nothing else) or inflammatory (but maybe we'll still have a good discussion). So understand if I'm not really thrilled with Anonymous Coward, but at least he replies to my posts. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Sometimes the PHB's feel better knowing that there is commercial support for that 'free OS' (or the othe 'free OS'). It's easier to convince them to try it knowing that a company the PHB is familiar with from the Windows world is also working in the *BSD *nix world... If a product of quality is available for free, I'll use it (the gimp). If a product is commercially available and I KNOW it is good from my experience with it in the Windowsland, I'd be more apt to be willing to pay to use it (Opera browser).
  • Well we know form experience that most of the bigger companies are already aware of linux, and therefore continually requesting they port software annoys them (for instance Loki). You can't be sure that they're serious about it until they start asking us. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink.....
  • When people ask that, they really mean "is it Windows compatible?" There could be a Dragonball processor inside PCs, the average person doesn't know, doesn't care, and doesn't want to know/care. If Windows ran on it and all their apps looked and worked the same, it would still be a "PC" to them and they'd be oblivious to it.
  • > OpenBSD and NetBSD are almost exactly the same OS, but configured differently.

    No, they're not. They're still similar in many respects but not "almost exactly the same" at all. E.g. OpenBSD and NetBSD use a completely different VM.

    > BSD /dev is quite different to Linux. BSD doesn't have /proc.

    Wrong. It's just not mounted or enabled as default in NetBSD and OpenBSD for security reasons.

    > The biggest cause of differences is differing versions of the standard C libraries. All GNU/Linuxes,
    > and GNU/HURD, use glibc. BSD has its own libc.
    As SunOS, HP-UX ... have.

    > This means that a fair few standard functions work quite differently. In particular, GNU
    > extensions, like the %a flag for scanf, will be missing from BSD.

    Wich means that GNU does the same as Microsoft when they add their own "features" to an official standard. The BSDs' scanf conforms to ANSI X3.159-1989 aka "ANSI C" so it's not their fault if some Linux software won't compile or run because of GNU weakening standards.
  • > by this argument, we should all be using sysV or whatever.

    "whatever" - maybe

    "sysV" - no, BSD (first distribution 1978/79) is older than System V (1983), wich was strongly influenced by BSD BTW.

  • I don't think products such as Postgres or MySQL are up to the task of competing with Informix, Sybsase, Oracle, or IBM in their chosen markets. There's huge amounts of third party software and suppport available, as well. Plus legacy apps.

    When there's a free alternative that includes all the features and scalability of the big name databases, maybe some interest will be seen, but I doubt it... Those are such complicated beasts that company's like to have the ability to lean on the vendors... even oracle, with their historically horrible support. Ever notice that they're the 2nd highest valued pure software company after Microsoft?
  • I'm almost puzzled at the idea of why Oracle hasn't announced anything for Mac OS X based systems... I mean, Larry Elison is on Apple's board of directors, so he obviously believes in Apple. OS X will be *probably* the easiest Unix for non-unix literate people to set up... WebObjects is one of the most popular application servers... The G4 is a great chip... Apple supposedly has SMP G4 systems in the works... That all makes for an awesome turnkey internet/intranet server, if they just had a high quality SQL database.

    In Elison's position, h knows probably better than 99.9% of the industry what apples plans, intents, and capabilities will be a year from now... It'd almost be comical if Informix beat Oracle to the OS X punch.
  • Or the other problem of the software developers who:
    1. Develop using linux "ONLY" methods (using /proc instead of system calls)
    2. Develop using linux "ONLY" sytem headers ("#include , etc.) when standard headers exist (/sys/machine.h, etc.)
    3. Develop using "direct" access to constructs (instead of through system calls - makes it difficult to port some things)
    4. Develop functionality with no regards toward porting to other OS. This helps no one.


    What CAN be done to help further things along
    1. Develop a cross-developers group (people willing to supply test boxes from other OS).
    2. More development of crossplatform differences (and workarounds).
    3. Better development skills (learning how to encapsulate the OS specific functionality into wrapper functions [change the OS, change the functions that the wrappers call].)
  • I decided to try FreeBSD recently. At first I wanted a dual boot machine, but gave up because the two couldn't agree on disk partitioning (I have two SCSI drives). Then I decided to go with FreeBSD, since "it can run Linux binaries". The first Linux program I tried was xcdroast. I finally got all the libraries it required loaded (tix, Tk, tcl), and tried it. The result: Segmentation fault: core dumped. Oh well, back to Slackware 7.0 I guess.
  • I've used FreeBSD, NetBSD, Redhat, and Debian. You're right in that the BSD's give you a trimmer system. Redhat is the worst at putting stuff on your machine you didn't want, and not letting you remove it. The startup process of the BSD's does seem very nice, but Debians init scripts are very good and it is not tricky at all. As for package maintence, debian wins hands down. When GNU/Debian BSD comes out, I may move to that. I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but if they go w/ all ANSI standards, and the apt package mantence system, that'd be great. The BSD package systems are probably better than RPM IMHO, but they still leave alot to be desired. Also configuration tools in BSD are weak, and why the hell did it take my dual ppro 2 and a half hours to compile the kernel in BSD? linux took less than 30 minutes.
  • now, if only I could learn to type... package maintenence... and my dual p-pro 200 took 2.5 hours...
  • I have been fighting a database on FreeBSD war for a couple of months, company name not required. This Novell shop may, and that is may, consider Linux. Why? It is all over the news (cNBC). I was talking a FreeBSD/MySQL package -- not quite on deaf ears. This may help because Informix is a product they can research, and heard about.

    A quick www.remarq.com search got me the post. Here: is the short script [remarq.com]

    -d

  • by this argument, we should all be using {YUCK} Windows NT {/YUCK} ;-)
  • What is an example of a "redhat only" binary?

    I have not come across such a thing when copying programs between Slackware and RedHat based systems.

  • ... and why the hell did it take my dual ppro 2 and a half hours to compile the kernel in BSD? linux took less than 30 minutes

    huh..., then something is wrong. The 1.6MB FreeBSD 3.4 kernel compiles in about 3 minutes with my Dual PII-400, the Linux 2.2.14 is about the same.

    2.5 hours?? Maybe a "make world".

  • Nah, we'd all be using CP/M
    ;-)
  • Because it was:
    1. offtopic
    2. trollwork to distract people from trying FreeBSD
    3. FUD, it's no problem to dualboot *BSD and Linux, there are tons of How-Tos.
    Since we are talking of FreeBSD:

    Go to www.freebd.org, goto "FAQ" and geep going on to "Installation", the question "Can I have more than one operation system on my PC?" and finaly to "the multi-OS page".

    I'm no FreeBSD user, I don't know the FreeBSD web server very well, but I found that document in less than 2 minutes.

  • I think the package system in (Free)BSD is great. It's real simple (pkg_{add|delete|info} [filename]), and has never given me any problems. As for your kernel, my PPro200 (single processor) machine takes about 20 min to compile my 4.0 current kernel, so I suspect you're doing something wrong.
  • Well, it may sometimes be hard to figure out which code is portable and which is not (I'm not talking of obvious things like relying on /proc). I do however believe that we have a great tool that has helped loads of applications to be ported easily to BSD; glib.

    I was a bit sceptic to glib at first, but after looking through their header files (actually just one file), I did realize that they provide most of the wrapper functions that you can ever think of.

    (BTW, does anyone know how well glib works for Win32?)

  • the package maintenence system is simple, but apt is much nicer. You don't even have to download the package before hand, it gets all the dependencies(instead of just telling you they are not met), it handles conflicts. It does everything that pissed me off about any other system not doing. The only problem is when the package maintainer manages to screw up a dependency(rare, but it happens), it's not fun to fix, but it can be done.
  • The FreeBSD web server is "www.freebsd.org".
    It runs apache, but it could even run thttpd, ncsa, w3c-httpd - it doesn't matter at all.
    "www.freebsd.org" is still the FreeBSD web server.

    You are stupid, aren't you?
  • PICK is an example. (ok, they support 2-3 others)
  • > The BSDs' scanf conforms to ... ANSI C ...
    > so it's not their fault if some Linux software
    > won't compile or run because of GNU weakening
    > standards.

    I stand corrected about /dev on BSD. My post wasn't supposed to say whose fault the incompatibilities were - I was just describing them to the best of my knowledge!

    > GNU does the same as Microsoft when they add their
    > own "features" to an official standard.
    I don't accept this. For one thing, GNU extensions are very well documented in the libc info page. The words "this is a GNU extension" are everywhere. The GNU sed info page is a good example; it tells you the maximum width of lines according to POSIX, and also the maximum width which various systems will use. Compare this to the MS J++ manual which doesn't even make it clear that J++ is not Java. Remember how the ANSI standard came about; the stuff in it was originally part of people's extensions to K&R C. Do you wish we'd sticked with K&R C? Personally I have no objections to people extending a standard per se. The thing that bothers me is when they don't make it clear that their library/browser/whatever is more forgiving than the standard allows, thus encouraging people to write unportable code. glibc can hardly be accused of such sneaky extensions - the libc info page is very clear about what is part of the standard and what isn't.

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