Summary of how well HP and SUNs work together

[Matt Burdick]

Since the summary that I am reponding to has some inconsistencies in it, I
thought I'd try to clear some things up.  All the information I post here
applies to the most recent versions of HP-UX.  Earlier versions may be
different.

Also, I have not commented on all of the possible subjects - only the
areas in which I know something about.

Cartridge tapes: 

	The format for the cartridge tapes for HP's series 300 workstations
	are not compatible with SUN's.  HP's format is based on a 3M
	standard.


Operating System:

	HP's HP-UX is entirely compliant with System V R2, but the
	networking code is Berkeley 4.2-based.  HP is also adding
	functionality from 4.3 BSD when possible.  Many Berkeley library
	functions are available in /usr/lib/libBSD.a for compatibility.
	SUN's Sun-OS is Berkeley 4.3-based.  Job control (SIGSTOP, SIGCONT,
	...) is supported on HP's series 800 machines, but not on the 300
	series (at least up to HP-UX 6.2).  HP-UX 6.5 (coming out Real Soon
	Now) will have job control.


File System:

	SUN's file system supports long file names (255 character names)
	only.  HP-UX supports both long and short file names (14 character
	names).  Short file names are supported because some applications
	do not expect file names to be any longer than 14 characters.  The
	catch is that once you convert a file system from short file names
	to long file names, it isn't possible to reverse the process.

	NFS does work between the two systems, but HP doesn't support
	version 4, which means that you can't export subdirectories - only
	file systems.  Also, it is not generally possible to grant root
	access to an exported file system.  The hack below, however, will
	allow this, since it patches the kernel to change the uid of
	'nobody' to 0 rather than -2.  Note that this patches the bits in
	the /hp-ux file rather than the running kernel.  Therefore, to use
	it you must reboot the system:

		#!/bin/sh
		/bin/adb -w /hp-ux <<-"END_SEMI_CLUSTER"
		        nobody?W 0
		END_SEMI_CLUSTER

Networking:

	HP-UX systems allow either IEEE 802.3 or Ethernet packets on the
	LAN.

Executable programs:

	These cannot be shared between HP and SUN workstations.

Terminal support:

	HP-UX uses terminfo while SUN uses termcap.

Printer support:

	HP-UX uses 'lp' rather than Berkeley's 'lpr'.  However, 'lp' does
	connect to 'lpr' in such a way that the two work together
	transparently (a SUN can print to a printer on an HP-UX system and
	vice-versa).  For purists, there is an 'lpr' script that is a
	wrapper around 'lp' that can be used (I'm not sure if it's shipped
	with HP-UX or not, though).

I hope this helps to clear things up a bit.

	-matt

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are my own, and not those of my
employer (or perhaps any rational being).

Matt Burdick			| Hewlett-Packard
burdick%hpda at hplabs.hp.com	| Technical Communications Lab