Interactive and me - An open letter to ISC.

[Gary Heston]

In article <1990Jul17.123023.11819 at sco.COM> jim at iggy.UUCP (Jim Sullivan) writes:
> [ regarding serialization ]
>Actually, for the real user, he/she never knows that they system has been
>serialized, since they are running some application on top of UNIX.  The
>person who is inconvenienced is the system administrator, who has an addition
>administrative task to perform.

In the case of the SCO TCP/IP package, where they communicate on an
undocumented socket and lock the system if two match, I think that would
definantly inconvenience users. If you're going to put this serial number/
installation key garbage into software, make it possible to find out what
the serial number of an installed package is. Put it into a file somewhere,
a comment in /etc/profile or something, so that a backup tape can be
looked at to find out which of a dozen packages needs to be reinstalled
after the crash.

In any case, I consider locking up systems in networks to be improper. 
There should be a message echoed to the console about the conflict, and
then a normal shutdown. I'm not having to deal with this yet, since I
have a fairly small number of *nix system, and they're wired via serial
links. Inconveniencing sysadmins doesn't get you more business, in most
smaller (say, 2-5 systems) sites the admin tasks are an additional duty
someone does in there copious free time when they're not coding. Those
people don't need or want any inconvenience, including sudden system
crashes. Users don't want to recreate files lost as the result of such
crashes, where the admin had 5 sets of software to install and only
unwrapped one, without knowing any better (this lockup situation is
undocumented, remember). If I had a product do this to me, I'd tell 
the boss not to buy any more. We can't afford the downtime. We're a
suspicious and untrusting lot to begin with... 

I should add the following:

	1) I'm primarily an admin, with a few other duties. Effectively,
	   it's full-time work.

	2) The above are my opinions, not SCIs'. I say this because....

	3) This company resells both ISC and SCO products, with the
	   systems we manufacture. 

>Jim Sullivan					Youth Culture Killed My Puppy!
>SCO Canada Inc. (Formerly HCR Corporation)
>...!uunet!hcr!jim jim at hcr.com			Opinions are mine.
>416 922 1937

-- 
    Gary Heston     { uunet!sci34hub!gary  }    System Mismanager
   SCI Technology, Inc.  OEM Products Department  (i.e., computers)
"The esteemed gentleman says I called him a liar. That's true, and I
regret it." Retief, a character created by Keith Laumer.