A portable Unix?

[Chris Torek]

In article <2862 at kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> sloane at kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
(Bob Sloane) writes:
>I have been looking for a portable operating system for some time. Does anyone
>know of one?  Unix?  Which version? BSD, SYS V, Ultrix, XENIX,...? Does such
>a thing really exist?  I mean one operating system that can run on several
>different machines, UNCHANGED.

The `Tahoe' release of 4.3BSD runs on the DEC VAX series as well as
the CCI/Harris/Sperry/ICL `Tahoe' machines (though not on all current
models of each).  The same user and kernel sources are used; machine
dependent portions (device drivers and assembly code) are segregated
by subdirectories; it is entirely feasible to run a command like

	okeeffe% tar cfFF - /usr/src | rsh somevax tar xf -
	okeeffe% rsh somevax 'cd /usr/src; make clean; make build'

and make a new Unix system on a Vax based on the last month's work
done on a Tahoe.  (Okeeffe is a CCI Power 6/32 at Berkeley.  The
secret -F option in tar is for `source feathering'.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris