[geeks] Postscript question

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> One can hope that as OS X matures it will get better in these areas.  My
> understanding was that it is so different that porting the standard
> tools isn't trivial.

Well, as much as the marketroids like to say "it's Unix!!" to the
techies, it isn't really--at least, not as an entire system.  The
problems with porting recovery/repair tools are twofold.  For one,
the standard filesystem is HFS+, not UFS or FFS, so you have to deal
with multiple forks and all the other HFS weirdness.

Second, and more profoundly, the organization of the system itself is
more like OpenStep than Unix.  Instead of plain old config files, most
configuration parameters are obtained from netinfo.  Libraries,
binaries, and headers are scattered throughout the system in individual
"bundles" rather than clumped together in /usr or /usr/local.  Even what
would be considered basic utilities are as likely to be in
"CoreServices.framework" as in /usr/libexec or /sbin.

All in all, it's a good if immature system.  It's definitely more
compartmentalized (and, to some extent, organized) than Unix.  And,
while the core interactions between the kernel and the libraries is
all Unix, the userland stuff (including the management of loadable
kernel modules) is so more intricate than Unix, that very little of
what we know about keeping a system healthy and diagnosing failures
directly applies to OS X.

Basically, what we're seeing is a complicated and intricate system
that's trying to, in one fell swoop, undo many of the perceived failings
of Unix and be end-user friendly -and- be compatible with one of the
most sophisticated desktop platforms on the market.  It's a wonder that
they got it delivered in only 5 years, and it makes sense that it's a
little fragile even now.  I just hope that Apple starts paying as much
attention to the diagnosis and repair of the system they've built as
they have to making it pretty.

That said, I'm still pissed-off about not having a working desktop
computer for the past day.

> And, they are going to have to work this stuff out if they really expect
> the Xserve line to make it.

No doubt.  Not all the world conists of expendible and easily-cloned web
servers.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
  "Albert Einstein nailed space-time, but the wild thing had him stumped.
   Al, baby, two and two make five-and-a-quarter; that's why people fall
   in love." -- Thomas Dolby, "That's Why People Fall in Love"