Re: [Toolserver-l] nightshade will be converted to Solaris on January 3, 2011

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Purodha Blissenbach: Please files issues in JIRA and include "[solaris]" in the subject line. I don't remember the mail you quoted below, and if it's not in the archives, perhaps it never made it to the list at all. Your other option is to ask us for help with migrating your scripts. Well, what is "Linux"? I doubt there are many tools that require a particular OS kernel (such as Linux) in order to run. So, when people say they prefer Linux, what are they really looking for? I can think of several things: * Shell -- but this is the same between Linux and Solaris (bash) * Shell utilities (ls, find, awk, sed, grep, cut, ...) -- but these are the same between Linux and Solaris (GNU utilities) * "ps" -- but we provide our own version of "ps" that supports the BSD syntax that many Linux users are used to. * "top" -- top on Solaris is slightly different because it's "Unix top" instead of "procps top", but this isn't something that tools typically use, and it's not that hard for users to learn the difference. (prstat is better anyway ;-) * Default configuration for utilities. For example, some users complained about the "vim" on the Solaris systems because they expect it to be configured the same way that Debian Linux configures it. But "vim" is vim on every OS, and the default configuration can be changed. If uses report these issues to us, I have no problem with changing the Solaris configuration to match the Linux configuration where it makes sense. (For example, I think Debian's default vim configuration is quite sensible.) * GNU compiler -- in the past, users switching C or C++ tools from Linux to Solaris often had to change from GNU GCC to Sun Studio. But from Monday, GCC will be the standard compiler on both systems. * cron -- okay, Solaris doesn't support "/" syntax in cron. I personally think this is only a minor annoyance and hardly justifies providing a completely separate OS for people who just cannot work without "/". To address your specific concerns: Shell scripts mostly depend on shell utilities; all the ones you mentioned (Bash, awk, sed, grep, and cut) are GNU tools, and are identical between the Linux and Solaris login servers, because we provide the GNU userland by default. (The exception is that some tools on the Solaris systems may be newer versions than on Linux.) As for pywikipedia, I don't think it's correct to claim that this "runs with Linux only" -- in fact, there are several pywikipedia instances currently running on the Solaris login server. PHP is a third-party application and is completely unrelated to OS, except that the version on the Solaris servers is newer (5.3 vs 5.2). No doubt there *are* some differences that will require changes to tools, and OS differences that I didn't list above. This is why we gave users two months to test their tools before announcing a date for the switch, and a further two months after the announcement before the actual conversion. - river.