[TUHS] Re: HP-UX

On Mon, Sep 02, 2024 at 01:17:16PM -0400, Alan D. Salewski wrote: "Was" being the operative term here. By the time I wrestled HP-UX for a living (early 2000s), it was ... not so great. We ran the MCOE (Mission Critical Operating Environment) package with MC/ServiceGuard clustering for HA services and paid for the support contract to go with it. Ran into an issue were something we were trying to do just didn't work and the kernel told us to take a hike (LVM fun). Fine, time to use that expensive contract. We had a few rounds of back-and-forth with HP support, even got IIRC two new versions of the LVM binaries, no dice. After some time (IIRC at least 4 weeks) they must have found someone who remembered where the kernel sources were stashed _and_ could read them. We finally got an answer that TLDRed down to: "What you are trying to do cannot work because you run into hard coded design limits of the kernel", ok, fair enough - but why did that have to take so long? The hardware support (we ran both PA-RISC and Itanium from HP) was an interesting mixed bag at the time. Our normal hardware support guy was "old HP" and _really_ good, friendly chap, very competent. So were the consultants we hired for MC/SG training. Then we got a tech for the tape library who as originally Compaq and that was just ... bad[0], to the point where the aforementioned consultants were visibly embarassed and took over[2]. And from reading between the lines, there seemed to be no love lost between the two sides at HP at the time ("old HP" and "Compaq acquisition"). Kind regards, Alex. [0] Showing up to a (known to the company that sent you) pure HP-UX environment and demanding that the LTO library be wired to a Windows server[1] instead because you need to do a firmware update gets you results that start at loud laughter and move on to unprintable language. [1] Aside from us going "WTF?!", that wouldn't have worked anyway since the Windows servers the other departments had didn't have Fibre Channel interfaces ... [2] turns out, one could do the firmware updates from HP-UX if one knew their stuff -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison