2 Feb
2016
2 Feb
'16
7:22 a.m.
On Feb 2, 2016, at 12:21 AM, Phil Budne <phil at ultimate.com> wrote:
Configuration was stored in a "Object
Database" (so forget anything
you ever knew about the /etc directory). System administration for
mortals was done with a GUI called "SMIT". It showed an animation of
a person running. If the command failed, they fell down face first.
But, SMIT *DID* show you the commands it was using, so you could learn
from the mistake of ever running it.
:-) The command/control workstations for IMAGE ran AIX on POWER (RS/6000) desktop
stations. I got to see a lot of SMIT face-plants, but of course, that was usually because
I had fouled up at some point or another. I wasn?t enough of a UNIX weenie at the time
that the experience even reminded me of UNIX.
However in fairness, if a workstation was T/U, it probably wasn?t one of the RS/6000?s,
and the SMIT-inspired swearing fits by the folks that actually knew what was going on were
brief compared to the swearing fits at the Tru64(?) Alphasevers that did the data logging
and reduction. I gathered there was a relatively severe endian-ness disagreement between
programmers and DEC hardware in that case.
- Mark