>> Did anyone consider staying with SVR4 and just making the tools work >> properly. >> i.e a green field site and using SVR4 build a complete set of tools from >> ground up. >> Enda >> > >Based on all already published info I saw - no in reality. SVR4 is not >broken itself but they think that some new packaging system will solve >their ignoring of feature delivering magically somehow, ignoring the >flexibility of SVR4.
There is unfortunately a history at Sun to throw away things and start from scratch. While the "from scratch" bits are sometimes better designed the "we'll implement lost functionality in stage 2" never materializes. The prime example of this, I believe, are the admin tools: In Solaris 2.1 there was a reasonable set of tools which worked locally on a system, including a graphical package installer which knew about clusters, what was installed on the system and allowed you to simply add back what was missing or remove what you didn't want. When this was rewritten in a "networked based" admintool shell, apart from the huge security issues this introduced, that functionality was never restored. With the removal of admintool even more functionality was gone and both SMC and lockhart supposedly stepped up to the plaid but the former sees no development "because it is being replaced" and the latter is "only a framework" so it's completely useless. Whether this is going to happen this time, I don't know, but I see this as a real risk. My starting position is therefor generally "only rewrite from scratch if you can proof you cannot sufficiently improve". We have proven that install slowness is caused by bunzip2; that is the low hanging fruit. Casper
