[HN Gopher] Installing and using HP-UX 9
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Installing and using HP-UX 9
        
       Author : TMWNN
       Score  : 115 points
       Date   : 2025-11-10 08:48 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thejpster.org.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thejpster.org.uk)
        
       | TMWNN wrote:
       | From the author's Reddit post <https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageco
       | mputing/comments/1ot83o4/y...>:
       | 
       | >I've got my HP 9000 Model 340 booting over the network from an
       | HP 9000 Model 705 in Cluster Server mode and I've learned some
       | very unsettling things about HP-UX and its filesystem.
       | 
       | >Boot-up video at the end of the blog, where I play a bit of the
       | original version of Columns.
        
       | spedione wrote:
       | The "context dependent filesystem" concept is a bit trippy, but I
       | think it's a pretty neat solution to "some systems need a their
       | own version of a file, other files ought to be universal".
        
         | brontitall wrote:
         | It reminds me a little of a thing used in clustering of DECs
         | (later HPs) Tru64 Unix.
         | 
         | The clusters had a shared OS image - that is a single, shared
         | root filesystem for all members. To allow node-specific config
         | files, there was a type of symbolic link called a "Context
         | Dependent Symbolic Link" (CDSL). They were just like a normal
         | symlink, but had a `{memb}` component in the target, which was
         | resolved at runtime to the member ID of the current system.
         | These would be used to resolve to a path under
         | `/cluster/members/{memb}`, so each host could have its own
         | version of a config file.
         | 
         | The single shared root filesystem made upgrades and patching of
         | the OS extra fun. There was a multi-phase process where both
         | old and new copies of files were present and hosts were
         | rebooted one at a time, switching from the old to the new OS.
        
           | mesrik wrote:
           | The Berkeley Automounter Suite of Utilities also known as am-
           | utils did similar arch/platform local and remote mount tweaks
           | commonly quite easily.
           | 
           | https://www.am-utils.org/
           | 
           | The am-utils "amd" known as its running process current use I
           | don't have much to say as I've not much seen it as at least
           | Linux distros have had autofs-tools quite long time. But -90
           | something am-utils was the thing we mostly used.
           | 
           | Adding: Oh, that made me remember we had then also user mode
           | nfs daemon, which allowed re-exporting remote mounts, which
           | was at times with smaller disks and always looking where to
           | get it more if nothing but temporary storage great help.
           | Current kernel based nfs doesn't support it any more.
        
       | chkaloon wrote:
       | Thanks for this. Brings back so many memories of the long hours
       | spent in computer rooms with HP 9000s and RS/6000s back in the
       | 90s. Seeing that SAM interface made me shiver :)
       | 
       | It's great that there are folks like you preserving this history
        
       | aniou wrote:
       | Nowadays NetBSD offers something similar to "context depended
       | filesystem", i.e. a special form of symbolic links that can
       | points to different locations, according to wide range set of
       | attributes: from _domainname_ via _machine_arch_ to _gid_.
       | 
       | For details see https://man.netbsd.org/symlink.7 - section _Magic
       | symlinks_ at very end of manual.
        
         | randrus wrote:
         | I seem to remember something like that in DG/UX too.
        
       | mesrik wrote:
       | IMHO, HP-UX had hands down best written man pages I've ever seen
       | any UNIX commercial or free. And I've been working quite many
       | with.
       | 
       | All man pages were well written, nicely formatted easy to read
       | and almost all came with often valuable examples giving quick
       | enough understanding to check usage most often. That has been
       | absolutely the thing that I've missed other *nix systems since.
       | 
       | But there are too many things were done so nicely and made it
       | nice to maintain with HP-UX that it's not worth trying to
       | remember and list all. But unfortunately shell environment was
       | not match to convenience GNU tools Linux had from beginning. That
       | is without making effort to install (read: compile from source
       | for quite long time) those HP-UX if that was allowed. With
       | university computing center that no problem, but telco side it
       | was big nono -- not without getting product owner permission
       | first :/
       | 
       | But just an example Ignite-UX was one of my favourites with HP-
       | UX. The simplicity using a one simple command with few options
       | bootable DAT tape that could then be used to either recover whole
       | running fully functional system or clone that developed system
       | first to staging lab and then up to production with ease was
       | great time saver major upgrades and migrations. None of the Linux
       | bare metal backup systems I've tested have been able to recover
       | exactly same disk layouts, usually LVM part is poorly done. As
       | has been VmWare p2v migration tools also btw.
       | 
       | That Linux LVM that Sistina did first before Red Hat bought them,
       | is implemented quite exactly what HP-UX had for some time then.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | And documentation, apparently no longer to be found on public
         | HP sites, after all their reboots as companies.
         | 
         | Occasionally I find some stuff via search engine, mostly
         | random.
        
           | mesrik wrote:
           | HP-UX general support seems it is EOLd by end of this year.
           | Extended, apparently very pricey, support will last till
           | 2028.
           | 
           | It would be nice if anyone having still contacts they could
           | ask if HPE would be willing to relax at least parts of HP-UX,
           | like documentation and let achieve.org take them and let us
           | occasionally check things as rererence how it was HP-UX.
           | 
           | It would be shame if all that work that they did documents
           | were lost and unavailable general public later on.
        
             | accrual wrote:
             | Could it be possible to copy the man pages directly from a
             | running distribution? I'm sure that's not allowed, but if
             | it's otherwise disappearing forever...
        
               | mesrik wrote:
               | Sure it is, if you have installation disks. Those are bog
               | std ISO9660 with rock ridge -overlay extension. Which is
               | just hidden file on CD top directory, which maps those
               | silly uppercase ISO naming conventions with file version,
               | and Linux should be able to mount them without problems.
               | 
               | I do not remember any more if those man files were
               | preformatted and .Z compressed or were there the troff
               | source files and "an" package also. Commercial unicen did
               | have bad habit not to provide sources, so that could be
               | the case.
               | 
               | But if someone have the CD:s then its not too hard to
               | check I believe. Installation files could be packed
               | somehow, like compressed and then cpio or tar inside.
               | That's what I now think those would have been. But I
               | can't remember for sure, its's bit over 25 years when I
               | did work HP-UX last time.
               | 
               | And if I remember correctly HP did ship some printed
               | manuals also with CD's. I have some kind of memory seeing
               | some disks like that, but I never used those. We had
               | paper manuals back then and which were then sent to
               | customer as part of our product. Nor have I any idea
               | which format those documents or whole document CD's would
               | be. Postscript or PDF if we would be lucky, but it could
               | be some proprietary format in worst case.
        
         | bpoyner wrote:
         | I agree that LVM in HP-UX was far ahead of Linux back in the
         | day. To be fair some of those advanced features in HP-UX LVM
         | required an additional license (eg: mirroring required
         | Enterprise Operating Environment). I haven't touched HP-UX in
         | like 10 years however.
        
           | mesrik wrote:
           | That is true, sw licenses were a major nuisance. As they
           | usually are. Not just where to get one, but in time, to keep
           | track of those and secure so that proof of purchase was not
           | lost before deployment and include final delivery. HP product
           | codes and major version change product renaming plague were
           | not exactly my favourite part of work!
           | 
           | Many HP-UX boxen (servers) came with default (interactive)
           | multiuser OS licenses. Product differentiation which HP sales
           | loved had license castrated workstations, which came only two
           | user license.
           | 
           | First time I had no clue about this and were wondering why
           | some odd network management software I was installing a
           | server did not restart properly and was causing head
           | scratching. Then I found that logs stated our license was not
           | valid though it had been confirmed valid in other test
           | install.
           | 
           | A HP support guy I knew and saw later told that I had
           | probably to install optional two-user package and then the
           | software will start. Oh, great that it was. But what the heck
           | that two-user license only prevented only two serial line
           | users simultaneously and only systems console was serial that
           | time and everyone else logged in via network. To be sure I
           | made PM check if we still were within license because of
           | that. He told me later yep, no problem there. Just get it
           | done and we're ready deploy it to site.
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | I very rarely read man pages (similarly gnu info) on Linux
         | nowadays, whoever they're written for isn't me.
         | 
         | Superior alternatives:
         | 
         | * tldr/tealdeer - usually just a pile of typical usage
         | examples, almost always covers what I want
         | 
         | * jfgi because surely someone has tried to do this before and
         | asked about it on an ancient forum
         | 
         | * llms - regurgitating the info from above, possibly with the
         | bonus of letting it try a script on a sandbox and then entering
         | a error-confusion loop
         | 
         | * source - documentation can be wrong or incomplete, but the
         | source never lies
        
         | pmontra wrote:
         | I remember the hours gcc needed to compile itself on those HP
         | servers. We needed it for all the programs that would not
         | compile with HP's cc. We also installed some GNU userland
         | utilities because, as you wrote, they were better than the ones
         | in HP-UX. Those were the years around 1990.
        
           | Zenst wrote:
           | I did some HP-UX in late 80's, migration of servers across
           | the country for a courrier company from NCR towers to HP
           | servers running HP-UX (sorry don't recall the models of
           | hand).
           | 
           | Had fun porting sortware across, a radio system that was
           | unable to test fully unless in the field (which it did first
           | time, which was amazing). Had many good chats with HP
           | engineers back then (we did a large purchase as a global
           | company) and one I still recall was early editions of HP-UX
           | having an error code of 8008, until somebody in senior
           | managment at HP saw it one time (no customer had ever
           | complained apparently about it).
           | 
           | I liked HP-UX having previously worked on IBM RT systems
           | running AIX, as well as NCR towers with there more vanilla
           | System V. Though did have SMIT with AIX and SAM with HP-UX
           | for those manual saving moments of ease to fall back on.
           | Though my favourite flabour of unix of that time would be the
           | Pyramid systems dual universe OSx. You could have a BSD or an
           | AT&T enviroment at once, able to use both flavours in scripts
           | by prefixing with bsd or att, to run that command. Don't
           | recall how it handled TERMCAP/TERMINFO of hand (that was
           | always an area of fun back then).
           | 
           | Fun times, in the days in which O'Reilly and magazines like
           | Byte or Unix World, were the internet, along with expensive
           | training courses and manuals that you would use and thumb
           | every page of the multi tombed encyclopedic stack they came
           | in.
           | 
           | Best C platform for developing that I did use in that era,
           | hands down the VAX under DCL, the profilers etc, pure leaps
           | and joy.
        
             | palmotea wrote:
             | > I liked HP-UX having previously worked on IBM RT systems
             | running AIX, as well as NCR towers with there more vanilla
             | System V.
             | 
             | There's very little on the internet about those "NCR
             | Towers."
             | 
             | > 1987: https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/ncr_marries_its
             | _tower_un...: "Despite abandoning its effort to implement
             | Unix on its NCR 32 chip set, NCR Corp did not abandon its
             | ambition to bring Unix into the mainstream of its mainframe
             | product offerings, and the company yesterday launched a
             | facility whereby its top-end multiprocessor Series 9800
             | fault-tolerant mainframes can be used as servers to a
             | network of 68020-based Tower Unix supermicros."
             | 
             | > 1988: https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/ncr_renews_its_
             | tower_uni...: "When you sell as many machines as NCR does
             | with the Tower, you can't rush to incorporate a new chip as
             | soon as it arrives because there simply aren't enough chips
             | to meet your needs. Accordingly the new Tower models use
             | the 25MHz 68020 rather than the 68030."
        
           | eichin wrote:
           | Yeah, HP's cc was "not technically a C compiler" - the only
           | supported use of it was to compile a couple of stub files and
           | link the kernel, on kernel configuration changes. (This led
           | to a bunch of work in making gcc bootstrap from cc, even on
           | top of HP/UX weird ABI, something involving function pointers
           | being longer than other pointers IIRC?)
        
       | pjmlp wrote:
       | I used the versions 10 and 11.
       | 
       | My significant experiences on HP-UX were HP Vault, one the very
       | first approaches of doing containers in UNIX, and going through
       | 32 bit to 64 bit transition.
        
       | alias_neo wrote:
       | My first thought, upon reading that these were being given away,
       | and seeing "Cambridge" was that they should go to the "Centre for
       | Computing History".
       | 
       | I've been trying to visit this place with my daughter for 4 (or
       | more?) years now, every time we've been in the area (roughly once
       | per year), I forget that it isn't open on Mondays (which is the
       | day we typically have a couple of hours before leaving the area),
       | walk up to the doors only to realise (again) I've made the same
       | mistake, and my daughter and I walk away disappointed.
       | 
       | We'll make it one day!
        
       | jcarrano wrote:
       | I have the HP logic analyzer that runs HP-UX. To me it's crazy
       | that I can connect to it with a 2025 Linux OS and run X11 apps
       | remotely out of the box.
        
         | Gracana wrote:
         | It's too bad they went to Windows later on. Having the Unix
         | environment available makes the older stuff really flexible.
        
         | classichasclass wrote:
         | If it's the model I'm thinking of, it's basically a 9000/712.
         | An easy way to get a PA-RISC workstation from someone who
         | doesn't realize what it actually is. :)
        
       | CaseFlatline wrote:
       | Oh my! Thanks for the memories - HPUX was my first workstation
       | class unix operating system (sili-g's were too expensive). I
       | remember downloading and compiling gcc on hpux. THe ideas of
       | compiling a compiler with itself blew my mind!
        
       | pm215 wrote:
       | Oh hey, a 9000/340 in the Cambridge area. Almost certainly that
       | originated with the university's Engineering department, who back
       | in the 1990s got rid of a lot of these machines that they had
       | been using as X terminals. My notes say they had six diskless
       | workstations to each server, and kept the monitors to use with
       | the replacement machines, which would explain why this person's
       | 9000/340 has no disk or monitor.
       | 
       | Some truly terrible quality pictures of the one I used to own are
       | at
       | https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/tiroth...
       | (I have long since disposed of it). Some of the people who got
       | the machines had a play around with getting Linux booting on
       | them. Amazingly some of that code is still in the kernel, eg
       | drivers/net/ethernet/amd/hplance.c so it might even still work
       | ;-)
        
       | lizknope wrote:
       | Did anyone use AFS (Andrew File System)?
       | 
       | My university in the 1990's had hundreds of Unix workstations
       | from Sun, HP, DEC, IBM, SGI, and Linux.
       | 
       | It was all tied together using this so everything felt the same
       | no matter what system you were on.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environm...
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System
       | 
       | The IT dept installed and compiled tons of software for the
       | various systems and AFS had an @sys string that you would put
       | into your symbolic link and then it would dereference to the
       | actual directory for that specific system architecture.
       | 
       | https://docs.openafs.org/Reference/1/sys.html
       | 
       | https://web.mit.edu/sipb/doc/working/afs/html/subsection7.6....
       | 
       | "On an Athena DECstation, it's pmax_ul4; on an Athena RS6000,
       | it's rs_aix31" and so on.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > The IT dept installed and compiled tons of software for the
         | various systems and AFS had an @sys string that you would put
         | into your symbolic link and then it would dereference to the
         | actual directory for that specific system architecture.
         | 
         | This sounds cool, but I've wondered - couldn't you just stick
         | something like                 export $PATH=/nfs/bin/$(uname
         | -s)/$(uname -m):$PATH
         | 
         | in /etc/profile or so?
         | 
         | (I'm actually doing something like this myself; I don't ( _yet_
         | ) have AFS or NFS strongly in play in my environment, but of
         | all things I've resorted to this trick to pick out binaries in
         | ~/.local/bin when using distrobox, because Alpine and OpenSUSE
         | are _not_ ABI compatible)
        
           | adamdoran wrote:
           | What's really interesting about @sys is that it supports a
           | search-path at run-time, so the resolution can walk back
           | through a list of target systems to find an available one.
        
           | eichin wrote:
           | You could do that, but @sys is resolved in the kernel - so
           | you can use it in symlinks and just add .../bin to your path
           | (with bin -> .bindir.@sys ) and thus it works for non path
           | cases too...
        
             | eichin wrote:
             | Not as advanced as what Domain/OS did before it - the
             | kernel straight up evaluated _arbitrary environment
             | variables_ in the path resolver, which they used for things
             | like selecting  "personalities" (BSD vs SYSV vs "native")
             | but it wasn't restricted to any particular names. "We don't
             | make them like that anymore..."
        
         | lights0123 wrote:
         | My university still does! Though they're replacing it next
         | year.
        
           | jdboyd wrote:
           | What are they replacing it with?
        
         | growse wrote:
         | > Did anyone use AFS (Andrew File System)?
         | 
         |  _Glances round to see if there 's any alumni from a certain
         | Large Investment Bank also present..._
        
         | irusensei wrote:
         | I wish we had more options. AFS never left the laboratory and
         | stuff like AFP and whatever Novell had died a slow death.
         | 
         | I have the impression we stalled on NFS and CIFS and I don't
         | think webdav and s3 are good replacements because those don't
         | respect file system ACLs.
         | 
         | NFS would be great if you didn't had to chose between KDC
         | infrastructure or "trust me bro I'm uid 501".
        
           | avhception wrote:
           | Last time I tried, mounting a directory webdav server in the
           | same manner as an NFS or CIFS server was a hot mess. Some
           | FUSE client tried to fully download and cache everything in
           | ~/.cache or something. It's been a while, but I haven't tried
           | anything since then. CIFS is stupid for UNIX <--> UNIX, and
           | NFS has that UID mess...
        
         | ahartmetz wrote:
         | >Did anyone use AFS (Andrew File System)?
         | 
         | Yes. URZ (university data center) of Heidelberg University,
         | circa 2005. No idea if they are still using it, but it seemed
         | to work fine at the time.
        
         | naves wrote:
         | Yes, everything at CERN, at least in the 2000s, was in AFS.
         | Fermilab was also using AFS extensively.
         | 
         | I remember compiling AFS from source for Scientific Linux 3.x
         | because there was a weird bug that didn't let the machines
         | mount AFS when they were integrated with LCG (before it was
         | renamed to WLCG: https://wlcg.web.cern.ch/)
         | 
         | Oh my... this comment really dates me...
        
         | somat wrote:
         | I tried it back when obsd included a client, hooking into the
         | public list was amazing, you could almost see an alternate web
         | in there but based on the unix filesystem instead of http.
         | unfortunately afs was dropped in 5.2
         | 
         | The big disappointment for me at the time was that obsd did not
         | also include a server component so it was comparatively much
         | more difficult to use afs in your own infrastructure. The
         | lesson being always make the effort to include the server side
         | if possible. Without that you feel like a second class citizen.
        
         | burnt-resistor wrote:
         | My university was similar (SGI, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Sun, Linux,
         | SCO), but they used NFS to mount home dirs local to the
         | computer clusters, which wasn't as cool because it wasn't
         | possible to mount home dir volumes remotely like an AFS campus.
         | They also, unfortunately, used original NIS which could easily
         | extract all password hashes of all users with a simple `getent
         | passwd`. I proceeded to run John The Ripper against a dump of
         | everyone and found 60 passwords in 30 seconds, including
         | several tenured professors.
         | 
         | Those were the days when portability and longevity were
         | important and there wasn't as much of a monoculture or
         | incompatible code/language features churn.
        
       | throw0101d wrote:
       | 9.x was released in 1992:
       | 
       | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-UX
       | 
       | 11.0 was released in 1997, with latest 11.31 going EOL
       | 2025-12-31.
        
         | claudex wrote:
         | I totally missed the EOL announcement. Not that I use it, but
         | it is one on the few last big proprietary Unix. I thought their
         | will always be enough paying customers to maintain it (even if
         | sold to third party).
        
           | feisty0630 wrote:
           | As soon as Intel killed Itanium, the clock was ticking for
           | HP-UX.
        
       | jonathaneunice wrote:
       | Context Dependent Filesystems were one of those weird, wonderful
       | experiments in Unix' early days that never ultimately escaped its
       | home world. Every vendor Unix had a few. HP were true engineers
       | in those days, so HP-UX had more than a few. But the general
       | corporate attitude toward sharing and standardization was very
       | different. "We want to be standards-based, but we also need some
       | _special sauce_ to differentiate us from the competition. "
       | 
       | For example, HP-UX was a BSD-based Unix implementation that tried
       | very very hard to pretend it was UNIX System V (R2/R3). "No, no
       | really! I'm not one of that university kids!" But BSD was a far
       | better foundation, vastly better networking etc., so that's what
       | it was underneath.
       | 
       | Unix of the era was billed as a multi-user shared system, but it
       | wasn't always great at that. It desperately lacked much of the
       | quiet robustness and workhorse-ness of the proprietary
       | minicomputer OSs of the day (e.g. VMS, AOS, HP's own MPE). No
       | vendor did more to fill that gap and make multi-workload a
       | workaday reality. HP added a fair-share scheduler (FSS), the
       | first multi-system high availability clustering in Unix
       | (MC/ServiceGuard), and scores of refinements along the way. As a
       | result, in practice HP-UX was admirably hardened, and it ran more
       | users and more concurrent competing jobs per system than any
       | other Unix system could. Often by a wide margin.
       | 
       | In ~1995 HP doubled down on FSS with Process Resource Manager
       | (PRM), which could guarantee various "shares" (weighted
       | priorities) of total machine resources. First commercial Unix
       | ancestor to today's containers. In production ~6 years before BSD
       | jails and Virtuozzo, ~10 years before Solaris Zones, ~18 years
       | before Docker/Linux containers, and ~20 or more years before
       | container were mainstream production vehicles.
       | 
       | Unfortunately for HP, its workstations (the ones OP acquired)
       | weren't nearly as popular with universities and developers as Sun
       | Microsystems', so you tended to find HP-UX in commercial
       | production--larger servers, more workload, but smaller numbers.
       | And thus smaller ability to promote its innovations or be
       | selected because of them.
       | 
       | Hat tip to steely-eyed missile man Xuan Bui and the many unsung
       | engineering stars of HP in the Unix era.
        
         | kev009 wrote:
         | I would say SunOS (i.e. pre Solaris SysV and not including it)
         | was the quality bearer for UNIX in that era. Particularly once
         | they did the Unified Buffer Cache; HP-UX was never able to
         | accomplish this and it makes it not an ideal file server
         | amongst other problems.
         | 
         | HP-UX 10 and 11 progressively imported more SysV code and lost
         | some of the charm that 9.x has.
         | 
         | I find AIX to be fascinating. Especially 3.x against
         | contemporaries with its LVM, and a pageable kernel. A lot of
         | people have snap judgements against it because they saw 'smit'
         | but don't really understand anything about it.
        
           | jonathaneunice wrote:
           | SunOS evolved to be a great file server and "network
           | computing" server, whereas HP-UX evolved to be a better
           | multi-workload commercial server. Horses for courses--and
           | they often ran on different turf.
           | 
           | You're also right to shout out out some of the other
           | innovators: Data General's DG/UX did a great "let's redesign
           | the kernel for multiprocessing and NUMA." IBM's AIX had
           | kernel threads, pageability, and preemptibility at a time
           | when no one else did (plus JFS, LVM, and eventually LPAR
           | isolation). And Sequent DYNIX/ptx had some impressive
           | multiprocessing (RCU) and large DBMS optimizations very early
           | on. HP was by no means alone trying to engineer away Unix'
           | early weaknesses.
        
         | mesrik wrote:
         | >Unfortunately for HP, its workstations (the ones OP acquired)
         | weren't nearly as popular with universities and developers as
         | Sun Microsystems', so you tended to find HP-UX in commercial
         | production--larger servers, more workload, but smaller numbers
         | 
         | Agreed, the university I worked HP systems cost was the major
         | reason Computing Center Sun was purchased, though we had stray
         | discount price purchased units of almost all vendors too.
         | 
         | We did have one HP 3000/MPE running library VTLS quite long
         | time. I can't remember its exact model any more. But was first
         | 160cm heights rack filling old system and then later replaced
         | with some 9000/E35 matching size smallish (a thick and _very_
         | heavy PC) size smaller 3000 series box. I did not manage that,
         | but helped its sysadmin with his 9-track autoloader issues
         | couple of times. I would have certainly recycled that tape unit
         | to another use, but it was HP-IB (IEEE 488  / GPIB) connected
         | like whole rack filled with disks all daisy-chained were easy
         | to believe not having been cheap. Too bad it was so hard to get
         | GPIB adapter working with other systems. Those terminals used
         | with MPE having local edit buffer were weird, as was HP Roman
         | character set used. All so well built that was a shame to let
         | the go when VTLS was retired about 30 years ago.
         | 
         | Maths department did have better funding to get few HP-UX
         | running long time. Only HP-UX we had at CC was C160 workstation
         | running OpenView NMS, but that's it.
         | 
         | Yes and commercial side (a telco vendor) I did work customer
         | demanded HP and there were very few Sun servers. It was only
         | used if and when software was not at all available for HP-UX.
         | What I recall Ericsson switching systems tended to come with
         | Sun/Solaris and Lucent 5ESS HP/HP-UX that time.
         | 
         | A friend of mine went SF some conference, I don't recall year.
         | But he came back with HP brand sunglasses which HP gave all
         | visiting their booth and told "Remember, not to look at Sun" :D
        
         | ylee wrote:
         | >Unfortunately for HP, its workstations (the ones OP acquired)
         | weren't nearly as popular with universities and developers as
         | Sun Microsystems', so you tended to find HP-UX in commercial
         | production--larger servers, more workload, but smaller numbers.
         | And thus smaller ability to promote its innovations or be
         | selected because of them.
         | 
         | Columbia University during the 1990s was a SunOS/Solaris shop
         | (and, before then, VAX
         | <https://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/>). My first
         | year, AcIS (Academic Information Systems, IT for
         | faculty/students) set up a single computer lab in the
         | engineering building <https://cuit.columbia.edu/computer-lab-
         | technologies/location...> with HP workstations. Although they
         | booted into HP-UX and its Motif window manager, MAE provided
         | Mac emulation and, in practice, was usually used because most
         | students were unfamiliar with X Window, of course.
         | 
         | The boxes used the same Kerberos authentication as the Sun
         | systems, so I presume I must have been using context-dependent
         | filesystems for binaries when logging into the systems locally,
         | or when I chose to remote log into one specifically from
         | elsewhere (just for novelty's sake; I preferred the Sun
         | cluster, or the Sun box dedicated to staff use).
         | 
         | MAE--the _raison d 'etre_ for the HP boxes--was slow and
         | unstable, and by the time I graduated Macs, I believe, replaced
         | HP, which made the lab consistent with what most of the other
         | computer labs had.
        
       | noisy_boy wrote:
       | That VUE environment looks suspiciously similar to CDE which was
       | what I saw on Sun Solaris boxes. Or am I getting confused?
        
         | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
         | The C in CDE is "common" because it was a collaboration between
         | the major Unix vendors on a standard for how Unix desktops
         | worked.
        
         | ch_123 wrote:
         | CDE was based heavily on VUE. If you read the CDE source code,
         | you'll find many references to VUE.
        
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