HP-UX differences

[OFC_EDM]

Hi,
I've been tasked with showing a group of Solaris admins what's different with HP-UX.

And they're tasked to do the same for us HP-UX Admins.

As part of a cross-training thing.

I'm looking for any good sources of information that would show what/how HP-UX does things differently than Solaris.

Useful stuff for intermediate to senior admins.

I'm biased towards HP-UX so obviously anything that highlights what makes HP-UX better is a good thing :)

Cheers

[OFC_EDM]

I'll start this off myself.

In HP-UX it's popular to use the following to document systems:
print_manifest (comes with Ignite)
SysInfo (HP Internal) ; also HTML based
cfg2html (WWW download)

Ignite is the product to image systems for system recovery.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

One view:

http://bhami.com/rosetta.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Oviwan]

Hi

here you can find a command mapping between hpux and solaris:
http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/288622-0-0-225-121.html

Regards

[Ivan Krastev]

Some useful things in HP-UX:

EMS monitoring,
linkloop


regards,
ivan

[Geoff Wild]

Or you could send them on a course:

http://h10076.www1.hp.com/education/datasheets/h5875s.pdf

Defacto site for docs is of course:

http://docs.hp.com


Rgds...Geoff

[Matti_Kurkela]

If your audience prefers to do things using the command line, you might want to compare the procedures for assigning the TCP/IP parameters :-)

HP-UX:
Hostname, IP address, netmask, default gateway, any other routes if necessary: edit /etc/rc.config.d/netconf. Also edit /etc/hosts if there was a name/IP change.

Solaris:
Hostname and IP address: create a per-interface name and save it to /etc/hostname., and the IP address for that name to /etc/hosts.
Netmask: edit /etc/netmasks.
Default gateway: edit /etc/defaultrouter.
Other routes: write your own startup script (I think; my Solaris knowledge is more than a bit rusty).

...It should be fairly obvious why I prefer the HP-UX way.

However, it would be unfair for the Solaris admins to not mention the Achilles' heel of HP-UX administration: /etc/rc.config.d.
Leaving a (backup) copy of a configuration file to /etc/rc.config.d can cause an inordinate amount of problems.
A typo in one configuration file in that directory may not affect only the startup script associated with that file, but *all* startup scripts.

MK

[Heironimus]

Where to begin....

Recent Solaris versions have SMF instead of init scripts and only have rc#.d directories for backwards compatibility. HP-UX uses only init scripts, gives them 3-digit numbers instead of 2 digits, and puts them under /sbin instead of /etc.

A lot of config files have different names and formats for no obvious reason.

HP's sh is (mostly) a POSIX shell. Sun's sh is pretty much an old-style Bourne shell and the POSIX shell is at /usr/xpg4/bin/sh.

HP-UX commands have various levels of standards compliance and sometimes use the UNIX95 variable to change their behaviors. Solaris uses /usr/ucb for BSD-style commands, /usr/xpg4 for XPG4-compliant versions (mostly the same as POSIX), and the normal paths under /usr for whatever Sun thinks is best.

HP-UX uses "shutdown {-h|-r} now". Sun uses "shutdown {-i0|-i6} -g0 -y".

Ignite-UX recovery has its limitations (like its reliance on NFS or local tape), but you can't argue with the results. Solaris JumpStart and flash archives seem to be designed for building new systems, not for recovering existing systems.

Everywhere I've seen HP-UX I've seen HP's LVM. Sun's equivalent SDS/SVM seems to be less widely used and is (to me) more complex for simple tasks.

I think Sun's kernel configuration is a lot nicer than HP's. Edit a plain text file (/etc/system) and reboot.

Everything except /stand on HP-UX will usually be HP's flavor of vxfs. Solaris uses ufs and you have to buy vxfs as an add-on if you want it. Solaris does not have any equivalent to /stand, so you won't be able to use vxvm or vxfs on your root filesystem.

[OFC_EDM]

Wow what a great start.

thanks!

[OFC_EDM]

This is in regard to MK's comment about backup copies of config files in /etc/rc.config.d

What issues have you all seen because of backup configuration files being kept there?

cheers