iserver on New Platforms
PCserver was developed on a 32-bit DEC5000 workstation running the Ultrix operating system. This happened to be the exact machine in our lab; for a short time, everything worked marvellously. Unfortunately, technology is not static; it was eventually time for an upgrade. This upgrade happened to coincide with this project, which meant that porting considerations needed to be resolved before continuing with the main part of the project.
The new platform is a DEC AXP (alpha) computer, running the 64-bit OSF1 operating system. As already indicated [link], parts of iserver have not been specified with portability in mind; this caused a bit of a problem, and led to a re-evaluation of the current setup...
Two solutions were proposed to
resolve the upgrade problem:
- Install Linux (a version of Unix for 486 processors) on the PC, and run an already-ported version of iserver. This would make running PCserver unnecessary, since Linux has full networking capabilities.
- Port iserver to OSF1 on the DEC AXP and continue to use the PCserver configuration which was currently in use.