UNIX robustness

[norman at nose.cita.utoronto.ca]

Allison Parent is probably correct that Ultrix doesn't have as impressive
a record of robustness as VMS, but there are certainly application-specific
cases where the system did pretty well.  The collection of MicroVAX II parts
I have at home mostly used to be the University of Toronto's backbone IP
routers, which ran an early Ultrix (I forget if it was 2.0 or 3.0).
Evidently most of these systems just ran and ran and ran, stopping only
for hardware failures.  (Probably mostly broken RD53 disks--most of the
disks that came in the parts collection were broken in one way or another.)
Although I am not a first-hand witness, the claim is that some of these
systems had uptimes as long as five years when they were finally decommissioned
in 1990 or 1991.

Anyone else got any my-UNIX-ran-longer-than-yours stories?

Norman Wilson

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