Thread: PostgreSQL on Novell Netware 6.5.

Hello all,

I have seen this presentation for new Novell Netware 6.5 version
released about two weeks or so.

http://www.novell.com/products/netware/netware65overview_popup.html

If you check 'Open Source' point, PostgreSQL text and PostgreSQL logo
are showed on the run.

I would be very happy if we could run PostgreSQL on Novell Netware
environment instead of Oracle or MySQL (default database on this
novell OS version) in a near future.

Somebody know if the changes to run  PostgreSQL on Win32 platform will
be provide a easiest port for Novell Netware servers ?

Thanks a lot.

Terry Yapt wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I have seen this presentation for new Novell Netware 6.5 version
>released about two weeks or so.
>
>http://www.novell.com/products/netware/netware65overview_popup.html
>
>If you check 'Open Source' point, PostgreSQL text and PostgreSQL logo
>are showed on the run.
>
>I would be very happy if we could run PostgreSQL on Novell Netware
>environment instead of Oracle or MySQL (default database on this
>novell OS version) in a near future.
>
>Somebody know if the changes to run  PostgreSQL on Win32 platform will
>be provide a easiest port for Novell Netware servers ?
>
It's been quite a while ago that I did NetWare programming (3.11 NLM, 
communication protocol for a dbms), and that I had some contact with 
Netware (4.1), but if Novell didn't change the architecture completely 
(I doubt that) the native win32 port won't be of any help for 
implementing PostgreSQL on NetWare. It's very different from Windows and 
*ix, so it would be a complete third implementation of basic service 
interfacing.

Regards,
Andreas

On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 10:52:58PM +0200, Andreas Pflug wrote:
> Terry Yapt wrote:
> 
> >I have seen this presentation for new Novell Netware 6.5 version
> >released about two weeks or so.
> >
> >http://www.novell.com/products/netware/netware65overview_popup.html
> >
> >If you check 'Open Source' point, PostgreSQL text and PostgreSQL logo
> >are showed on the run.

> It's been quite a while ago that I did NetWare programming (3.11 NLM, 
> communication protocol for a dbms), and that I had some contact with 
> Netware (4.1), but if Novell didn't change the architecture completely 
> (I doubt that) the native win32 port won't be of any help for 
> implementing PostgreSQL on NetWare. It's very different from Windows and 
> *ix, so it would be a complete third implementation of basic service 
> interfacing.

Some time ago there was a guy from Novell posting on hackers about the
porting of PostgreSQL to Netware.  He sounded like most of the job was
already done, but he wanted to have some patches accepted to be able to
build with a toolchain different from GNU make and friends (because it
was one or two orders of magnitude faster).  He left some time later
because of the null support he received for that, it seems.

Some time after that, Novell announced that MySQL would be their default
database system ...

-- 
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
Y una voz del caos me hablo y me dijo
"Sonrie y se feliz, podria ser peor".
Y sonrei. Y fui feliz.
Y fue peor.

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl> writes:
> Some time ago there was a guy from Novell posting on hackers about the
> porting of PostgreSQL to Netware.  He sounded like most of the job was
> already done, but he wanted to have some patches accepted to be able to
> build with a toolchain different from GNU make and friends (because it
> was one or two orders of magnitude faster).  He left some time later
> because of the null support he received for that, it seems.

What is this, a troll?  We gave that project quite a lot of support.
My recollection is that we lost interest somewhere around here:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2002-08/msg00278.php
when it became clear that Netware couldn't or wouldn't try to arrange
their code to keep the amount of platform-specific stuff reasonable.
The patch as they were proposing it would have been completely
unmaintainable --- certainly so for the community, probably for them
too.
        regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl> writes:
> > Some time ago there was a guy from Novell posting on hackers about the
> > porting of PostgreSQL to Netware.  He sounded like most of the job was
> > already done, but he wanted to have some patches accepted to be able to
> > build with a toolchain different from GNU make and friends (because it
> > was one or two orders of magnitude faster).  He left some time later
> > because of the null support he received for that, it seems.
> 
> What is this, a troll?  We gave that project quite a lot of support.
> My recollection is that we lost interest somewhere around here:
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2002-08/msg00278.php
> when it became clear that Netware couldn't or wouldn't try to arrange
> their code to keep the amount of platform-specific stuff reasonable.
> The patch as they were proposing it would have been completely
> unmaintainable --- certainly so for the community, probably for them
> too.

Last I remember they were going to port gmake to Novell and use that for
the port,but we never heard back from them.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
359-1001+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania19073
 

Hi,

> It's been quite a while ago that I did NetWare programming (3.11 NLM,
> communication protocol for a dbms), and that I had some contact with
> Netware (4.1), but if Novell didn't change the architecture completely
> (I doubt that) the native win32 port won't be of any help for

They've done the job. Forget all about 3.x / 4.x and even 5.x. No more CLib,
you have now LibC which is a POSIX like API.

AFAIK, they're finishing some usefull APIs, which'll make the port much more
"easy". The "only difference" will be the "threaded model" instead of
process based...

NW6.x already have Apache, bash, gcc, mysql, openssh, vnc, etc... thanks to
this "new architecture".

You can get the 7.2.4 on http://forge.novell.com

Eduardo

>Why 7.2.4 I wonder? And I don't see anything there in the CVS repository. I know they are not obliged to show us the
sourcecode, but doing so would be nice (especially to see the threading part).
 

Hi Andrew,

here you have the source code:

http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1132&release_id=434

Greetings..

Eduardo D Piovesam kirjutas E, 20.10.2003 kell 16:35:
> They stopped at 7.2.4 because "they're finishing some usefull APIs,
> which'll make the port much more "easy"."

Will this involve using a Linux kernel ;)

> When this part is done, a new port will be made with 7.4. With much
> less "NetWare specific code" and maybe, it'll be "accepted" by the
> PostgreSQL community.

Sure!

------------
Hannu

> > They stopped at 7.2.4 because "they're finishing some usefull APIs,
> > which'll make the port much more "easy"."
>
> Will this involve using a Linux kernel ;)
:) No, a NW kernel with a POSIX library. This'll be great, because you'll
can run powerfull opensource software with an enterprise-class NOS. Another
option...

Clustering support (32 x 32), stable & consistent file system (Novell's
Storage System, forget the old Tradition File System (very mature & stable,
but it doesn't fit the current storage necessity)), security & stability
(our servers is counting 700+ days).

It's a valuable addition to the Novell community, but it's also an good
addition to the PostgreSQL community, but of course, when everything is 100%
done. ;)

Regards,
Eduardo

>> > They stopped at 7.2.4 because "they're finishing some usefull APIs,
>> > which'll make the port much more "easy"."
>>
>> Will this involve using a Linux kernel ;)
> 
> :) No, a NW kernel with a POSIX library. This'll be great, because
> :you'll can run powerfull opensource software with an enterprise-class
> NOS. Another option...
       Well, the "pthreads" seem to be working just fine.
       For all my work that most people would do in C/C++, I do in assembler, 
and the POSIX support in NetWare now is providing some very nice APIs in 
NetWare 6.0 and 6.5 that simply weren't available on NetWare 4.x and 
earlier (NetWare 5.x has some of this, and Novell has been working hard to 
move in this direction).

> Clustering support (32 x 32), stable & consistent file system (Novell's
> Storage System, forget the old Tradition File System (very mature &
> stable, but it doesn't fit the current storage necessity)), security &
> stability (our servers is counting 700+ days).
       I hosted over 500 internet sites (HTTP (Apache), DNS, SMTP/POP3, FTP, 
NNTP, Oracle, various Java services, PERL, etc.) on NetWare 5 across two 
different /24 address spaces, and the server (yes, all of this was done 
with a single Pentium III server with 512 MBs of RAM) was fast and reliable 
with minimal maintenance.
       The new file system (NSS) cuts down the boot time since volume mounts 
always complete in less than 1 second as opposed to the "Traditional File 
System" (TFS) which required approximately 5 to 10 minutes to mount.
       NSS is a journaling system, which I've not been able to break yet by 
simulating power outages during busy times.  When the next release of 
PostgreSQL is ready for NetWare, I'm going to try to break it in this way 
as well (by making it very busy with many simultaneous write, index, and 
vacuum operations before "pulling the plug").  So far I've found that 
Oracle 8i on NetWare was quite good at handling this and the worst that 
ever happened (at least in my testing) was that there was a cut-off point 
where newly written records were lost.
       I'm not pleased with Oracle's decision to discontinue support for 
NetWare, and PostgreSQL fits that void very well (except for not having 
table spaces, but I can live with that), and so I anxiously await the new 
version of PostgreSQL so that I can proceed with some rather large web-
based projects that have been in the planning and research stages for 
approximately 3 years now.
       Unfortunately I simply can't use MySQL because they don't have views, 
and there are some data integrity problems (e.g., numbers getting truncated 
silently instead of an error being returned, etc.).

> It's a valuable addition to the Novell community, but it's also an good
> addition to the PostgreSQL community, but of course, when everything is
> 100% done. ;)
       I agree wholeheartedly that both the Novell and PostgreSQL user and 
developer communities will benefit greatly from this.  From a marketing 
perspective, both organizations will also benefit by gaining additional 
exposure.

-- 
Randolf Richardson - rr@8x.ca
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Please do not eMail me directly when responding
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