On Feb 2, 2016, at 12:21 AM, Phil Budne <p...@ultimate.com> wrote:

> Configuration was stored in a "Object Database" (so forget anything
> you ever knew about the /etc directory).  System administration for
> mortals was done with a GUI called "SMIT".  It showed an animation of
> a person running.  If the command failed, they fell down face first.
> But, SMIT *DID* show you the commands it was using, so you could learn
> from the mistake of ever running it.

:-) The command/control workstations for IMAGE ran AIX on POWER (RS/6000) 
desktop stations. I got to see a lot of SMIT face-plants, but of course, that 
was usually because I had fouled up at some point or another. I wasn’t enough 
of a UNIX weenie at the time that the experience even reminded me of UNIX. 

However in fairness, if a workstation was T/U, it probably wasn’t one of the 
RS/6000’s, and the SMIT-inspired swearing fits by the folks that actually knew 
what was going on were brief compared to the swearing fits at the Tru64(?) 
Alphasevers that did the data logging and reduction. I gathered there was a 
relatively severe endian-ness disagreement between programmers and DEC hardware 
in that  case.
                                                        - Mark


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