UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [487]
See page 735 for more information about LPRng.
POSIX documents are not available on-line (and the current versions may never be), but you can buy a printed version from the IEEE Computer Society. POSIX.1 and POSIX.2 (also known as ISO 9945-1 and 9945-2) define the POSIX versions of the UNIX system calls and commands, respectively. These standards are currently being revised jointly by ISO, the IEEE, and The Open Group with a target completion date of late 2001 or early 2002. When complete, the same standard will be used by all three organizations. The completed version will supposedly be freely available on the web.
The Open Group (formerly known as X/Open) produced a superset of the POSIX standard called the Single UNIX Specification, SUS. This process started with a survey of all the systems and applications the members could get their hands on. It identified 1,170 different interfaces (commands, shell utilities, system calls, and the like) that were commonly used. Thus, the project was known for a while as Spec 1170.
The UNIX trademark originally belonged to AT&T Bell Labs. It went from there to UNIX Systems Laboratories (a subsidiary of AT&T), then on to Novell, and then to SCO. SCO gave The Open Group royalty-free licensing rights. If your product meets the Single UNIX Specification and you have sufficient money, then you can call your product UNIX. Test suites and accredited test laboratories handle the certification. The document that defines the Single UNIX Specification is for sale, of course, but it can also be found beneath www.opengroup.org/publications.
Attendance at most standards meetings has been declining for the last few years, although not at the IETF. Some standards organizations (most, in fact) receive a large portion of their income from selling copies of the standards documents, not for $20 (paper and reproduction costs) but for closer to $300. Nearly all standards are written by volunteers who are not paid by the standards body for their work.
A consortium called the Austin Group (because their first meeting was in Austin, Texas) that consists of standards folks from IEEE, ISO, and The Open Group maintains a web site containing the working documents for various standards. Interested users are encouraged to go to the site, download the drafts, and participate in the standards process. The web site does require you to register, but they won’t spam you or charge for copies of working documents. The site is www.opengroup.org/austin.
USENIX funds a person to be an institutional representative to several standards bodies. They do this not necessarily to shape the direction that a standard may be taking, but rather to inform the UNIX community of the status of standards work and to derail bogus standards as they start to emerge. The standards representative collects input from many sources, the most notable of which are the snitches.
A snitch is a technical person who attends a particular session and writes a report “from the inside.” These snitch reports become the basis for the summary reports in the ;login: magazine. They have also been used, even by those attending, to understand what the standard is proposing and what’s wrong with it (or even what’s right with it!). If you are active in the standards process and are technically competent, consider volunteering to be a snitch in your area of expertise. The snitch dinners are reported to be very fine.
27.16 SAMPLE DOCUMENTS
Several of the policy or procedure documents referred to in this chapter are available from www.admin.com. Table 27.6 lists the docs and their corresponding contents.
Table 27.6. Policy and procedure documents at www.admin.com
1. For example, crack , which is a program for guessing passwords. See page 666 for more information.
2. Keep in mind that this is an Australian law, although similar computer and software-related legislation has been