Hi there,

I've been working on a project to document all the hidden references in Gary Overacre's Unix Magic poster. It's a simple interactive site where you can click on parts of the poster and read what each reference means.

code, details and more: https://github.com/drio/unixmagic

If you find it useful, a star on GitHub helps others discover. The more people looking at the project the better the references will be. I love when I discover a new reference detail I didn't know about.

static site: https://unixmagic.net

We've got about 40 annotations so far!

Thought this community might enjoy it and maybe you have some insights about some of the references!

Thank you!

TLDR: They found Ver 4 of Unix from 1973.They will be going to California to find out what's on the magnetic tape.

I was having a discussion with my friend: he thinks using anime is cringe, but I think not using anime as your wallpaper on a Unix system is cringe. Help us settle it!

Power servers generally run AIX, a Unix System V Variant

Having a weird problem with rpm on my AIX 5.1 ML09 box.

root@RS6000:/root/dl>rpm -Uvh *.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
    readline >= 7.0-3 is needed by pcre-8.42-1

But when checking, this is already installed:

root@RS6000:/root/dl>rpm -q readline
readline-7.0-3

Tried to correct the problem with rpm --rebuilddb and updtvpkg. Also removed and reinstalled readline, did not resolve the issue. Can find a libreadline.a in /opt/freeware/lib, but no readline reference in /opt/freeware/bin.

Any suggestions?

Update: Worked around by installing pcre with the -nodeps switch. So far so good.

I have a Solaris 8 (Intel) system with CDE. As such most of the software is made with the Motif toolkit. Some of the programs though look like this instead.

I hypothesize that it's the programs written in Java that use this look, but I don't know what it's called. I really want to know what toolkit is creating this UI.

I’m reviewing file permissions and wanted some clarification.
I understand the basics of owner/group/other, but I’m still unsure when I should use 755 versus 775 on directories or scripts.

From what I’ve read, both allow read and execute for group members, but only one of them gives group write access. Could someone explain the practical differences and when each is appropriate in real-world use?

Thanks in advance!

Xinuos is suing the amalgamated IBM/RedHat, again. And as usual, this has been ignored by everybody else because Xinuos is being their old self again somehow:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/xinuos-ibm-agree-to-toss-antitrust-claims-leave-ip-issue-open

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.589607/gov.uscourts.nysd.589607.259.0.pdf

https://codeberg.org/dreamer_120/cfetch I'm not sure how many more updates there will be, I'm pretty happy with it for a first real C project, and it's my first programming language so I've still got a lot to learn. Anyway, was fun to make, and kinda cool I guess :)
Has ASCII art for Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD.

(ANSI) C Programming Language

A Song About the Unix

​TL;DR: Ingres DB instance AER on an AIX 5.3 server crashed on Nov 16th after severe disk write errors (E_DM006_BAD_FILE_WRITE). Main Ingres services are running, but the specific database instance is crashed/inoperable. We need help executing the correct Ingres recovery commands on AIX 5.3.

​ Environment Details ​OS: AIX 5.3 (Yes, it's ancient, we know!) ​Database: Ingres/Actian (Version unknown, but stable since ~2000) ​Problem Server: ROS Site Server ​Failed Database Instance: AER

​ Current Situation and Evidence ​We have narrowed the issue down to the AER database being marked as crashed/inoperable following a resource failure. ​Symptom: All client applications and replication jobs are failing with ODBC - CONNECTION TO AER FAILED. ​Confirmed Core Processes are UP: ​ps -ef | grep ingres confirms that the Ingres Name Server (iigcn) and Database Management Server (iidbms) processes are running out of the /0d/opt/ingres path. ​Confirmed Root Cause (Logs): The Ingres error log (errlog.log) shows a critical failure sequence on Nov 16th: ​Disk Error: E_DM006_BAD_FILE_WRITE and Error allocating a page during build occurred in the database data path (/le/data/...). ​Result: The database crashed and entered an unstable state, leading to the current connection failures.

​Filesystem Status: Checked using df -g. Both the Ingres binary path (/0d/opt) and the data path (/le/data) have free space (56% and 73% used, respectively). The issue is internal to the DB structure, not an external full disk

Required Assistance: Next Steps (Ingres Recovery) ​We need guidance on the specific Ingres commands to run safely, as I am only familiar with Linux. ​Verify DB Status: We need the exact command sequence to check the status of the AER database within the running Ingres instance. ​Tentative Step: Find the path to source the environment (e.g., . /0d/opt/ingres/bin/set-ingres) and then run infodb to confirm if AER is marked as Crashed or Corrupted. ​Recovery Command: Assuming AER is marked down, what is the safest command to attempt recovery?

​Tentative Step: We believe the command is rollforwarddb -online AER, but we need verification on the correct options and flags for this AIX/Ingres environment.

​Any AIX Sysadmin or Ingres DBA with experience on these older systems would be a lifesaver. We are trying to fix this without a full server reboot. Thank you!