HP-UX

HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system. It runs on their PA-RISC range of processors and Intel's Itanium processor, and was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems. Earlier versions also ran on the HP 9000 Series 200, 300, and 400 computer systems based on the Motorola 68000 series of processors, as well as the HP 9000 Series 500 computers based on HP's proprietary FOCUS processor architecture.

HP-UX was the first Unix to use access control lists for file access permissions rather than the standard Unix permissions system. HP-UX was also among the first Unix systems to include a built-in Logical Volume Manager, a derivative of the Veritas volume manager. HP has had a long partnership with Veritas, and they use VxFS as their primary file system. For technical reasons, however, the file system used for the boot kernel has remained HFS (a variant of UFS) and so this older technology has continued to receive support from HP.

Following the merger of HP with Compaq in 2001, plans were made to merge the Tru64 TruCluster technology with HP-UX. This was expected to occur with the release of the long-delayed 11i v3 version. However, HP had suffered employment reductions in key departments during the economic downturn, and so at the end of 2004 the decision was made to cancel this project. Instead HP would partner with Veritas on a clustering solution.

Since about 2000, the focus of HP-UX has increasing been on enhanced reliability, security, and partitioning. The reliability is provided through clustering technology and package failover on a system outage, as well as redundant hardware, increased quality testing, and error monitoring and correction. Security features have significantly increased with 11i v2, with the addition of kernel-based intrusion detection, strong random number generation, stack buffer overflow protection, security partitioning, role-based access management, and various open source security tools. The system partitioning ranges from hardware partitions to isolated OS virtual partitions, and most recently the Virtual Server Environment (VSE).

As of HP-UX 11i v2 release, the operating system will scale as follows:

• 128 processors (expandable to 256)
• 1 Tb main memory
• 32 Tb maximum file system
• 2 Tb maximum file size

Release history

Prior to the release of HP-UX version 11.11, HP used a decimal version numbering scheme with the first number giving the major release and the number following the decimal showing the minor release. With 11.11, HP make a marketing decision to name their releases 11i followed by a v(decimal-number) for the version. The i was intended to indicate the OS is internet-enabled, but the effective result was a dual version-numbering scheme. (The name change was apparently made to respect the World War I Armistice anniversary, which occurs on 11.11 in nations that use decimal dates.)

The first version of HP-UX was 1.0, built about 1983. The OS has undergone a series of updates and enhancements since that time, with the 9.0 release in July, 1992 beginning the 9.x series.

• 9.x (1992–1995) — 9.00, 9.01, 9.03 (s700), 9.04 (s800), 9.05, 9.07, 9.10. These provided support for the series 300, 700 and 800 HP systems.
• 10.0 (1995) — This major release saw a convergence of the operating system between the series 700 (workstation) and series 800 (server) systems. (The OS no longer supported the older series.) There was also a significant change in the layout in the system files and directories, based on the AT&T SVR4 UNIX standard. Applications were removed from /usr and moved under /opt; startup configuration files were placed under /etc/rc.config.d; users were moved to /home from /users, &c. The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) was presented at 10.0 as a replacement for the older methods of disk management. Software for HP-UX was now packaged, shipped, installed, and removed via the Software Distributor (SD) tools.
• 10.20 (1996) — This release included support for PA-RISC processors that support PA2.0, including 64-bit data registers. Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) were introduced for use within CDE. The root file system could be configured to use the Veritas VxFS. 10.20 also supported 32-bit user and group identifiers. The prior limit was 60,000, or 16-bit. This and earlier releases of HP-UX are now effectively obsolete, and support by HP ended on June 30, 2003.
• 10.24 — This is a Virtual Vault release of HP-UX, providing enhanced security features.
• 10.30 (1997) — This was primarily a developer release with various incremental enhancements. The use of PAM continued to expand in the system security components. Various changes to system calls were also made. This OS also provided the first support for Kernel Threads, with a 1x1 thread model (each user thread is bound to one kernel thread). 10.30 was also the first release of HP-UX that was fully year 2000 compliant.
• 11.00 (1997) — The first HP-UX release to also support 64-bit addressing; previous releases had been 32-bit only. It could still run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit system. This release was also deemed Y2K-compliant. It supported 1×1 kernel threads, symmetric multiprocessing, fibre channel, and NFS PV3. It also included tools and documentation to convert 32-bit code to 64-bit.
• 11.04 — Virtual Vault release.
• 11.10 — This was a limited release to support the V2500 SCA (Scalable Computing Architecture) and V2600 SCA servers. Other versions supported the V-class server in a single cabinet configuration, 11.10 ran on the SCA versions where two servers are stacked on top of eachother, interconnected by a hyperplane crossbar. 11.10 also added JFS 3.3, 128-CPU support, AutoFS, and a new ftpd. It was not available separately.
• 11.11 (2000) — Also known as 11i, this release of HP-UX introduced the concept of Operating Environments. These are bundled groups of layered applications intended for use with a general category of usage. The available types were the Mission Critical, Enterprise, Internet, Technical Computing, and Minimal Technical OEs. (The last two were intended for HP 9000 workstations.) The main enhancements with this release were support for hard partitions, gigabit ethernet, NFS over TCP/IP, dynamic kernel tunable parameters, and protected stacks.
• 11.20 (2001) — Also known as 11i v1.5, this release of HP-UX was the first to support the new line of Itanium-based (IA64) systems. It was not intended for mission critical computing environments and did not support HP's ServiceGuard cluster software. It did provide support for running PA-RISC compiled applications on IA64 systems, and for Veritas Volume Manager 3.1.
• 11.22 (2002) — An incremental release of the Itanium version of HP-UX, it was designated 11i v1.6. This version achieved 64-way scalability, MxN threads, added more dynamic kernel tunable parameters, and supported HP's Logical Volume Manager on IA64. It was built from the 11i v1 source code stream.
• 11.23 (2003) — The original release of this version was in September 2003 to support the Itanium-based systems. In September 2004 the OS was updated to provide support for both Itanium and PA-RISC systems. This version is also identified as 11i v2. Besides running on IA-64 systems, this release includes support for BIND 9.2.0, ccNUMA, web-based kernel and device configuration, IPv6, Mozilla Application Suite, Sendmail 8.11.1, strong random number generation, and wu-ftpd.

Operating Environments

Operating Environments (OEs) are tested and integrated application bundles designed to work with the operating system and provide the functionality needed for the system's purpose. The following lists the currently available HP-UX 11i v2 OEs:

• HP-UX 11i v2 Foundation OE (FOE) — Designed for the demands of Web servers, content servers and front-end servers, this OE includes applications such as HP-UX Web Server Suite, Java, and Mozilla Application Suite. This OE is bundled as HPUX11i-OE.
• HP-UX 11i v2 Enterprise OE (EOE) — Designed for database application servers and logic servers, this OE contains the HP-UX 11i v2 Foundation OE bundles and additional applications such as GlancePlus Pak to enable an enterprise-level server. This OE is bundled as HPUX11i-OE-ENT.
• HP-UX 11i v2 Mission Critical OE (MCOE) — Designed for the large, powerful back-end application servers and database servers that access customer files and handle transaction processing, this OE contains the Enterprise OE bundles, plus applications such as MC/ServiceGuard and Workload Manager to enable a mission-critical server. This OE is bundled as HPUX11i-OE-MC.
• HP-UX 11i v2 Minimal Technical OE (MTOE) — Designed for workstations running HP-UX 11i v2, this OE includes the Mozilla Application Suite, Perl, VxVM, and Judy applications, plus the OpenGL Graphics Developer's Kit. This OE is bundled as HPUX11i-MTOE.
• HP-UX 11i v2 Technical Computing OE (TCOE) — Designed for both compute-intensive workstation and server applications, this OE contains the MTOE bundles plus extensive graphics applications and Math Libraries. This OE is bundled as HPUX11i-TCOE.

External links

• Hewlett-Packard HP-UX (http://www.hp.com/go/hpux/)
• The HP-UX Porting and Archive Center (http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/): Porting Open Source Software to HP-UX
• comp.sys.hp.hpux from Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=comp.sys.hp.hpux)
• HP-UX FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/)
• Securing HP-UX (http://www.blacksheepnetworks.com/security/resources/sec_HPUX2.html)
• HP and Veritas to Accelerate HP-UX 11i Virtualization (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/041202a.html)de:HP-UX

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