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Hp-ux
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  Logo
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  Caption
  Developer Hewlett-Packard
  Family UNIX System V
  Source Model
  Working State Current
  Latest Release Version 11230603
  Latest Release Date March 2006
  Kernel Type
  License Proprietary
  Website wwwhpcom/go/hpux/


HP-UX ('''H'''ewlett '''P'''ackard '''U'''ni'''X''') is Hewlett-Packard 's Proprietary implementation of the Unix Operating System , based on System V (initially System III ). 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 List s 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 . 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 Hi Performance FileSystem (HFS; a variant of UFS ) and so this older technology has continued to receive support from HP.

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



RECENT RELEASE HISTORY

Since about 2000, the focus of HP-UX has increasingly 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).

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.

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 made a Marketing decision to name their releases 11''i'' 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.)



EARLIER HISTORY


The first version of HP-UX was 1.0, built about 1983 . It started out based on System III Unix, and later on System V.

The first HP-UX, for the FOCUS systems (Series 500s), had a kernel
written in MODCAL, a sort of modified Pascal with extensions for
low-level programming. Pascal/MODCAL was in vogue at HP for operating system work in the early-to-mid 1980s. This kernel in turn was hosted on top of another lower-level kernel called SUNOS (no relation to Sun Microsystems ' SunOS ) and emulated a file system similar to UFS on top of an HP-peculiar filesystem called Structured Directory Format (which led to curious features like . and .. not actually existing in a directory as opened and read). The
userland was a mix of AT&T, UCB, and HP sources.

The series 200/300 history also started out claiming System III and later System V. The HP-UX ROMs for the HP Integral PC had two versions: 1.0 which was System III based and 5.0 which was System V based.

HP announced its Precision Architecture in the second half of 1986 , for two hardware lines: the HP3000 series 930 which had an equivalent HP9000 series 840, and the HP3000 series 950 which also had an HP9000 series 8xx equivalent. The 3000/930 and 9000/840 were different from later PA-RISC systems in that the PA-RISC processor was spread across several boards of TTL.

At the time, HP did not have shippable quantities of hardware, but did have some installed at third-party developers sites. It was another year before MPE/XL was ready for its 1.0 release to customers, and in that time the HP9000 series 840 had shipped with HP-UX and the HP3000 series 930 had been dropped from the price list, not being enough faster than a classic HP3000 series 70 running a similar workload.

When it came time to do a Unix for the first PA-RISC systems (Series
800), at least the kernel was based on 4BSD but then worked over to
make it behave more like System V and other HP-UXs. BSD-isms
gradually got put back into it over the late 1980s and 1990s. That is, HP started a fresh port of Unix and then layered the old code and APIs on top.

The last release for the series 500 was 5.2.

Series 200 and Series 800 HP-UXs started with versions 1.0 and later
got version number bumps up to other ports' version numbers as they became
more compatible with those ports. So s200 went from 2.x to 5.0 when it got demand paging and more compatible with s500 5.0, and PA-RISC went from 3.1 to 7.0 when its userland was being built from common sources used in 7.0 on the s300.

By HP-UX 7 even the series 300 port was feeling somewhat BSDish, including that it had the BSD Fast File System and you could get a filesystem with long filenames if you wanted that.

Kernel had common source (across series 700/800 at least, maybe
s300/400 too) in 8.0.


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:



REFERENCES