CERN Accelerating science

HP-UX 10.20 and (no) Version 11

  Lionel Cons and Alan Silverman, IT/DIS

After a survey of the main CERN groups and teams using HP workstations and servers, and at the request of the FOCUS committee, we have decided not to support HP-UX 11 for general use in CERN, at least not for the coming 18 months. Instead we will freeze on the currently-certified version, HP-UX 10.20, with the exception that we will re-certify it with the latest patches and some fixes which HP states will make it compatible with the Year 2000. We will also look into certifying the latest release of 10.20, the so-called ACE version.

Freezing 10.20 in this state does not affect its support which will continue for the foreseeable future. This includes:

• user support,
• reporting problems to HP and providing patches (as long as HP supports this version),
• the provision of AFS,
• the availability of a central installation service based on 10.20,
• a working SUE for 10.20,
• the provision of ASIS tools based on 10.20,
• the provision of the current CERNLIB release based on 10.20,
• the provision of other tools, commercial and public domain, based on 10.20 for as long as the supplier supports this version.

In addition, there are currently no plans to upgrade the central HP batch and interactive servers beyond version 10.20.

Purchasers of HP workstations and servers should ensure that new systems bought can run version 10.20. A small part of HP's latest range only run under version 11; today, May 1998, this concerns mainly the V Class of servers. We cannot say today if future models, perhaps based on newer PA-RISC chips, will be able to operate under version 10.20 or not. Prospective users should check with HP before buying new HP equipment.

If you have any questions on this subject, concerning either version 10.20 or version 11, please contact Lionel Cons (Lionel.Cons@cern.ch) or Alan Silverman (Alan.Silverman@cern.ch).