HP-UX

Hi HP-UX users. If you can help with the following I would be grateful. I am starting off on my HP-UX learning/certification path and need to acquire an HP-UX machine. I would prefer HP hardware, ie. PA-RISC and see that there are many for sale on eBay, etc., and was hoping someone on this forum could answer the following:

1. has anyone purchased from any of the many people on eBay selling these machines. If so, how was your experience?

2. what are the licensing issues for home users like myself. For example, how does it work when it comes to things such as patching and updating the system and getting/downloading the install disks. Is it entirely open source/free. How does someone like myself go about running HP-UX 'at home'

3. similar to Q2 - how does it work when it comes to support for a 'home user'. Are there costs ($$$) involved?

Any other, useful information along similar lines would be extremely useful.

Many thanks to all who read this thread.

1) As the purchaser of IT in a small UNIX software house Ive purchased 8 different HP machines over the past couple of years. I started off buying from a known supplier, but found ebay to be much better for cheaper and older equipment. I would say find an ebay vendor that can supply you with what you want, and stick with them. Most will also supply a 90 day money back guarantee.
2) Licensing of the O/S comes with the hardware normally, so that isnt a problem. Make sure you get the O/S you want installed by the hardware vendor, and try and get O/S install CD's with the hardware, as more than likely you wont be able to get install media separately, or it will cost a lot. You certainly used to be able to download patch bundles for different versions of HP, but not usually specific ones, I believe. Sometimes you can join a free HP Developer group and get patches, compilers and the like, but I wouldnt rely on it.

3) Yes definitely! As with most proper UNIX vendors - very little is free.

If you are doing certification I wouldnt buy a PA-RISC. Although you can get 11iv3 on PA-RISC Ive found it quite difficult to get support. Most customers are changing over to Integrity (Itanium) boxes but these can be difficult to find on ebay and more expensive to purchase second-hand. If you are happy with slower/cheaper boxes and learn 11iv2 then C3600 (and other C class machines), although only 550mhz (ish) are plenty powerful to learn on. Infact we still use these boxes for QA.

I hope this helps.

I believe home users have access at work to needed resources (patches etc...) HP certification is hard work if you dont work on HP-UX almost daily...
The good free support you will get from itrc.forums I have not seen anything that cannot be solved through there except real HW issue... and licencing of course...

Good luck

(I did have a D270 (well OK 2...) to fiddle with at home but my wife went mad about them... so I had to put them in my garage that is far away from home... So my advice would be (unless you have no room and noise problem) to go for a B180, B2XXX or as mentionned a C class)