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I will add that consumer macOS is a piss-poor server OS. At one point, for many years, it would just sometimes fail to `exec()` a process. This would manifest
by AceJohnny2 2y ago
I will add that consumer macOS is a piss-poor server OS.
At one point, for many years, it would just sometimes fail to `exec()` a process. This would manifest as a random failure on our build farm about once/twice a month. (This would manifest as "/bin/sh: fail to exec binary file" because the error type from the kernel would have the libc fall back to trying to run the binary as a script, as normal for a Unix, but it isn't a script)
This is likely stemming from their exiting the server business years ago, and focusing on consumer appeal more than robustness (see various terrible releases, security- and stability-wise).
(I'll grant that macOS has many features that would make it a great server OS, but it's just not polished enough in that direction)
- outworlder 2y ago> I will add that consumer macOS is a piss-poor server OS. Windows is also abysmal but it hasn't stopped people from using it. But yes, it is too much of a desktop OS.
- toast0 2y agoI wouldn't run a Windows server, but at least it can manage a SYN flood, whereas MacOS doesn't have syncookies or similar (their version of pf has the syncookie keyword, but it seems like it only works for traffic that transits the host, not for traffic that is terminated by the host). Windows also has some pretty nice stuff for servers like receive side scaling (afaik, Microsoft brought that to market, or at least was very early).
- AceJohnny2 2y ago> as normal for a Unix veering offtopic, did you know macOS is a certified Unix? https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm As I recall, Apple advertised macOS as a Unix without such certification, got sued, and then scrambled to implement the required features to get certification as a result. Here's the story as told by the lead engineer of the project: https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-certified/answer/Terry-Lambert https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix...
- autoexecbat 2y agoand Windows used to be certified for posix, but none of that matters theses days if it's not bug-compatible with Linux
- jorams 2y agoThis comes up rather often, and on the last significant post about it I saw on HN someone pointed out that the certification is kind of meaningless[1]. macOS poll(2) is not Unix-compliant, hasn't been since forever, yet every new version of macOS gets certified regardless. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41823078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41823078
- znpy 2y agolovely, i favorited that comment!
- rincebrain 2y agoDid that ever get fixed? That...seems like a pretty critical problem.
- AceJohnny2 2y agoYes, it quietly stopped happening a few years ago, sometime since 2020.