INFO-VAX Fri, 26 Oct 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 585 Contents: Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Pathworks vs NFS Re: Some success with VMS-NFS serving OS-X Standalone backup on Alpha? Re: ZLXp-E3 and DS10 and VMS 8.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:12:42 -0400 From: "Ken Robinson" Subject: Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Message-ID: <7dd80f60710251112p70549f9cx2af895e27f69588c@mail.gmail.com> On 10/25/07, P. Sture wrote: > > Clicking on View Complete Guestbook gives: > > > > Page Not Found > > > > [snip] > > > > The guestbook was definitely there earlier. I reckon that someone posted > something unpleasant so they simply deleted the file. > > Oh thanks a bunch to whoever did that; it means I'm not going to point a > load of folks there. This was just a wrong URL in the site. It was fixed. The guestbook is still there. Ken ------------------------------ Date: 25 Oct 2007 16:06:08 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Message-ID: In article <5oc1rnFkl53uU1@mid.individual.net>, bill@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: > > Are you taking bets? Guess which side I would bet on? > As usual, you'ld be wrong (I just tried it). Mozilla build 2002052008, OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-1 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:16:29 +0200 From: Dirk Munk Subject: Re: Happy Anniversary VMS - 30 years young Message-ID: IanMiller wrote: > Visit > http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/30th/index.html > and see Mark Hurd talk about VMS!!! > > Post your own message at http://h71000.www7.hp.com/fb_30years.html > OpenVMS customers have been paranoid about HP's intend with their OS, and with good reason. With that in mind, I wonder if anyone noticed that Mr. Hurd said that HP would support OpenVMS , not support and continue to develop OpenVMS or something similar. I don't know if this is significant, maybe we should ask for a clarification? ------------------------------ Date: 25 Oct 2007 21:04:42 -0400 From: Rich Alderson Subject: Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Message-ID: JF Mezei writes: > While I still haven't found a way to telnet into the mac sudo service telnet start -- Rich Alderson "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." news@alderson.users.panix.com --Death, of the Endless ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:18:02 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Message-ID: On 10/25/07 09:41, JF Mezei wrote: > Ron Johnson wrote: > >> And OSX users. Unless you've figured out a way to disable the GUI. > > While I still haven't found a way to telnet into the mac, I can ssh into Why do you *want* to telnet into OSX? -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:39:52 GMT From: Bob Harris Subject: Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Message-ID: In article <1acdd$4720ab25$cef8887a$15776@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei wrote: > Ron Johnson wrote: > > > And OSX users. Unless you've figured out a way to disable the GUI. > > While I still haven't found a way to telnet into the mac, I can ssh into > it and issue plenty of unix commands. And I can run X applications on > the mac that display on an x terminal. (But the native mac applications > don't do that). To access the GUI stuff, I just use VNC and view the desktop. So I use a combination of ssh for terminal sessions and VNC if I want the desktop (I actually tunnel the VNC via an ssh tunnel over the same ssh terminal connection. Bob Harris > A lot of people may be bitching about a GUI, but I have just spent long > dark hours trying to get NFS to work with VMS. And I have found that the > mac has a nice GUI LOG File viewer/manager. There is a list of various > system log files on the left, you select one, and you see its contents. > And the log file management appears to be really neat since it > automatically .gz compresses older version of log files, to save disk > space, but the log file viewer automatically decompresses it. And there > isn't a 32768 version limit on the mac. > > This is way ahead of what VMS has to offer in terms of log file > management. (ALL-IN-1 had something similar BTW, but of course, ALL-IN1 > was abandonned on the wayside just to please Bill Gates.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:50:08 GMT From: Bob Harris Subject: Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Message-ID: In article , JF Mezei wrote: > John Wallace wrote: > > There are many factors come into this decision, and you have said very > > little about which of them may be important to you. Despite this, there have > > been many helpful replies, and I'd like to add my 2p: > > I purposefully did not write what type of usage/apps I would want in > order to get a more comprehensive set of responses from you guys (and > they have been good so far). > > I've had a MAC since the fall of 1986. However, OS-X has very little in > common with the classic OS, other than essentially being able to run an > instance of OS-9 as an application. The Unix underpinnings make it > interesting as a learning exercise, and that puts it in an equal footing > with Linux. > > However, Linux appears to be a better carreer choice, even though the > OS-X server, on paper (or rather on Apple's web site:-) appears to be > much better packaged and fully loaded with what you need. > > Looking at all the advancements made by Apple, it makes VMS very very > pale in comparison. Lets be brutally honest here, what we have to look > forward to with VMS is essentially upgrades to support whatever hardware > HP wants to sell. > > Both OS-X and Linux are growing, so either is better than VMS since HP > is perfectly happy with the current pace of VMS shrinkage. OS-X appears > to be better quality, but Linux seems to be more popular. > > Going from VMS to OS-X would be moving from underdog to underdog, but > maintaining higher standards of quality. Going to Linux would be moving > to a winner but lowering standards somewhat. > > Thing is that OS-X may still be seen as underdog in the server market, > but what Apple has planned for it and the resources assigned to it gives > me hope that perhaps it may become a much more popular platform. > > > ------------------------ > > A joke I heard from space (litterally !): > > What's at the bottom of the ocean and twitches ? > > A nervous wreck. From what you are saying in this reply, I get the sense that you are trying to decide which would be best for your career. If that is the primary desire, then I would say Linux, as far more companies are using Linux as a server than Mac OS X. Maybe if the Apple continues making gains in the home and laptop space, business will start to seriously look at Apple in the server room. But unless you already have a company wanting to use Mac OS X, I would suggest Linux for your career. In addition since you have indicate you have used Mac's since '88, you might consider getting one for home. If not for yourself, then maybe a family member that you play with from time to time so you can keep up with what is happening in the Mac OS X space. NOTE: I may have 5 Macs at home and I use a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5GHz/2.5GB/800GB system with dual monitors at work, I write software for Linux. Bob Harris ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:49:40 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: MAC OS-X or Linux ? Message-ID: On 10/25/07 22:39, Bob Harris wrote: > In article <1acdd$4720ab25$cef8887a$15776@TEKSAVVY.COM>, > JF Mezei wrote: > >> Ron Johnson wrote: >> >>> And OSX users. Unless you've figured out a way to disable the GUI. >> While I still haven't found a way to telnet into the mac, I can ssh into >> it and issue plenty of unix commands. And I can run X applications on >> the mac that display on an x terminal. (But the native mac applications >> don't do that). > > To access the GUI stuff, I just use VNC and view the desktop. So > I use a combination of ssh for terminal sessions and VNC if I want > the desktop (I actually tunnel the VNC via an ssh tunnel over the > same ssh terminal connection. But that just seems so *hackish* (and not is the good connotation). X Windows' network transparency seems much cleaner to me, since you don't need to run a full-blown GUI on the server (which is actually an X client). -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:11:34 GMT From: VMS is Virus Free Subject: Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Message-ID: On 24 Oct 2007 23:43:46 +0200, peter@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) wrote: >In article , VMS is Virus Free writes: >>Any experiences and comments relative to the merits of Pathworks >>versus CIFS (aka Samba in VMS clothes) would be most appreciated. > >Pathworks vs. SAMBA V1 I had experiences with. >And the conclusio was that SAMBA V1 was awful, dead slow and brought the >whole VMS system to its knees (permanently 100% CPU, one single process >per client means hundreds vs. 30% CPU and 9 processes total with PATHWORKS) > >Now, it's ASOVMS vs. SAMBA V3 (?) and my experiences are worthless, I think. > >Why not try it yourself and let us know? The problem we face is that our main production VMS cluster is running VMS V7.3-2. It would be most difficult to marshall the resources to upgrade it to V8.3 which CIFS requires. Management's view: VMS is dead and we're getting rid of it. Reality view: the VMS systems run at 70% to 100% CPU all day long. They are minimally 4 CPU systems with 8 GB of memory, relatively new EV levels and are well tuned. They are just used because they can reliably put out the work, especially when compared to other more, umm, "modern" GUI based systems. Why not try it out ourselves? Well, we are testing but that's nothing like real-life experiences. For us to propose the upgrade and get it approved, there needs to be strong business reasons to do so. Management's view is that (a) it's working okay, (b) don't mess with it, and (c) it's going away. Well, it's been going away for the last 5 years; it'll likely be running 5 years from now. So with that atmosphere, the answer is quite simply that we need to know that the effort will be worth the reward. What I've been able to read on the CIFS literature speaks nothing about performance, only functionality. That's why I'm asking those that may have already been done this path to offer their experiences. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:25:25 GMT From: VMS is Virus Free Subject: Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Message-ID: On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:55:47 GMT, "John E. Malmberg" wrote: > >Pathworks is not single threaded, Pathworks is multi-threaded in a >single process per cluster. It is far more efficient on CPU resources >and context switching than the current V3 generation of SAMBA. If you >are having problems with performance with Pathworks, SAMBA will probably >not be much better, and possibly will be worse. We currently see Pathworks use 100% of one CPU. My guess is that it was designed before Kernel threads were available. When threading became available, it was too late or not enough energy left at Digital to optimize the product to take full advantage of threading. Otherwise, Pathworks would be able to use more than one CPU. >There may be tuning or other issues like disk / file fragmentation that >are causing the slowdowns you are seeing. There are always tuning, umm, "opportunities". AUTOGEN doesn't find anything. There is ample memory, multiple CPUs. Everything else runs well, only Pathworks gets bogged down. The problems we see stems from Windows desktops accessing files on VMS when (a) the directory being accessed has lots of files (lots = 10K to 100K files). Many .DIR files are in the 5K to 10K blocks size. DFU on a directory compress helps but does not offer much relief. (b) large files (500 GB to 1 TB) being read/written (c) lots of file transfers (both directions) Typical scenario is that access is relatively robust then one or more users start doing some of these activities and slows Pathworks file access down for everyone. The large directory sizes are the results of program design that did not think through design decisions when decade's worth of file activity would need to be available online. We cannot change this behavior. Reason: works okay, bigger fish to fry, no time to go back and fix an old app. >> Any experiences and comments relative to the merits of Pathworks >> versus CIFS (aka Samba in VMS clothes) would be most appreciated. > >I left the SAMBA / VMS project before the various planed performance >enhancements could be implemented and tested, so I do not know the >specifics. > >The SAMBA V4 design allows a single process similar to Pathworks / >Advanced Server to be used. I have no idea if it will be more efficient. We currently see Pathworks use 100% of one CPU. What we were looking (hoping) for with CIFS is that the design would make better use of the available CPU resources in a multi-CPU environment. What is sounds like is that CIFS still has a ways to go to catch up to Pathworks (performance-wise). >The SAMBA V1 through V3 model of separate processes has a much higher >overhead than threads, but provides the appearance of higher reliability >as a failed process only briefly affects one client until it is >restarted, where a single process model would affect all clients. > >-John >wb8tyw@qsl.network >Personal Opinion Only ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:49:58 GMT From: "John E. Malmberg" Subject: Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Message-ID: Ron Johnson wrote: > On 10/24/07 22:55, John E. Malmberg wrote: > [snip] > >>The SAMBA V1 through V3 model of separate processes has a much higher >>overhead than threads, but provides the appearance of higher reliability > > > Why do you "appearance"? The only reason that a process would fail is from hitting a software bug somewhere. While in theory the separate process model is more robust, since all processes share the same code, in all probability a software bug that crashed one process will eventually crash them all or repeatedly crash in the same place. -John wb8tyw@qsl.network Personal Opinion Only ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:45:45 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: Pathworks vs CIFS performance Message-ID: <%heUi.13160$BT5.10944@newsfe18.lga> On 10/25/07 22:49, John E. Malmberg wrote: > Ron Johnson wrote: >> On 10/24/07 22:55, John E. Malmberg wrote: >> [snip] >> >>> The SAMBA V1 through V3 model of separate processes has a much higher >>> overhead than threads, but provides the appearance of higher reliability >> >> >> Why do you "appearance"? > > The only reason that a process would fail is from hitting a software bug > somewhere. While in theory the separate process model is more robust, > since all processes share the same code, in all probability a software > bug that crashed one process will eventually crash them all or > repeatedly crash in the same place. Ah. From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [jargon]: robust adj. Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations in a given environment. One step below {bulletproof}. Carries the additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful attention to detail. Compare {smart}, oppose {brittle}. So, having one thread die while the others soldier along isn't *robust*, but it does *isolate* those people who are impacted by corner-case bugs, while the majority of users (who aren't affected by that corner case) keep on plugging away. And that's a darned site better than many apps. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:04:45 -0400 From: VMSQuest Reborn Subject: Pathworks vs NFS Message-ID: <-5udnWzGLsLB-rzanZ2dnUVZ_qqgnZ2d@giganews.com> We have been using Pathworks for several years now, serving about 1 TB of data to about 15,000 users. Some people here at my workplace are proposing a "Pathworks replacement" that entails a NetApps solution which, according to some NetApps folk, implies NFS for serving the VMS-based files. To me, comparing Pathworks to NFS is barely comparing fruit to fruit, let alone apples to apples. Knowing that there is no shortage of any of these in this forum, I am soliciting opinions, attitudes, prejudices, flames and even some facts or pointers-to-facts regarding the use of NFS (with or without NetApps) as a replacement for Pathworks. In particular, issues of efficiency, performance, security and maintainability seem relevant here. Maybe there are other issues worth commenting on? Thanks in advance for any help with this, and in arrears for the many years of VMS-related information and entertainment that many of you have given me. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:33:01 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Some success with VMS-NFS serving OS-X Message-ID: Bob Koehler wrote: > In article , JF Mezei writes: >> >> Question: is it normal that even though I specified /STRUCTURE=5 in the >> mount command that the SHOW DEVICE shows ODS-2 ? > > Does your NFS client actually support ODS-5? Some don't. In this case, the NFS client is Alpha VMS 8.3 and the /STRUCTURE=5 in included in the HELp for the MOUNT command inside the TCPIP utility (TCPIP services 5.6). The TCPIP MOUNT command accepts the /STRUCTURE=5 command happily, but still mounts the drive as /structure=2. Perhaps this only works if the NFS server at the other end is another VMS machine of same vintage ? One problem is that the NFS software appears to lack the usual logging/debugging logicals. And the log file for the NFS server on VMS is locked while the server is running so it isn't very helpful since we can't read it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:22:07 +0000 (UTC) From: morris@osmium.mv.net (Skipper W. Morris) Subject: Standalone backup on Alpha? Message-ID: I know that for Alpha you're supposed to use AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM to build a minimum bootable system on some *other* device to boot and run standalone backups. What I'd like to do is just build a minimum bootable root on my primary system disk so I don't have to fuss with a CD just to do backups. Anyone ever tried this? Is it feasible? /Skip ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:25:14 GMT From: winston@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing) Subject: Re: ZLXp-E3 and DS10 and VMS 8.3 Message-ID: <00A6FAD5.FED6CADB@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> In article <07102319334836_202002A8@antinode.org>, sms@antinode.org (Steven M. Schweda) writes: >From: winston@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing) > >> I have a DS10 (not the one I just won, which is a DS10L; this is for work). >> It's just out of the box and has never run here. We bought it without a >> a graphics adapter. I was given a card marked PBXGA-CA, >> which I was able to put in the short PCI slot. >> >> Googling suggests this card is a ZLXp-E3 > > Soinds right to me. > >> This doesn't seem to be listed in the OpenVMS SPD 8.3, which lists: >> [...] > > It's too old to be tested any more. I used them in my AlpSta 200 >4/233 systems when they were "new". > >> Should my DS10 know how to drive this card well enough to use it for the >> console when booting? (Currently, a video cable running from the card to a >> a Raritan switch shows no signal on the card when I boot the system, but I >> could have screwed that up any number of ways.) > > I wouldn't bet on it. I generally replaced my PBXGA cards with ELSA >GLoria Synergy-8 cards, rather than promoting them into my XP1000 >systems, so if I ever did try one there, I've forgotten the outcome. I >have a dim recollection of problems using a PBXGA in my (now disused) >PWS 500a[u], however, which leads me to doubt the likelihood of success >in an XP1000. Does SRM "show config" name the thing? > >> What do the dip switches on the card mean > > Keep searching with Google, and you should find: > > http://antinode.org/dec/pbxga_settings.html > >> and how should they be set? > > Depends on your display's capabilities. > >> Will this card function to drive a DECwindows-type console under VMS 8.3? > > Probably on old hardware, unknown on a modern system (PWS or newer). > >> Should I bag this and get a Radeon? > > Most likely. The XP1000 seems to like those. > Thanks very much for this full and helpful response. Appreciate your going to the trouble (especially when I _still_ owe you a zx2000). Will bag this and get a Radeon from Island. Thanks! -- Alan ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.585 ************************