INFO-VAX Thu, 04 Sep 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 484 Contents: Re: Archive strategy Re: Archive strategy Re: Can you record DVDs on 7.2.1? Re: Charon-VAX "upgrade" (was DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Re: cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Re: cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Re: Loose Cannon-dian Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Re: Note to Island Computers customers Re: Note to Island Computers customers Re: Note to Island Computers customers Re: Note to Island Computers customers OpenVMS upgrade checklists Re: OpenVMS upgrade checklists OT: 11/70 vs 11/780 OT: Flying with Diabetes (was RE: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site) Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site SSH and SFTP configuration Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 14:42:24 -0500 (CDT) From: sms@antinode.info (Steven M. Schweda) Subject: Re: Archive strategy Message-ID: <08090314422410_20200E21@antinode.info> From: tadamsmar > I ask about putting a DVD on an Alphaserver DS10 runing 7.2-1. > > Never did get a clear answer on that. I am not sure anyone can point > me to the software and hardware I need to get, at least not explicitly > like a recipe in a cookbook. Gee, I wonder why. Send me a DS10 and a VMS V7.2-1 CD set and enough money to pay for a DVD-writing drive (and for my time), and I'll try to figure it all out for you. How many other people do you think are trying to write DVDs with such an obsolete VMS version? > [...] no one > can give me a straightforward answer to my question. It's not > technical enough to do that. Perhaps no one is willing to do your whole job for you for free. I know I'm not. > I am really not sure I know any more now > than before I ask the question. Not my fault, I claim. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steven M. Schweda sms@antinode-info 382 South Warwick Street (+1) 651-699-9818 Saint Paul MN 55105-2547 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:55:18 -0500 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: Archive strategy Message-ID: <48BF4006.12B20CB7@spam.comcast.net> tadamsmar wrote: > > I ask about putting a DVD on an Alphaserver DS10 runing 7.2-1. > > Never did get a clear answer on that. I am not sure anyone can point > me to the software and hardware I need to get, at least not explicitly > like a recipe in a cookbook. Well, no, no "cookbook". However, to summarize, and see Eberhard's post in the other thread: Most any SCSI DVD burner MIGHT do - it's difficult to be certain without polling others for their experience. V7.2-1 lacks the necessary IDE support, so it's gotta be SCSI. Eberhard says that DVDRECORD covers everything from CD-R through DVD/RW. It might still be freeware. Check wih him - see the other thread for his address. > But, now I am thinking about some sort of removable disk solution. An > external SCSI enclosure that can hold at least 2 removal disks. Got > any suggestions on that? An outfit called Castlewood once had a circa. 2GB removeable cartridge hard disk ("orb drive"), but I believe they've gone belly up. Iomega may have moved on past the Jaz drives and such. Dunno - haven't looked at that for some time now. > I figure removable disks are easier to recheck periodically since they > should have a higher capacity than a DVD. ...and should have a longer shelf life. That said, hot-swappable might be a good substitute for removeable. That's your call, of course. FWIW... D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:44:38 -0700 (PDT) From: tadamsmar Subject: Re: Can you record DVDs on 7.2.1? Message-ID: On Sep 3, 8:51=A0am, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: > In article , "Richard B. Gi= lbert" writes: > > > > > Just beat it to death Bob!! =A0I had no trouble figuring out what he me= ant! > > =A0 Hey, it's a technical newgroup. =A0Either 0 or 1. Flatter yourself, if you want. But don't overlook the fact that no one can give me a straightforward answer to my question. It's not technical enough to do that. I am really not sure I know any more now than before I ask the question. Thanks for the reminders about dashes and dots. Anyway, I guess my question is too arcane. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:05:44 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: Charon-VAX "upgrade" (was DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:17:04 -0700, Malcolm Dunnett wrote: > I'm confused - does using Charon-VAX eliminate the need to > purchase/upgrade a VMS license? You're still running the apps under VMS, > right - just using Charon to emulate the underlying hardware? > http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/sri-charon-vax-emulator.html Of course, if you don't have it under maintenance I suppose it might not be necessary, at least it would never be apparent. -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:14:21 -0700 From: Marty Kuhrt Subject: cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Message-ID: cURL 7.19.0 is now available for VMS. You can download it from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html#VMS This is the binary and object library distribution of the cURL 7.19.0 release. The OpenSSL and noSSL versions are self-contained in that you can run these programs without any other software on the system. For the hp SSL version, you will need to have hp's SSL V1.1-B, or better, product installed. For more information on how to use this program or how to use the library to create your own programs consult http://curl.haxx.se/ for the most up-to-date documentation. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:04:45 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Message-ID: <48bf3474$0$12412$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Marty Kuhrt wrote: > cURL 7.19.0 is now available for VMS. You can download it from > http://curl.haxx.se/download.html#VMS Many thanks for keeping curl up to date on VMS. Could you provide a short blurb (or a link) to a description of what has changed since last version ? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:19:32 -0400 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: cURL 7.19.0 available for VMS Message-ID: <48bf45ac$0$90264$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> JF Mezei wrote: > Marty Kuhrt wrote: >> cURL 7.19.0 is now available for VMS. You can download it from >> http://curl.haxx.se/download.html#VMS > > Many thanks for keeping curl up to date on VMS. > > Could you provide a short blurb (or a link) to a description of what has > changed since last version ? http://curl.haxx.se/changes.html will probably explain it. Arne ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:20:55 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Bob Koehler skrev: > In article , Johnny Billquist writes: >> Well, it is a hardware design thing, you know... > > It's up to VMS as to how to use the space it was allowed. I'm not > sure VAXeln or ULTRIX used it the same way. Most probably not. But VMS cannot use the space in other ways than the hardware makes possible. >> The P0 and P1 related registers are a part of the context of the process, and >> are also given as virtual addresses within S0 space, while S0 space itself is >> pointed to by a table at physical address. > > P0 and P1 registers like PR$_P0BR started in early models as > privileged CPU registers. Many of the privileged CPU registers > actually were implemented in RAM in later models. But I don't think > there's anything in the VAX architecture that says what values they can > take on. An OS can pretty much set them as it needs. Implemented in RAM? How do you mean that? Are you saying that they were at some fixed address in physical address space? I just checked the VAX-7000 machines, which have the NVAX+ CPU, and SBR, SLR, P0BR, P0LR, P1BR and P1LR are all still internal registers accessed by the MTPR/MFPR instructions. (Sitting with the KA7AA CPU Technical Manual in front of me.) As for allowable values, yes there are limitations. The valid page entires given by P0 and P1 space must point to (virtual) addresses mapped into S0 space. That means that they cannot be less than 0x80000000. Also, they cannot be larger than 0xBFFFFFFF. (That explicitly disallows P0BR to be less than 0x8000000, but P1 space is inversed, so P1BR can very well point below 0x8000000, as long as P1BR plus P1LR is greater or equal to 0x80000000). So that's definitely a limitation. On the NVAX+, the physical addressing was extended by two bits. So the high two bits of the SBR register are actually used, and the PTE entry is changed so that the PFN is actually 23 bits wide (instead of 21). This means that the CPU can generate the full range of 32-bit physical addresses. However, a program still can't address more than at most 3 GB, since that's the absolute max size of P0, P1 and S0 space. S1 space is still not possible to play with. So, you do have a machine that can have more physical memory than a process can address. So, for a process to play with all physical memory, it would have to change the mappings as it moved along. All of this is hardware limitations, and VMS can't do diddly squat about it. > S0 space is pointed to by page tables the same as any other space. > Only the highest level S0 page table pointing to the second S0 level > page tables has to be at a known RAM location, and even that location is > variable and found in the SCB, which in turn is located via the PR$_SCBB. Huh? That don't make sense. The SBR register points at a physical address. The SLR gives how large this page table is. The layout of the table is the same as any of the other page tables, but the difference is that this page table is at a physical address, while the other page tables are at a virtual address. Also, S0 space don't have multiple levels. It's all flat. > But I'm not sure the VMS kernel ever outgrew a single level of page > tables. It's pretty small. Don't really matter. The VAX hardware don't allow it, so VMS can't do anything about it. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:23:44 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Bob Koehler skrev: > In article , Johnny Billquist writes: >> Not true. On the VAX, S1 space is reserved, and you can never write any code >> that access it. it will always give you a fatal trap. The hardware do know this, >> and cares very much. There is in fact no way to create a page table for S1 space. >> > > When the VAX physical and virtual addresses were expanded the virtual > addresses originally reserved for S1 space were appended to S0 space. > So on those models you certainly can create a page table for those > addresses even though they became known as S0 space. > > The difference is academic. No, and no. The size of the page tables didn't change. Please go back and read the manuals. What changed was the SBR register, and the PTE entries. Your S0 space is still a max of 1GB. P0 and P1 are also still a max of 1GB. That means the virtual address space your program can live in, and play in, is still limited to 3 GB, even though the extended addressing of the last VAXen allowed for 3.5 GB of physical memory. Is there no one else but me who actually reads the manuals? Are all people here just sitting around and guessing??? Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:33:52 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Bob Koehler skrev: > In article , Johnny Billquist writes: >> The 11/70 don't have SBI, or anything close to it. >> > > Odd that all my block diagrams from DEC for the 11/70 show CPU, > memory, UNIBUS adapters, and MASSBUS adapters hanging off of it, then. Odd that my 11/70 sitting next to me, along with the complete drawings for it is totally missing an SBI then. You do have a CPU backplane, on which all things are connected. But that's hardly a surprise, since that's the way with any computer. But an SBI is a very specific bus, on which you hang different adapters talking the SBI protocol. For starters, memory on a PDP-11/70 sits on a separate memory bus. That memory bus is connected to the cache controller. The massbus controllers have a direct access path to the cache controller bypassing the Unibus map, but are also located on the Unibus, but only for the CSRs. The Unibus talks directly to the CPU, but talks to the cache controller via the Unibus map (for DMA). And of course, the CPU is talking to the cache controller via the MMU. And then you have the front panel that talks directly to the cache controller as well, in addition to talking with the MMU and CPU. The memory bus is four flat cables that are daisy chained through all memory boxes and terminated in the last one. The MK-11 MOS memory box has it's own backplane, which actually is compatible with the memory bus of the VAX-11/750. So the same memory modules (with some limitations) can be used in both a VAX-11/750 and a PDP-11/70 MK11 memory box. > DEC even wrote up how they were not abandoning the UNIBUS just > because they came out with a system that didn't use it for the > system bus. That's a different issue. The 11/70 still don't have an SBI. And apart from the massbus adapters, and memory being on a separate bus, the 11/70 is still a Unibus machine. You even have a number of Unibus slots in the CPU box. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:45:04 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk skrev: > On Sep 3, 1:46 pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob > Koehler) wrote: >> But I'm not sure the VMS kernel ever outgrew a single level of page tables. It's pretty small. > > The kernel code may have started small and may well not have grown > hugely. The same cannot be said of kernel data structures, which > needed to be rather bigger in a system with maybe hundreds of GB of > memory and hundreds of devices (and users, and processes), than they > were in the first VMS systems with a few MB of memory and a handful of > devices (and users, and processes). Where do you think these data > structures are found? Rather than summarise badly, I'll refer to > (e.g.) http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/journal/v5/removing-32-bit-limit.html > which may refresh folks' memory. Thanks for the pointer. That made me go back and look once more, and I missed that for VAXen supporting extended addressing, S1 space was dropped. Instead if it's decided that the address is in system space, no more division is made, but instead you go directly to the SPT. And the SPT can actually be (2^22)-1 page entries long. Missed that part before. So I apologize for the comment that processes can only address 3 gigs of memory on a VAX. That restriction was also lifted when extended addressing was introduced. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:52:01 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Bob Koehler skrev: > In article , johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk writes: >> On Sep 3, 1:46 pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob >> Koehler) wrote: >>> In article , Johnny Billquist writes: >>> >>>> The 11/70 don't have SBI, or anything close to it. > > You can see discussed as the "backplane" at > http://www.pdp11.nl/pdp11-70/startpage.html . I don't recall where I > first saw the 11/70 backplane called an SBI, but it must have been > close to the SBI on the 11/780 because a lot of the I/O bus adapters > on the earliest 11/780 had the same model numbers as those on the > 11/70. I think DEC did very little re-engineering in those parts > of the computer while working to build the first VAX. If you mean "I/O bus adapters" as controllers on the Unibus, then yes, they were the same. They would, after all, be Unibus controllers, and the Unibus is pretty standard. However, the 11/780 needs a DW780 in order to get one (or more) Unibuses, while the Unibus on a PDP-11/70 is already there from the start, and there can only be one. Furthermore, the massbus adapters on a PDP-11/70 are called the RH70, while the massbus adapters on a VAX-11/780 are called the RH780. And they are very different beasts. For a PDP-11/70, there are no other I/O bus adapters, while the VAX-11/780, which have an SBI, could hang other stuff in there as well, such as the CI780, or that parallell interface I never can remember the name of (DR780?). Not to mention the multiple Unibuses... Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:04:53 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Johnny Billquist skrev: > Bob Koehler skrev: >> In article , Johnny Billquist >> writes: >>> Not true. On the VAX, S1 space is reserved, and you can never write >>> any code that access it. it will always give you a fatal trap. The >>> hardware do know this, and cares very much. There is in fact no way >>> to create a page table for S1 space. >>> >> >> When the VAX physical and virtual addresses were expanded the virtual >> addresses originally reserved for S1 space were appended to S0 space. >> So on those models you certainly can create a page table for those >> addresses even though they became known as S0 space. >> >> The difference is academic. > > No, and no. > The size of the page tables didn't change. Please go back and read the > manuals. > What changed was the SBR register, and the PTE entries. > Your S0 space is still a max of 1GB. P0 and P1 are also still a max of > 1GB. That means the virtual address space your program can live in, and > play in, is still limited to 3 GB, even though the extended addressing > of the last VAXen allowed for 3.5 GB of physical memory. > > Is there no one else but me who actually reads the manuals? Are all > people here just sitting around and guessing??? *Sigh* And as usual, foot in mouth... On the NVAX+, there is no S0 and S1 space. There is only system space, which is laid out by SBR and SLR. And so, that table can grow to twice the size of old... Presto, 2 Gig of system space, for a total of 4 Gig of addressable space. Except for the very last page... Sorry about that. :-( Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:00:07 GMT From: John Santos Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: Bob Koehler wrote: > In article , Johnny Billquist writes: > >>That would be equally true if the physical address space was only 16 bits as well. >>The point is that your virtual addresses always goes through an address >>translation, which both tells where the virtual address maps to in the physical >>address space, and can also declare that some addresses aren't even valid. >> > > > No. The PDP-11 did not do virtual address translation on a page by > page basis. It just took the virtual address and added the base Ahem... Yes, it did. It just had a very small "page table". Each page table entry (there were 8 of them for each processor mode, or 8 for I and 8 for D on an I&D machine) could map anything from 0 to 8192 bytes in 64-byte increments on arbitrary 64-byte physical memory boundaries. (I hope I got the numbers right, since I usually think in words on a PDP-11 and am multiplying by 2 to get things in terms of bytes for the benefit of you youngsters.) > physical address in the corresponding APR. If you had 64K or less > RAM all physical addresses were within reach no matter what was in > the APR. No. Each APR had a size (Page Length Field in the Page Description Register for that page) in 64-byte blocks. If an address reference to a page was outside the page length, then you got a page length error trap. All 64K of physical memory would only be accessible if the Kernel set the APRs up appropriately. If a page's access mode was set to no access (0; a 3-bit field in the PDR), any access to that page would cause a memory management trap. So a user mode program on a system with 64K of physical memory could minimally see 1 64-byte page (at some arbitrary 64-byte address in physical address space) at one of the 8 page boundaries in it's virtual address space. (For example, set 7 of the 8 user mode PDRs to 0, and stick a 1 in the PLF of the remaining PDR, and set the corresponding PAR to some value between 0 and 64K/64 (= 1024 decimal). For an I&D machine, the I-space and D-space PARs could be set to different values, thus preventing both read or write access to instructions and executing data. 64 bytes is awfully fine granularity, especially when you only have 8 grains. I don't know how other O/S's managed it, but RSTS/E used the high APRs to map run-time systems and the low APRs to map user programs and data, expanding upward on request (but no higher than the base of the RTS.) It mapped (and managed) memory in 1KW (2048 byte) chunks, and didn't allow programs to have holes in there memory space (except between low-mem and the RTS.) On I&D machines, I think the high APRs, where the RTS lives, was mapped to the same physical addresses, thus effectively disabling I&D separation, but low memory could be mapped to different physical memory. The user could *not* ask to be mapped to specific physical addresses; the O/S decided where to put things. (On RSX, privileged tasks could ask to be mapped at specified addresses, thus allowing memory sharing and user-mode access to the I/O page, but the task had to be installed to do this. Normal non-privileged processes couldn't do this.) The I&D mapping of the RTS didn't allow user code to modify it; normally RTSes were marked read-only in their PDRs. Since it took privilege to install or remove an RTS, a non-priv'ed or program couldn't do this. There's a 3rd memory entity beside user low-memory and RTSes. Resident libraries, adapted from the RSX implementation, sat in the middle, between low-memory and the RTS. You could attach to a resident library (that had been installed by a privileged user), and once attached to them, map arbitrary chunks of them into your process address space. The O/S managed the physical memory used, and made sure your requests (relative to the virtual base address of the library) were valid; you could only access library pages that actually were part of the library. Of course, using a library took over at least one of your 8 pages. Still, using libraries instead of disk overlays could result in enormous performance gains, especially for something shared like EDT or RMS or DECnet. Correspondingly enormous TKB times as you tried to get the ODL right, too :-) You could also do demand paging by setting the relevant PDRs to trap on reference, then retrieving the corresponding pages from backing store and restarting the instruction. The PDR even had a "this page has been written" bit, so the O/S could know whether or not it needed to save a page when swapping or faulting out a page. Anyway, the bottom line is (with a reasonable operating system that didn't do pathological things to the APRs) PDP-11's had true, if tiny and coarsely-segmented, virtual memory. The mapping for I and D space might be different, but it > was a calculable fixed offset for the duration of a task. > No, the only way to know the relative physical locations of the I-space and D-space pages was by looking at the PDRs, which, being on the I/O page, were only accessible if the operating system chose to make them so. > And if you had less than 64KB RAM, no APR might be used. Lots of > PDP-11 didn't even have APR. > Memory management did not exist on the earliest (16-bit) PDP-11's, and was an option on most of the middle generation (18-bit) 11's (e.g. the PDP 11/40, 11/34, 11/45?, etc.) It was only on the later generations, and the large memory 22-bit machines, that it was built-in and standard. But on all PDP-11's, it could be disabled (and was disabled by default on power up or system reset; the O/S loader was responsible for initializing it and enabling it.) On systems without APRs and on those where MMSR0 bit 0 is clear (MM status register 0), any program had direct access to all physical memory less than 56K (the 1st 7 pages), and to the I/O page on page 7. But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about what happens when memory management *is* present and enabled. -- John Santos Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc. 781-861-0670 ext 539 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:18:09 GMT From: Roger Ivie Subject: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS Message-ID: On 2008-09-03, Johnny Billquist wrote: > or that parallell interface I never can remember the name of (DR780?). DR780, indeed. Fun device. It looked things up in the page tables, so you could give it user-space addresses. I thought there were manuals over at bitsavers, but I'm sure not finding them. There was also a VAXBI equivalent called the DRB32, but I never dealt with that one. In my case, we had some custom hardware run by a PDP-11/23 hanging off the end of a DR-780. I did some user-level programming of the DR-780 for diagnostic purposes and the embedded code on the 11/23; the final customer did the operational software for the DR-780. I liked the interface so much that I patterned a later VAXBI device after it; in that case, it was a Z-80 looking things up in the VAX page table. I have seen the odd reference every now and then to a DR70, a PDP-11/70 equivalent to the DR-780, but I never encountered one of those. -- roger ivie rivie@ridgenet.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:32:57 GMT From: John Santos Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian Message-ID: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk wrote: > In article <7F4vk.215$Af3.5@trnddc06>, John Santos writes: > >>Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: >> >>>On Sep 1, 9:50 pm, B...@rabbit.turquoisewitch.com (Brad Hamilton) >>>wrote: >>> >>> >>>>In article <98806cee-a3cd-4fd4-8a3c-74e312e3d...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, b...@signedness.org wrote: >>> >>>: >>> >> >>So HP may have appreciated and may have acted on your information without >>acknowledging it, though some kind of "thank you" would certainly encourge >>others to come forward. >> >>I've seen somewhere that anyone can file a bug report (security-related or >>not) and they'll take it seriously, but they won't necessarily respond unless >>they need more information or if you have a support contract. It looks >>just like a black hole even if it isn't. >> > > > Feedback to those who report bugs is only polite. However with security bugs it > is an essential part of the process since there is a long history of those > discovering such bugs and not being kept informed by the vendor resorting to > publication of the details or even demo exploits in order to pressure the > vendor into providing a fix. > Good point! > David Webb > Security team leader > CCSS > Middlesex University > > -- John Santos Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc. 781-861-0670 ext 539 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:22:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: On Sep 2, 6:08=A0pm, Michael Kraemer wrote: > Rich Jordan schrieb: > > > > > And the way its been reported to happen sometimes. > > > Customer: =A0Hello, HP! I want to buy a VMS system > > HP: VMS Windows? > > Customer: =A0No, VMS. =A0Ok, OpenVMS. > > HP: What version of windows is that? > > Customer: =A0Its no any version of windows. =A0Its OpenVMS > > HP: Hmm, =A0Well does it run on a proliant? =A0We sell those. > > Customer: =A0No, it runs on Alphaservers, and on the new Itanium > > systems. > > HP: =A0Itanium. =A0Oh, I know. =A0Hey, we sell those with windows too! > > Customer.... *click* Hello, IBM? > > IBM as second source for VMS ? No, but as a vendor that (at least by reputation) is willing to sell customers what they ask for and makes sure their front line contact folks are at least familiar enough with available products to get a calling customer to the right place. That example obviously represents a customer lost. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Sep 2008 18:36:37 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: <6i83plFp7vpjU2@mid.individual.net> In article <00A7F159.B49DD437@sendspamhere.org>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > In article <6i7tmaFpe9kaU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: >>In article <00A7F14A.4F01987B@sendspamhere.org>, >> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >>>{...snip...} >>> As for the importance of c.o.v. I notified several customers about the >>> current vulnerability and the patches which HP finally made available. >>> These customsers didn't get any information from HP, they got it from >>> c.o.v. indirectly via me. >> >>Which is why I, once again, reiterate why is this not being sent to CERT >>for the widest possible disemination? > > Feel free to inform CERT. It needs to be done by someone who actually knows what the vulnerabilities and possible exploits are. I would have hoped one of our VMS experts would have done it. I am neither qualified nor in a position at the moment to even verify them. I currently have no VMS systems up as I have been away from home for the past 6 months and having been told by my associates at DISA (as I related here) that they have no interest in updating or testing OpenVMS SRR's it is unlikely I will take the time to set one up in the near future. bill -- Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves billg999@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. University of Scranton | Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:59:55 -0700 (PDT) From: bugs@signedness.org Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: On Sep 3, 7:36=A0pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: > In article <00A7F159.B49DD...@sendspamhere.org>, > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 VAXman- =A0@SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > > > In article <6i7tmaFpe9k...@mid.individual.net>, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (B= ill Gunshannon) writes: > >>In article <00A7F14A.4F019...@sendspamhere.org>, > >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0VAXman- =A0@SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > >>>{...snip...} > >>> As for the importance of c.o.v. =A0I notified several customers about= the > >>> current vulnerability and the patches which HP finally made available= . > >>> These customsers didn't get any information from HP, they got it from > >>> c.o.v. indirectly via me. > > >>Which is why I, once again, reiterate why is this not being sent to CER= T > >>for the widest possible disemination? > > > Feel free to inform CERT. > > It needs to be done by someone who actually knows what the vulnerabilitie= s > and possible exploits are. =A0I would have hoped one of our VMS experts > would have done it. =A0I am neither qualified nor in a position at the > moment to even verify them. =A0I currently have no VMS systems up as I ha= ve > been away from home for the past 6 months and having been told by my > associates at DISA (as I related here) that they have no interest in > updating or testing OpenVMS SRR's it is unlikely I will take the time to > set one up in the near future. > > bill > > -- > Bill Gunshannon =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0| =A0de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. = =A0Three wolves > billg...@cs.scranton.edu | =A0and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. > University of Scranton =A0 | > Scranton, Pennsylvania =A0 | =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 #include = =A0 You could mail HP's security team and ask they cc CERT in on their advisory ------------------------------ Date: 3 Sep 2008 19:13:41 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: <6i85v5Fp81arU1@mid.individual.net> In article , bugs@signedness.org writes: > On Sep 3, 7:36 pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: >> In article <00A7F159.B49DD...@sendspamhere.org>, >>         VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >> >> > In article <6i7tmaFpe9k...@mid.individual.net>, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: >> >>In article <00A7F14A.4F019...@sendspamhere.org>, >> >>        VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >> >>>{...snip...} >> >>> As for the importance of c.o.v.  I notified several customers about the >> >>> current vulnerability and the patches which HP finally made available. >> >>> These customsers didn't get any information from HP, they got it from >> >>> c.o.v. indirectly via me. >> >> >>Which is why I, once again, reiterate why is this not being sent to CERT >> >>for the widest possible disemination? >> >> > Feel free to inform CERT. >> >> It needs to be done by someone who actually knows what the vulnerabilities >> and possible exploits are.  I would have hoped one of our VMS experts >> would have done it.  I am neither qualified nor in a position at the >> moment to even verify them.  I currently have no VMS systems up as I have >> been away from home for the past 6 months and having been told by my >> associates at DISA (as I related here) that they have no interest in >> updating or testing OpenVMS SRR's it is unlikely I will take the time to >> set one up in the near future. >> >> bill >> >> -- >> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves >> billg...@cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. >> University of Scranton   | >> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include   > You could mail HP's security team and ask they cc CERT in on their > advisory HP has never reported anythign to CERT before, why would I expect them to do so now? Because I asked them? I'm not even one of their customers anymore. bill -- Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves billg999@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. University of Scranton | Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:46:40 -0700 (PDT) From: DaveG Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: On Sep 3, 2:13=A0pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: > In article , > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 b...@signedness.org writes: > > > > > On Sep 3, 7:36=A0pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: > >> In article <00A7F159.B49DD...@sendspamhere.org>, > >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 VAXman- =A0@SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > > >> > In article <6i7tmaFpe9k...@mid.individual.net>, billg...@cs.uofs.edu= (Bill Gunshannon) writes: > >> >>In article <00A7F14A.4F019...@sendspamhere.org>, > >> >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0VAXman- =A0@SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > >> >>>{...snip...} > >> >>> As for the importance of c.o.v. =A0I notified several customers ab= out the > >> >>> current vulnerability and the patches which HP finally made availa= ble. > >> >>> These customsers didn't get any information from HP, they got it f= rom > >> >>> c.o.v. indirectly via me. > > >> >>Which is why I, once again, reiterate why is this not being sent to = CERT > >> >>for the widest possible disemination? > > >> > Feel free to inform CERT. > > >> It needs to be done by someone who actually knows what the vulnerabili= ties > >> and possible exploits are. =A0I would have hoped one of our VMS expert= s > >> would have done it. =A0I am neither qualified nor in a position at the > >> moment to even verify them. =A0I currently have no VMS systems up as I= have > >> been away from home for the past 6 months and having been told by my > >> associates at DISA (as I related here) that they have no interest in > >> updating or testing OpenVMS SRR's it is unlikely I will take the time = to > >> set one up in the near future. > > >> bill > > >> -- > >> Bill Gunshannon =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0| =A0de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) = n. =A0Three wolves > >> billg...@cs.scranton.edu | =A0and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. > >> University of Scranton =A0 | > >> Scranton, Pennsylvania =A0 | =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 #include =A0 > > You could mail HP's security team and ask they cc CERT in on their > > advisory > > HP has never reported anythign to CERT before, why would I expect them to > do so now? =A0Because I asked them? =A0I'm not even one of their customer= s > anymore. > > bill > > -- > Bill Gunshannon =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0| =A0de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. = =A0Three wolves > billg...@cs.scranton.edu | =A0and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. > University of Scranton =A0 | > Scranton, Pennsylvania =A0 | =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 #include = =A0 HP has its own SSRT (Software Security Response Team). I believe all this stuff is in their hands. And FWIW, also noticed lots of companies/orgs belong to FIRST (Forum of Incident Response & Security Teams) www.first.org, HP included. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Sep 2008 15:53:24 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: In article , Rich Jordan writes: > > No, but as a vendor that (at least by reputation) is willing to sell > customers what they ask for and makes sure their front line contact > folks are at least familiar enough with available products to get a > calling customer to the right place. e.g. IBM has red trucks. Now what was it the customer wanted in the first place? IBM will sell you those even if they don't make them. In fact, IBM will sell them to you even if they don't exist. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 14:57:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: <385dd5d3-174f-415c-bf86-9815f2a52774@25g2000prz.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 3:53=A0pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: > In article , Rich Jordan writes: > > > > > No, but as a vendor that (at least by reputation) is willing to sell > > customers what they ask for and makes sure their front line contact > > folks are at least familiar enough with available products to get a > > calling customer to the right place. > > =A0 =A0e.g. =A0IBM has red trucks. =A0Now what was it the customer wanted= in the > =A0 =A0first place? =A0IBM will sell you those even if they don't make th= em. > =A0 =A0In fact, IBM will sell them to you even if they don't exist. Take it however you want. It has been a while but we have had prospects and customers both come to us because they could not find out how to buy a VMS layered product license from HP, or what to do (and who to do it with) to upgrade a VAX to an Alpha, buy a faster/ newer system, etc. and get prices. The people they tried to talk to were unable even to refer them to a distributor or vendor that could do what they needed (and they found us via other channels). There were no VMS 'sales' people they were able to get to via the HP front end publicly accessible channels. IBM is just a name plucked out of the 'blue' as an example; my wife's company is a long time customer of theirs and doesn't seem to have this specific kind of problem with them. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 23:05:34 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: Loose Cannon-dian (was: Re: DEFCON 16 and Hacking OpenVMS) Message-ID: In article <385dd5d3-174f-415c-bf86-9815f2a52774@25g2000prz.googlegroups.com>, Rich Jordan writes: >On Sep 3, 3:53=A0pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob >Koehler) wrote: >> In article ..com>, Rich Jordan writes: >> >> >> >> > No, but as a vendor that (at least by reputation) is willing to sell >> > customers what they ask for and makes sure their front line contact >> > folks are at least familiar enough with available products to get a >> > calling customer to the right place. >> >> =A0 =A0e.g. =A0IBM has red trucks. =A0Now what was it the customer wanted= > in the >> =A0 =A0first place? =A0IBM will sell you those even if they don't make th= >em. >> =A0 =A0In fact, IBM will sell them to you even if they don't exist. > >Take it however you want. It has been a while but we have had >prospects and customers both come to us because they could not find >out how to buy a VMS layered product license from HP, or what to do >(and who to do it with) to upgrade a VAX to an Alpha, buy a faster/ >newer system, etc. and get prices. The people they tried to talk to >were unable even to refer them to a distributor or vendor that could >do what they needed (and they found us via other channels). There >were no VMS 'sales' people they were able to get to via the HP front >end publicly accessible channels. > >IBM is just a name plucked out of the 'blue' as an example; my wife's >company is a long time customer of theirs and doesn't seem to have >this specific kind of problem with them. As reported here in the past IBM has been known to bid other manufacturer's systems in order to win a contract including bidding VMS see http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/854076c06a39bdfc David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:32:19 -0500 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: Note to Island Computers customers Message-ID: <48BF3AA3.AD714A1B@spam.comcast.net> David wrote: > > THANKS FOR THE CORRECTION > I had to look that up afterwards How solid is the cell phone service? D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:47:49 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Note to Island Computers customers Message-ID: <48bf3e76$0$9637$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> So, if it rains here on Sunday, can I blame Island Computers for having attracted the lovely Hanna ? BTW, the track seems to be moving in a direction that would spare Georgia. (and here in Montreal, we might just get the outer limits of the rain). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 19:13:53 -0700 (PDT) From: yyyc186 Subject: Re: Note to Island Computers customers Message-ID: I do hope you are able to ride this out David. You're a good guy and the industry would feel your loss. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:15:58 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Note to Island Computers customers Message-ID: <48bf533f$0$3363$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Ok, I used good old maps.google.com to lookup Island's location. According to Google (which, as we know, is absolutely infallible), David's store is in the middle of some park between Tybee Island and the mainland :-) I will assume though that he is along highway 80 near the village at the eastern end of Tybee island. How wonder how close to the beach his office is ? :-) :-) Yep, Tybee Island is really out there on the coast, so it would have definitely been vulnerable to a direct hit, and tidal flooding etc. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at3.shtml?5day?large#contents georgia is no longer in the path of Hanna. But it will likely still get some nasty rain and winds, but not hurricane level. This will likely ruin David's weekend though. No sun tanning on the beach, no swimming and no surfing. That is really a rough life when you live on a beach :-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:08:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Jordan Subject: OpenVMS upgrade checklists Message-ID: DEC (and OpenVMS Engineering since then) has provided OpenVMS Upgrade Checklists for versions of VMS up to (apparently) V8.2; at least that is the last one I can find via the search assistant. These checklists are more complete than the centrally located 'mini' one included in the install/upgrade guide; they consist of numerous information points gathered together from the install/upgrade manual and the release notes. Has this very useful feature been discontinued for current (and new?) releases? Or am I just not hitting the right keywords in the search assistant? Thanks Rich ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:12:11 -0500 From: BRAD@rabbit.turquoisewitch.com (Brad Hamilton) Subject: Re: OpenVMS upgrade checklists Message-ID: In article , Rich Jordan wrote: >DEC (and OpenVMS Engineering since then) has provided OpenVMS Upgrade >Checklists for versions of VMS up to (apparently) V8.2; at least that >is the last one I can find via the search assistant. > >These checklists are more complete than the centrally located 'mini' >one included in the install/upgrade guide; they consist of numerous >information points gathered together from the install/upgrade manual >and the release notes. I've been using the 'mini' checklist for years, and was not aware of a more comprehensive checklist. Could you provide an online pointer to such a creature (or at least the name of the manual)? Or a pointer to the "search assistant"? If it is part of the doc set, I would be willing to guess that since there were not a whole lot of changes between V8.2 and V8.3, that there was no need to provide an "upgraded" manual (I know that examples of this "paradigm" exist for other manuals, but I can't recall any specifics). The intent would be for one to use the 8.2 manual in the 8.3 "environment". [...] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:07:41 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk Subject: OT: 11/70 vs 11/780 Message-ID: <90ff1833-4bff-49e7-9c0f-c01232228f92@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 6:30 pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: > In article , johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk writes: > > > On Sep 3, 1:46 pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob > > Koehler) wrote: > >> In article , Johnny Billquist writes: > > >> > The 11/70 don't have SBI, or anything close to it. > > You can see discussed as the "backplane" at > http://www.pdp11.nl/pdp11-70/startpage.html. I don't recall where I > first saw the 11/70 backplane called an SBI, but it must have been > close to the SBI on the 11/780 because a lot of the I/O bus adapters > on the earliest 11/780 had the same model numbers as those on the > 11/70. I think DEC did very little re-engineering in those parts > of the computer while working to build the first VAX. > > > > >> But I'm not sure the VMS kernel ever outgrew a single level of page tables. It's pretty small. > > > The kernel code may have started small and may well not have grown > > hugely. The same cannot be said of kernel data structures, which > > needed to be rather bigger in a system with maybe hundreds of GB of > > memory and hundreds of devices (and users, and processes), than they > > were in the first VMS systems with a few MB of memory and a handful of > > devices (and users, and processes). Where do you think these data > > structures are found? Rather than summarise badly, I'll refer to > > (e.g.)http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/journal/v5/removing-32-bit-limi... > > which may refresh folks' memory. > > Yes, now that I think of it, there would be no point in growing S0 > space to cover that which had been reserved for S1 if it was so small > as to fit in on layer of page tables. Maybe you can see pdp11.nl if you have a local copy, but I can't. There is no pdp11.nl entry in DNS, it seems that site is either temporarily down (and not just briefly), or gone forever. A few high- level pages are available at www.archive.org; just enough for me to see (eg) that the site included a Vaxlab section, which might have been interesting for me. Fortunately, as luck would have it, the particular page you mentioned is still in Google's cache [1] and is a nice page but makes no mention of SBI. It does mention SDI (with a D not a B); SDI was/is the name for the DEC-proprietary [2] MSCP-based disk interconnect used in RA- series disk drives such as the RA60, RA81, etc, which would (in a UNIBUS box including 11/70, 11/780 and various others) have a UDA50 as host adapter. Sure you've not muxed them ip, like I did with FS108 and FS508 not long ago? I'm not sure what I'd expect to be common (in IO adapter terms) between an 11/70 and an 11/780. In customer part number terms, the MASSBUS adapters were different (RH70 vs RH780), and although I can't remember (or find) customer part numbers, iirc the UNIBUS adapters were different too (though obviously actual UNIBUS peripherals might well be common). There is even a DW780 (UNIBUS adapter for 11/780) manual online (at vt100.net and elsewhere) but there's no easily- findable reference within it to 11/70 (the PDF hasn't been OCR'd yet, so search doesn't work, which is a real shame). [1] http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:hcBgMZvmGO4J:www.pdp-11.nl/pdp11-70startpage.html [2] Back then, "proprietary" was bad, and "open" was good. These days, "proprietary" is usually seen as a synonym for "our exclusive competitive advantage", and "open" often just means anything but Microsoft. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 23:29:43 -0400 From: "Peter Weaver" Subject: OT: Flying with Diabetes (was RE: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site) Message-ID: > > Lucky you. =A0You can fly even though you can't see. =A0After = spending what > > seemed like a small fortune, I was told that I would never be = allowed to > > fly on my own, let alone possess a pilot's license because of = diabetes. > > It was fun while it lasted. >=20 > Not necessarily the case. I know two pilots with diabetes that > actively fly (certified, not experimental or LSA). There's more > paperwork involved, but it can be done. You need to find the right > AME that has been through it already. AOPA is a great resource for > getting that stuff figured out as well. Way off-topic but... I'm in Canada so none of this applies to people outside Canada but... Two weeks ago I went for my aviation medical. I could still read the smallest print in the book and the eye chart test gave me 20/15-2 so = things were looking good. But then the doctor said "What treatment are you on = for your diabetes?" After he saw the look on my face he said "Oh, by the = way, you have diabetes." He said that since diabetic people could pass out while flying and since Transport Canada does not like that happening he was going to hold my medical until I had more detailed blood work done. He also added that if = I had a commercial license then it would be gone even without the detailed blood work but as a private pilot I may get to keep my license "After = much letter writing." Luckily the detailed blood work came back with the number just on the borderline. The doctor said that there was no risk of me passing out and gave me back the medical with the warning that there may still be = questions from Transport Canada. The family doctor says that if I drop 10 kg then = I should be fine. I am very happy that I got to fly yesterday but one little test cost me = my license for a week and could have taken it away completely. Peter Weaver www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com Winner of the 2007 OpenVMS.org Readers' Choice Award for System Management/Performance ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:04:25 -0700 From: Joe Bloggs Subject: Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:54:35 -0500, David J Dachtera wrote: >Again, I apologize for the off-topic post. I know some of my fellow VMS >folks also deal with AIX. > >Is anyone aware of a SYSMAN-like utility for AIX? I need to be able to >execute the same command on multiple LPARs, HACMP not withstanding. > >Any ideas anyone has would be useful. > >D.J.D. if your LPARS are all on the same subnet(s), consider using SSH? setting up password-less SSH authentication btw systems takes a bit of work, but once done, you can put together small shell scripts to execute the same commands on each. on the VMS systems, we use a DECUS tool, RCOM (decnet-based) that was more useful than SYSMAN, becasuse it was implemented such that the remote side process was persistent (such that default directory and logicals would survive from one command to the next). otoh, SSH, iirc, allows keyboard interaction with the remote shell (in practice I hardly ever make use of that ability, but handy when you need it) lastly, at least some terminal emulators have the ability to send the same command-text to multiple sessions at once. $ rcom.sh prod uptime # ssh uptime # Host A ---------------- 12:51pm up 43 days 5:17, 0 users, load average: 0.74, 0.80, 0.90 # ssh uptime # Host B ---------------- 12:51pm up 50 days 17:35, 1 user, load average: 1.11, 1.05, 1.06 # ssh uptime # Host C ---------------- 12:51pm up 50 days 18:45, 0 users, load average: 0.85, 1.08, 1.26 $ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:36:49 -0500 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Message-ID: <48BF3BB1.82DA5897@spam.comcast.net> Bill Gunshannon wrote: > > In article <48BDF6D4.42504333@spam.comcast.net>, > David J Dachtera writes: > > sol gongola wrote: > >> > >> David J Dachtera wrote: > >> > "Steven M. Schweda" wrote: > >> >> From: David J Dachtera > >> >> > >> >>> Is anyone aware of a SYSMAN-like utility for AIX? I need to be able to > >> >>> execute the same command on multiple LPARs, HACMP not withstanding. > >> >> Don't know aboit the multiple hosts part, but SMIT was the handy tool > >> >> for system management when I was young. (Sure miss the SMIT dude > >> >> falling on his face when a command failed.) > >> > > >> > Well, SMIT(TY) is whole different critter from SYSMAN. SMIT(TY) is a > >> > screen-oriented interface to various system management task, but AFAIK > >> > does not provide for operations within a group of nodes or a cluster. > >> > SMITTY is the character-cell version. SMIT is the X version, but > >> > defaults to SMITTY if X is not setup in the process environment or > >> > otherwise not available. > >> > >> AIX has a slew of commands to performs the system functions that are > >> performed by sysman. If you know the commands man files are there > >> for you but difficult for the uninitiated. SMIT makes it easier. > >> > >> AIX System Management Interface Tool (SMIT) lets you build an activity > >> through its menu interface. Before issuing the execute you can use F6 > >> to view the command to be executed, save it and use it elsewhere. You > >> can also look in the /smit.script file for a list of previously executed > >> commands to copy and use elsewhere. > > > > Acknowledged (again). > > > > The hard part - and the reason for the initial post - is to execute > > those commands on multiple LPARs so you only have one management point > > instead of 10, 100, 1000, .... > > Are you limited to only things that come with AIX? CFEngine might be > what you need but it is one of those dreaded OpenSource thingies. :-) If there is a binary available for WhineBloze, that would get me around issues of vendors not wanting anything "foreign" on the system, for FDA compliance or what-have-you. D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:39:14 -0500 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: OT: SYSMAN Equiv. on AIX? Message-ID: <48BF3C42.580BB7B4@spam.comcast.net> Joe Bloggs wrote: > > On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:54:35 -0500, David J Dachtera > wrote: > > >Again, I apologize for the off-topic post. I know some of my fellow VMS > >folks also deal with AIX. > > > >Is anyone aware of a SYSMAN-like utility for AIX? I need to be able to > >execute the same command on multiple LPARs, HACMP not withstanding. > > > >Any ideas anyone has would be useful. > > > >D.J.D. > > if your LPARS are all on the same subnet(s), consider using SSH? > > setting up password-less SSH authentication btw systems > takes a bit of work, but once done, you can put together small > shell scripts to execute the same commands on each. > > on the VMS systems, we use a DECUS tool, RCOM (decnet-based) > that was more useful than SYSMAN, becasuse it was implemented > such that the remote side process was persistent (such that default > directory and logicals would survive from one command to the next). > > otoh, SSH, iirc, allows keyboard interaction with the remote shell > (in practice I hardly ever make use of that ability, but handy when > you need it) > > lastly, at least some terminal emulators have the ability to > send the same command-text to multiple sessions at once. > > $ rcom.sh prod uptime > # ssh uptime # Host A ---------------- > 12:51pm up 43 days 5:17, 0 users, load average: 0.74, 0.80, 0.90 > # ssh uptime # Host B ---------------- > 12:51pm up 50 days 17:35, 1 user, load average: 1.11, 1.05, 1.06 > # ssh uptime # Host C ---------------- > 12:51pm up 50 days 18:45, 0 users, load average: 0.85, 1.08, 1.26 > $ Now - take that to the next level, and automate it across multiple LPARs so the command only has to be manually entered ONCE. Looks like you have, but it's not very clear. What is "rcom.sh"? D.J.D. D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:55:13 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: <6a3ef5a1-e12e-4aa6-9235-05e957f99a11@n38g2000prl.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 1:31=A0pm, Marty Kuhrt wrote: > My FAA medical is stamped with "HOLDER SHALL POSSESS GLASSES WHICH > CORRECT NEAR", thus I keep a pair in my flight bag along with the > medical certificate. =A0Seems they've been printing the sectional charts > with fuzzy ink of late... =A0;^) The AME warned me last time that he would have to put corrective lenses on my medical at my next visit. I like the wording on what you've got: "POSSESS" and not "WEAR". The problem with leaving them in the flight bag is that putting them on while wearing headsets is a real pain. That's why I'm going to explore the bifocal sunglasses. FYI: www.commander.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:59:52 -0700 (PDT) From: DaveG Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: On Sep 3, 2:55=A0pm, FrankS wrote: > On Sep 3, 1:31=A0pm, Marty Kuhrt wrote: > > > My FAA medical is stamped with "HOLDER SHALL POSSESS GLASSES WHICH > > CORRECT NEAR", thus I keep a pair in my flight bag along with the > > medical certificate. =A0Seems they've been printing the sectional chart= s > > with fuzzy ink of late... =A0;^) > > The AME warned me last time that he would have to put corrective > lenses on my medical at my next visit. =A0I like the wording on what > you've got: "POSSESS" and not "WEAR". > > The problem with leaving them in the flight bag is that putting them > on while wearing headsets is a real pain. =A0That's why I'm going to > explore the bifocal sunglasses. > > FYI: =A0www.commander.org No offense and I am a wearer of glasses, but what does the subject of glasses have to do with the SMGRTL issue? Maybe I'm blind (with or without glasses) and simply can't see it. ;-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:04:29 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: <28c07da6-f5fc-4610-9ba5-aeccdc8a5d40@w39g2000prb.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 3:59=A0pm, DaveG wrote: > No offense and I am a wearer of glasses, but what does the subject of > glasses have to do with the SMGRTL issue? > > Maybe I'm blind (with or without glasses) and simply can't see > it. =A0;-)- Hide quoted text - You're right. This must be the first time a thread on c.o.v. has strayed so far off topic (not). My apologies for the inconvenience. :-) ------------------------------ Date: 3 Sep 2008 15:57:14 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: In article <6a3ef5a1-e12e-4aa6-9235-05e957f99a11@n38g2000prl.googlegroups.com>, FrankS writes: > > The AME warned me last time that he would have to put corrective > lenses on my medical at my next visit. I like the wording on what > you've got: "POSSESS" and not "WEAR". > > The problem with leaving them in the flight bag is that putting them > on while wearing headsets is a real pain. That's why I'm going to > explore the bifocal sunglasses. I like my bifocal sunglasses. Back when my prescription was simple the FAA kept correcting my medical from "glasses" to "lenses" and yes, I enjoyed flying with my contacts in. But later on the FAA stopped correcting my medical. And my optometrist says those contact lense bifocals don't really work. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:51:01 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: <00A7F17E.79A40B29@SendSpamHere.ORG> In article , Marty Kuhrt writes: >FrankS wrote: >> On Aug 23, 7:15 am, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >>> My Rx was a little more than cheap reading glasses... not at $400! >> >> Yeah, the prescription glasses cost me $600, and I never use them. >> They had a "progressive" lens and my eyes just never got used to >> them. The cheapo reading glasses do a great job. I'm going to try >> traditional bifocals for driving and flying because the gps and >> instruments are starting to enter the fuzzy viewing range. > >My FAA medical is stamped with "HOLDER SHALL POSSESS GLASSES WHICH >CORRECT NEAR", thus I keep a pair in my flight bag along with the >medical certificate. Seems they've been printing the sectional charts >with fuzzy ink of late... ;^) Lucky you. You can fly even though you can't see. After spending what seemed like a small fortune, I was told that I would never be allowed to fly on my own, let alone possess a pilot's license because of diabetes. It was fun while it lasted. -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM ... pejorative statements of opinion are entitled to constitutional protection no matter how extreme, vituperous, or vigorously expressed they may be. (NJSC) Copr. 2008 Brian Schenkenberger. Publication of _this_ usenet article outside of usenet _must_ include its contents in its entirety including this copyright notice, disclaimer and quotations. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:18:55 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: <8a7174d5-2cdf-4fcf-83b7-1f669147c3ca@r15g2000prh.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 6:51=A0pm, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: > Lucky you. =A0You can fly even though you can't see. =A0After spending wh= at > seemed like a small fortune, I was told that I would never be allowed to > fly on my own, let alone possess a pilot's license because of diabetes. > It was fun while it lasted. Not necessarily the case. I know two pilots with diabetes that actively fly (certified, not experimental or LSA). There's more paperwork involved, but it can be done. You need to find the right AME that has been through it already. AOPA is a great resource for getting that stuff figured out as well. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 18:22:48 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: SMGRTL patch available on ITRC ftp site Message-ID: <7df498d1-4897-4cf3-aed2-82385fcaa371@z6g2000pre.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 8:08=A0pm, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: > Probably because they're not ID diabetics. =A0 Hmmm... One of them brings along his meds and injects himself before or after meals (I lose track). He has to check the sugar level before each flight as well, to make sure it's within the limits. Those of us that fly with him have gotten used to seeing him go through the pin prick ritual to check sugar, followed by the little syringe and injection into his belly. ID? He takes insulin. He's legal to fly. That's all I know of his illness. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 04:45:12 +0000 (UTC) From: morris@osmium.mv.net (Skipper W. Morris) Subject: SSH and SFTP configuration Message-ID: Does anyone have experience getting Host Based Authentication working for SSH and SFTP. What I really want to do is use SFTP from a batch job. However SFTP is written to make it impossible. It bombs out if you try and include the password in a file anywhere. The supported alternative is Host Based Authentication. This is sorta like DECnet proxy access, but much more complicated to setup. I've copied keygen files to directories, edited shost.equiv files, and done just about everything except sacrifice a goats entrails on my keyboard. But I *still* have to enter a password by hand. Suggestions appreciated. /Skip ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:00:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Hein RMS van den Heuvel Subject: Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster Message-ID: On Aug 30, 9:59=A0am, "H Vlems" wrote: > "Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply" > schreef in berichtnews:g98i28$3nu$1@online.de... Philip> > A 16-port 10/100 switch costs about EUR 80. =A0Will I see an improvement > > in performance worth my money? fwiw, check out the D-Link DGS-2208. It is a nice flexible 10/100/1000 8 port switch for less than $50 in the US ($30 through Newegg after $10 rebate. If need be, find a friend in the US to buy it). Hans> - put 10 Mb/s gear on a separate 10/100 switch and 100 Mb/s systems on another. That way the link between the two switches will operate at 100 Mb/s FD. On a 10/100 switch, one or more ports may run at 10 Mb/s and this does not affect transfers between systems capable of doing 100 Mb/s. I actually have two of those DGS-2208's and decided to put all Gigabit connections on one and 'the rest' on the other, and on to dsl 4 port 10/100 switch. Mixing an matching speeds seems to work fine, but it helps me visualize my network better, and it might just help some. fwiw, Hein. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:26:03 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster Message-ID: <2c539193-66ab-4ea6-a02b-516ee5bbba17@i24g2000prf.googlegroups.com> On Sep 3, 8:00 pm, Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: > On Aug 30, 9:59 am, "H Vlems" wrote: > > > "Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply" > > schreef in berichtnews:g98i28$3nu$1@online.de... > > Philip> > A 16-port 10/100 switch costs about EUR 80. Will I see an > improvement > > > > in performance worth my money? > > fwiw, check out the D-Link DGS-2208. > > It is a nice flexible 10/100/1000 8 port switch for less than $50 in > the US > ($30 through Newegg after $10 rebate. If need be, find a friend in the > US to buy it). > > Hans> - put 10 Mb/s gear on a separate 10/100 switch and 100 Mb/s > systems on > another. That way the link between the two switches will operate at > 100 Mb/s > FD. On a 10/100 switch, one or more ports may run at 10 Mb/s and this > does > not affect transfers between systems capable of doing 100 Mb/s. > > I actually have two of those DGS-2208's and decided to put all Gigabit > connections on one and 'the rest' on the other, and on to dsl 4 port > 10/100 switch. Mixing an matching speeds seems to work fine, but it > helps me visualize my network better, and it might just help some. > > fwiw, > Hein. I briefly had a D-Link 10/100 switch (DES1008-D) when I outgrew my FS105. It had to go, because it did not work the same way as the FS105 (or FS108) - my workroom LAN was remotely connected to a wireless DSL router by a WiFi "AP client" setup (topologically similar to your setup?), and the silly D-Link consistently refused to forward traffic to the AP client whereas the FS10x both "just worked". I was surprised at this, I had expected that at that level "a switch is a switch", but it wasn't. It's good to hear a D-Link switch is now working in that kind of setup. In many circumstances it would be a non-issue, but it was money wasted for me. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 21:04:40 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: switch vs. hub for hobbyist cluster Message-ID: In article <2c539193-66ab-4ea6-a02b-516ee5bbba17@i24g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk writes: > I briefly had a D-Link 10/100 switch (DES1008-D) when I outgrew my > FS105. It had to go, because it did not work the same way as the FS105 > (or FS108) - my workroom LAN was remotely connected to a wireless DSL > router by a WiFi "AP client" setup (topologically similar to your > setup?), I have no wireless stuff. Half the fun of having a hobbyist cluster is connecting up the cables. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:57:39 GMT From: Antonio Carlini Subject: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: I've been trying to add more disk capacity to my VAXstation 400-90. Currently I have 3 18GB 68-pin SCSI disks (one IBM something or other and two Fujitsu MAH3182MP). The Fujis both have jumpers on the "START DRIVE" and the "NARROW/WIDE" jumpers. I forget how the IBM is setup. I tried replacing one Fujitsu disk with a Fujitsu MAU3036NP 36GB drive. This is known to be working (tested on a PC). It didn't show up, no matter how I set the jumpers. So I decided to be brave and tried an SCA-80 adapter with a MAT3147NC 140GB drive (out of a Sun box). No luck. Even an 18GB MAJ3182MC from Compaq didn't want to play ball. So what's the biggest drive known to work on such a VAXstation. Has anyone managed to persuade any SCA-80 drives to work? Any debugging hints? Thanks, Antonio arcarlini@iee.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 15:06:19 -0500 (CDT) From: sms@antinode.info (Steven M. Schweda) Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: <08090315061960_20200E21@antinode.info> From: Antonio Carlini > So what's the biggest drive known to work on such a > VAXstation. Has anyone managed to persuade any SCA-80 > drives to work? I boot from a 1GB (Seagate ST11200N) drive in my VAXsta 3100 model 38, but I believe that it had a bigger (4GB) SCA data disk, Seagate ST15230WC, and later, as I recall, some similar 9GB thing. I haven't had any real trouble on my old junk with any SCA disks, but I probably haven't put anything bigger than 9GB on a VAX. (I'm too far away from the VAXsta right now to check on what's in there now, but I believe that the 4GB drive failed a while ago, and the 9GB was the closest thing I could find in the junk pile.) Most of my Alpha disks are also SCA with adapters. > Any debugging hints? Start with a Seagate disk? (I have used some (Compaq?) Fujitsu thing, too (18GB? on an Alpha?), but its bearings got loud sooner than I expected, and so I swapped it out.) It all seemed pretty fool-proof to me, so other than the usual ID and termination things, what could go wrong? My Seagate STxxxxxWC drives seem to handle the narrow-wide stuff automatically -- no jumper. Most of my SCA adapters have both the 50- and 68-pin connectors, so I just use what fits the system. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steven M. Schweda sms@antinode-info 382 South Warwick Street (+1) 651-699-9818 Saint Paul MN 55105-2547 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 21:13:56 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: In article , Antonio Carlini writes: > So what's the biggest drive known to work on such a > VAXstation. Has anyone managed to persuade any SCA-80 > drives to work? I'm pretty sure the drive size itself is not the problem. The disk has to have firmware which works with VMS. Some do, some don't. Even rebadged disks (e.g. a Seagate whatever sold as an RZ whatever) often have modified firmware. Presumably, you're not putting this disk INSIDE the VAXstation, since heat might be a problem. I have a pair of 9-GB Seagate SX910800N drives (50-pin) as a shadow set, one with a direct connection to a VAXstation 4000 90A and one to a VAX 4000-105A. I've had that running continuously for about 7 years now. As far as I know, these disks were never officially certified to work with VMS, but they do so with no problems. (Before buying them, I checked here in the newsgroup.) So, with disks which aren't officially supported, your mileage may vary. Note to other hobbyists: When I have to reboot one of the VAXes, the disks connected to it are of course lost to the cluster. However, I can get a minicopy on this shadow set, even though neither of the disks is directly connected to an ALPHA. It's enough to do the proper MOUNT and DISMOUNT commands from an ALPHA. (During the startup sequence, I have some code which signals to the console that the disks are ready for mounting and waits a while to give the operator (me!) a chance to issue the mount command from an ALPHA in the cluster.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 15:30:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Len Whitwer Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: On Sep 3, 2:13=A0pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig--- remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote: > In article , Antonio > > Carlini writes: > > So what's the biggest drive known to work on such a > > VAXstation. Has anyone managed to persuade any SCA-80 > > drives to work? > > I'm pretty sure the drive size itself is not the problem. =A0The disk has > to have firmware which works with VMS. =A0Some do, some don't. =A0Even > rebadged disks (e.g. a Seagate whatever sold as an RZ whatever) often > have modified firmware. > > Presumably, you're not putting this disk INSIDE the VAXstation, since > heat might be a problem. > > I have a pair of 9-GB Seagate SX910800N drives (50-pin) as a shadow set, > one with a direct connection to a VAXstation 4000 90A and one to a VAX > 4000-105A. =A0I've had that running continuously for about 7 years now. = =A0 > As far as I know, these disks were never officially certified to work > with VMS, but they do so with no problems. =A0(Before buying them, I > checked here in the newsgroup.) > > So, with disks which aren't officially supported, your mileage may vary. > > Note to other hobbyists: When I have to reboot one of the VAXes, the > disks connected to it are of course lost to the cluster. =A0However, I ca= n > get a minicopy on this shadow set, even though neither of the disks is > directly connected to an ALPHA. =A0It's enough to do the proper MOUNT and > DISMOUNT commands from an ALPHA. =A0(During the startup sequence, I have > some code which signals to the console that the disks are ready for > mounting and waits a while to give the operator (me!) a chance to issue > the mount command from an ALPHA in the cluster.) I suspect VaxStation 4000-90 has an issue with the firmware within the unit itself in that the SCSI controller can not handle any drives larger that an 18GB disk. It's possiable to try and run an external drive off the turbo channel (PMAZ) and get larger drives to run. (Have never tried) If your really want to run larger drives I would switch to an Alpha system. (We can sell you a DS10L for $195.00 CHEAP!!!) Len Whitwer -Len Whitwer Puget Sound Data Systems, Inc. 19501 144th Ave. NE Suite D-100 Woodinville, WA 98072 e-mail mailto:len@psds.com Internet: http://www.psds.com Toll Free: (866)857-0710 Tel: (425) 488-0710 Fax: (425) 488-6414 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:30:09 GMT From: Antonio Carlini Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote in news:g9mumk$mu4$2@online.de: > I'm pretty sure the drive size itself is not the problem. The disk has > to have firmware which works with VMS. Some do, some don't. I would expect _any_ disk to _mostly_ work. SCSI has moved on a bit since the early days! I'm not saying that all disks are the same and that all of them are enterprise quality. But I'd still expect it to show up. So I expect that the problem is some setting on the SCA adapter. As for the 36GB SCSI-2 disk ... I don't know why that one didn't show up. > Presumably, you're not putting this disk INSIDE the VAXstation, since > heat might be a problem. It's been a long time, but I do remember asking the guy who was doing thermal quals for the Cougar whether I'd get away with two 4GB (RZ74?) drives inside the CPU enclosure and he was quite happy with that. I don't think it was ever officially qualified, but I never had an issue. So three modern SCSI disks should be fine (and has been for the last 5+ years or so.) > So, with disks which aren't officially supported, your mileage may vary. Yes. I've not found a non-working one yet (before this latest round of fiddling). What I'm looking for are some more datapoints: - Has anyone had a disk larger than 18GB work in a VS4000-90? - Has anyone had an SCA-80 disk work in a VS4000-90 (via what adapter?) Antonio ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:34:59 GMT From: Antonio Carlini Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: Len Whitwer wrote in news:aa33d388-f498-4684-90c8- c5b7215c1512@k36g2000pri.googlegroups.com: > I suspect VaxStation 4000-90 has an issue with the firmware within the > unit > itself in that the SCSI controller can not handle any drives larger > that an > 18GB disk. Except that 18GB is such an unlikely number over which to trip ... > It's possiable to try and run an external drive off the > turbo > channel (PMAZ) and get larger drives to run. (Have never tried) I don't know if there's a TC SCSI adapter, nor whether a VS4000-90 would even support it. But it's moot: I don't have one :-) > If your really > want to run larger drives I would switch to an Alpha system. (We can > sell > you a DS10L for $195.00 CHEAP!!!) Or cheaper still if I drag one in from the garage! But this Vaxstation has been my main VMS box for a long time now so I'm not going to ditch it that easily for some all-singing, all-dancing modern Alpha. Antonio ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:38:47 GMT From: Antonio Carlini Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: sms@antinode.info (Steven M. Schweda) wrote in news:08090315061960_20200E21 @antinode.info: > Start with a Seagate disk? I have what I have ... I'm not planning to go out and buy anything. I only want a bigger disk so that I can image all the VMS CDs I have and then make them available via LD DRIVER. Next attempt will be with a Quantum Atlas 10K (68-pin) 73GB disk. But that won't stay in there long even if it works: it sounds like a jet engine firing up when it runs! Antonio arcarlini@iee.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:17:04 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: <48bf3741$0$9636$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Question: At the SRM/firmware level on a VAX, wouldn't a SHOW DEV or SHOW SCSI or whatever command is available on that machine show any SCSI drive, whether supported or not, and irrespective of its size ? When one considers the 1gb limit on the Vaxstation 3100-30, the firmware will see larger disks and will happily boot from them. It will just snip off high order bits because it only cares about the first X lower order bits, so at one point, it may end up overwriting the start of the disk if asked to write beyond the first 1gb. So, coming back to the original poster: if the console will show any SCSI device, and this guy's console doesn't show that drive as being on the SCSI bus, then would it be correct to assume that the problem lies with the SCSI interface being incompatible (narrow/wide, 1-2-3 etc). If there is a TEST command for the SCSI bus, you might wish to try it and see if the light flashes on the drive at one point in time. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:20:39 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: VAXstation 4000-90 and SCA disks Message-ID: On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:57:39 -0700, Antonio Carlini wrote: > I've been trying to add more disk capacity to my VAXstation 400-90. > > Currently I have 3 18GB 68-pin SCSI disks (one IBM something or > other and two Fujitsu MAH3182MP). The Fujis both have jumpers on the > "START DRIVE" and the "NARROW/WIDE" jumpers. I forget how the IBM is > setup. > > I tried replacing one Fujitsu disk with a Fujitsu MAU3036NP 36GB > drive. This is known to be working (tested on a PC). It didn't > show up, no matter how I set the jumpers. > > So I decided to be brave and tried an SCA-80 adapter with a > MAT3147NC 140GB drive (out of a Sun box). No luck. Even > an 18GB MAJ3182MC from Compaq didn't want to play ball. > > So what's the biggest drive known to work on such a > VAXstation. Has anyone managed to persuade any SCA-80 > drives to work? > Souldn't be a problem, you have not connect them correctly I just checked my 4000/90 and it has two drives IBM DDYS-T18350N and IBM DDRS-34560 > Any debugging hints? > > Thanks, > > Antonio > arcarlini@iee.org -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.484 ************************