INFO-VAX Wed, 27 Feb 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 116 Contents: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Re: Buying disks for DS10s Re: Buying disks for DS10s Re: Buying disks for DS10s Re: Did I miss Infiniband clusters? Re: Eunice Re: how to convert lba to file name Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Re: Samba and text files Re: Samba and text files Re: Samba and text files Re: Samba and text files VMS Audio Update - Episode #16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:13:56 -0800 (PST) From: Neil Rieck Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: On Feb 26, 6:29=A0pm, JF Mezei wrote: [...snip...] First off, here is an overview of my recent PC activities: In 2007, I purchased the following from Factory Direct: 1) Compaq Presario (Pentium-D 820) running Windows-XP 2) Compaq Presario (Pentium-D 925) running Windows-Vista Then in September I heard a piece on NPR (Science Friday) about folding[at]home so decided to contribute to it. I bought 5 "used" high powered ATI Radeon cards on eBay for installation in some 24/7 PCs at my place of employment. (ATI cards are used as stream processors to increase science throughput by 7000% over CPU clients) http://folding.stanford.edu/ In 2008, I purchased the following from Future Shop (a.k.a. Best Buy): 1) HP-Presario based upon AMD 6000+ running Windows-Vista 2) HP-Presario based upon Core2quad (Q6600) running Windows-Vista BTW, the 2007 systems are in my basement doing folding[at]home (a tiny "folding farm" if you will). http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/folding_at_home.html > > Out of curiosity, does HP's wintel box offer anything that Dell or > Lenovo or others don't have ? > I work for a group that does PC installation and repair. I hate to paint with a wide brush BUT, in general and only based upon things I've personally seen, HP/Compaq PCs are (currenly) higher quality than either Dell or Lenovo equivalents. Caveat: maybe my employer only purchases cheaper lower end products from these companies; maybe Dell and Lenovo make better products but I just haven't seen them yet. > Do you feel comfortable buying from a company that is destroying VMS's > chances ? > Are you referring to HP? :-) :-) :-) Seriously, I only purchased systems that could run folding[at]home clients. I would have considered buying Alpha or Itanium systems if folding and/or BOINC clients were available for them but they weren't. Remember back in the old days when Alpha led the way in SETI analysis? Compaq was only interested in this when they had the best crunching stats. Then when SETI converted over to the BOINC framework (and PCs got faster due to memory technolgies like DDR2), HP didn't bother to help port BOINC to either Alpha or Itanium. Meanwhile, companies like IBM, have the BOINC platform running on every product they sell to help with medical reseach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_community_grid They make server clients available to their customers and you just know their PR people are going to take partial credit for curring Alzheimers or Cancer. (does anyone remember what happened when DeepBlue beat Kasparov? IBM stock jumped 35% even though DeepBlue was never ever going to be marketed) Many servers (Alpha and Itanium as well) do much less at night and I see nothing wrong with companies diverting these resources to medical research when possible. So why hasn't HP produced BOINC (and or folding) clients for their server products? > > A full install of Microsoft Office only took a minute. > > Quick, someone call 911 to send paramedics to Mr VAXman's house, he's > just had a heart attack after reading this :-) :-) :-) :-) Neil Rieck Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/ ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 12:52:13 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: <47c55cfd$0$25047$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <47c4a117$0$31251$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei writes: >Neil Rieck wrote: > >>{...snip...} >> A full install of Microsoft Office only took a minute. > >Quick, someone call 911 to send paramedics to Mr VAXman's house, he's >just had a heart attack after reading this :-) :-) :-) :-) Nah. Nothing revolutionary there JT. I can flush shit down my toilet and into the storage tank in roughly the same time or less, so dumping M$ shit onto a PeeCee's storage device in a minute is quite believable. As for any heart attack, let's see what today's duplex ultrasounds says for my chances. ;) -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:38:30 +0000 (UTC) From: Cydrome Leader Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: JKB wrote: > Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de > Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon, > Cydrome Leader ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >> JKB wrote: >>> Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de >>> Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon, >>> Cydrome Leader ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >>>> JKB wrote: >>>>> Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de >>>>> 6-core CPU on the horizon, >>>>> Neil Rieck ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >>>>>> For anyone watching competing technologies, Intel has a 6-core CPU on >>>>>> the horizon. >>>>>> >>>>>> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080226-details-slip-on-upcoming-intel-dunnington-six-core-processor.html >>>>> >>>>> Yes and ? My Sparc T1000 uses 8-cores CPU (and 4 threads by core) >>>>> for a long time... >>>> >>>> and each "thread" is about the speed of a 486. >>> >>> Nope. This server is a database server and runs faster than all x64 >>> I have tried. >>> >>> JKB >>> >> >> Each thread is horribly slow, there's just lots of them. shut off 30 cores >> and see how that machine handles. > > I have a lot of T1000 and I have done a lot of tests before buying > this kind of material. I have made some tests to see degradation due > to SMP architecture. This degradation is not important and when you > know what you do with this material, you can achieve very good > performances in parallel computation (or with multithreaded > softwares). Each thread is not horribly slow as you say, and its > performance is good even when load average is high. I think you > haven't tried this material. > > JKB > > PS: [OT], thus for me, bullshit. run a compile on a t1000. it's like stepping back into the 1990s. You can read the compiler jabber as it slowly scrolls by. threaded stuff seems happy on such a machine, but for single processes that want CPU, it's really really slow. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:40:46 +0000 (UTC) From: Cydrome Leader Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: JF Mezei wrote: > Neil Rieck wrote: > >> I just bought an HP-Pavilion with a quad-core (q6000) @ 2.4 GHz for >> $650 > > Out of curiosity, does HP's wintel box offer anything that Dell or > Lenovo or others don't have ? not sure about the pavilion stuff, but HP has good support on their business and workstation series machines. > Do you feel comfortable buying from a company that is destroying VMS's > chances ? Can you explain the overlap between VMS and a windows workstation? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:24:06 +0000 (UTC) From: JKB Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: Le 27-02-2008, à propos de Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon, Cydrome Leader écrivait dans comp.os.vms : > JKB wrote: >> Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de >> Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon, >> Cydrome Leader ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >>> JKB wrote: >>>> Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de >>>> Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon, >>>> Cydrome Leader ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >>>>> JKB wrote: >>>>>> Le 26-02-2008, ? propos de >>>>>> 6-core CPU on the horizon, >>>>>> Neil Rieck ?crivait dans comp.os.vms : >>>>>>> For anyone watching competing technologies, Intel has a 6-core CPU on >>>>>>> the horizon. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080226-details-slip-on-upcoming-intel-dunnington-six-core-processor.html >>>>>> >>>>>> Yes and ? My Sparc T1000 uses 8-cores CPU (and 4 threads by core) >>>>>> for a long time... >>>>> >>>>> and each "thread" is about the speed of a 486. >>>> >>>> Nope. This server is a database server and runs faster than all x64 >>>> I have tried. >>>> >>>> JKB >>>> >>> >>> Each thread is horribly slow, there's just lots of them. shut off 30 cores >>> and see how that machine handles. >> >> I have a lot of T1000 and I have done a lot of tests before buying >> this kind of material. I have made some tests to see degradation due >> to SMP architecture. This degradation is not important and when you >> know what you do with this material, you can achieve very good >> performances in parallel computation (or with multithreaded >> softwares). Each thread is not horribly slow as you say, and its >> performance is good even when load average is high. I think you >> haven't tried this material. >> >> JKB >> >> PS: [OT], thus for me, > > bullshit. > > run a compile on a t1000. it's like stepping back into the 1990s. You can > read the compiler jabber as it slowly scrolls by. > > threaded stuff seems happy on such a machine, but for single processes > that want CPU, it's really really slow. And ? If you buy a 32 threads-CPU without using multithreaded programs, you're idiot. -- Le cerveau, c'est un véritable scandale écologique. Il représente 2% de notre masse corporelle, mais disperse à lui seul 25% de l'énergie que nous consommons tous les jours. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:50:12 -0800 (PST) From: Neil Rieck Subject: Re: 6-core CPU on the horizon Message-ID: On Feb 27, 11:40=A0am, Cydrome Leader wrote: [...snip...] > > > Do you feel comfortable buying from a company that is destroying VMS's > > chances ? > > Can you explain the overlap between VMS and a windows workstation? > An instance of JF's humor :-) The HP-Pavilion (which runs Windoz) and VMS are both marketed by HP. Neil Rieck ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:57:52 -0800 (PST) From: "Bart.Zorn@gmail.com" Subject: Re: Buying disks for DS10s Message-ID: <231421ae-9da4-47f1-96d9-3566644eac13@n77g2000hse.googlegroups.com> We just finished moving our storage to brand new HP XP24000 arrays. The disks in those arrays also show the NOFE bit set. What about their supportability in HBVS sets? Because our previous arrays were HDS (Sun labeled), I use the / OVERRIDE=NO_FORCED_ERROR in the mount commands. Bart Zorn On Feb 26, 10:11 pm, bro...@cuebid.zko.hp.nospam (Rob Brooks) wrote: > ultra...@gmail.com writes: > > I thought he said he uses shadow sets and I thought > > volume shadowing was unsupported on vms with IDE > > disks ... > > > are you saying that you can run IDE shadow sets? > > Yes, you certainly can use HBVS with IDE drives, although it may not be > supported. The issue is the (non)-support for the SCSI READL/WRITEL commands. > > Those are used when HBVS detects a questionable sector on a member and wants > to "force the error" onto the other member(s) in the set. In the case of a > device that doesn't support those SCSI commands, you'll see the NOFE bit > set in the secondary device characteristics longword. > > In the case where shadowing can't "force the error", it'll simply drop the > member with the suspect sector(s). > > -- > > Rob Brooks MSL -- Nashua brooks!cuebid.zko.hp.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:17:44 +0100 From: Jur van der Burg <"lddriver at digiater dot nl"> Subject: Re: Buying disks for DS10s Message-ID: <47c51ca8$0$14344$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl> > The disks in those arrays also show the NOFE bit set. What about their > supportability in HBVS sets? This simply means that as soon as a fatal error is encountered on a member that that member will be thrown out of the shadowset. I presume that the controller will do everything in it's power to remap a bad block so that you will never see such thing, provided that you don't use a single disk on a lun in a controller like that (which will normally not be the case). So the value of hbvs is more limited, but still useful if you have multiple controllers and path's to your storage. Jur. Bart.Zorn@gmail.com wrote: > We just finished moving our storage to brand new HP XP24000 arrays. > > The disks in those arrays also show the NOFE bit set. What about their > supportability in HBVS sets? > > Because our previous arrays were HDS (Sun labeled), I use the / > OVERRIDE=NO_FORCED_ERROR in the mount commands. > > Bart Zorn > > On Feb 26, 10:11 pm, bro...@cuebid.zko.hp.nospam (Rob Brooks) wrote: >> ultra...@gmail.com writes: >>> I thought he said he uses shadow sets and I thought >>> volume shadowing was unsupported on vms with IDE >>> disks ... >>> are you saying that you can run IDE shadow sets? >> Yes, you certainly can use HBVS with IDE drives, although it may not be >> supported. The issue is the (non)-support for the SCSI READL/WRITEL commands. >> >> Those are used when HBVS detects a questionable sector on a member and wants >> to "force the error" onto the other member(s) in the set. In the case of a >> device that doesn't support those SCSI commands, you'll see the NOFE bit >> set in the secondary device characteristics longword. >> >> In the case where shadowing can't "force the error", it'll simply drop the >> member with the suspect sector(s). >> >> -- >> >> Rob Brooks MSL -- Nashua brooks!cuebid.zko.hp.com > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:59:35 -0800 (PST) From: yyyc186 Subject: Re: Buying disks for DS10s Message-ID: On Feb 26, 8:15=A0am, tadamsmar wrote: > > > Can you switch to IDE? If you like watching ice melt while waiting for a file to write. I moved my boot disk to SCSI and only use my big IDE disk for archiving stuff. > > Seem to be 80-pin SCSI disk drives out there, but do all 80-pin SCSI > drives work with all controllers. =A0 What's the "3" in SCSI 3 all about. There are many different SCSI connections. You want to avoid like the plague those "refurbished Fujitsu" without a label you see dirt cheap on eBay. I bought a bunch of them and gave all but two away. Yes, they replaced the spindle, but they pooched the logic card on EVERY ONE. They will not play well with any other SCSI device. You cannot introduce them to a currently stable SCSI chain and expect the chain to still work. I did manage to get two of them to work...after installing 3 TERMINATORS...don't ask...it defies ALL logic and law of electronics. They are extremely fast, but not worth the ulcers. Your best bet would be to call David at Island Computer and see what he has for you. If you don't already know the difference between SCSI-2 and SCSI-3, you are skilled enough to be buying SCSI drives on eBay or from anywhere else. I have yet to buy a "cheap" "refurbished" SCSI drive and have it actually "work". I've been using SCSI since the days of the 386-SX and Netware 2.11. Here is a much better question: Has anyone tried any of those 2TB network enclosures you see being sold at places like Microcenter? They claim to have a Gigabit interface. I was wondering if they could be made to play with a DS10 running a hobbiest license. I don't mind leaving the boot disk on the DS10, but was thinking it would make getting 2TB of storage worth while if I could spread it across many machines. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:52:15 -0500 From: norm.raphael@metso.com Subject: Re: Did I miss Infiniband clusters? Message-ID: This is a multipart message in MIME format. --=_alternative 004C2E61852573FC_= Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Rich Jordan wrote on 02/26/2008 05:41:29 PM: > On Feb 26, 4:41 pm, "Richard Maher" > wrote: > > Hi, > > > > IIRC there was talk a while back of HP working on Infiniband as a cluster > > interconnect; whatever happened to that? It's just that someone in the > > c.l.cobol conference posted a couple of IBM links and it jogged my memory. > > Maybe some kick-arse Orrible Oracle Cache-Fusion stats for VMS clusters > > would go someway to highlighting Rdb's unhealthy and misguided obsession > > with single-node configurations? > > > > HARDWARE: > > IBM System z10 Enterprise Class -- The forward-thinking mainframe for the > > twenty-first century > > > > http://www.ibm.com/vrm/newsletter_10577_2548_62970_email_DYN_1IN/WKle... > > > > OPERATING SYSTEM (preview) > > Preview: z/OS V1.10 -- Raising the bar and redefining scalability, > > performance, availability, and economics > > > > http://www.ibm.com/vrm/newsletter_10577_2548_63032_email_DYN_1IN/WKle... > > > > Cheers Richard Maher > > I think I remember a seminar some years ago down in the chi-pit here > in ill annoy where Terry Shannon was present and infiniband and ZLE > were discussed as up and coming. Never heard about it again though. IIRC it never reached critical mass and was dropped. Isn't the current plan to use IP? --=_alternative 004C2E61852573FC_= Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
Rich Jordan <jordan@ccs4vms.com> wrote on 02/26/2008 05:41:29 PM:

> On Feb 26, 4:41 pm, "Richard Maher" <maher...@hotspamnotmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > IIRC there was talk a while back of HP working on Infiniband as a cluster
> > interconnect; whatever happened to that? It's just that someone in the
> > c.l.cobol conference posted a couple of IBM links and it jogged my memory.
> > Maybe some kick-arse Orrible Oracle Cache-Fusion stats for VMS clusters
> > would go someway to highlighting Rdb's unhealthy and misguided obsession
> > with single-node configurations?
> >
> > HARDWARE:
> >   IBM System z10 Enterprise Class -- The forward-thinking mainframe for the
> > twenty-first century
> >
> > http://www.ibm.com/vrm/newsletter_10577_2548_62970_email_DYN_1IN/WKle...
> >
> > OPERATING SYSTEM (preview)
> >   Preview: z/OS V1.10 -- Raising the bar and redefining scalability,
> > performance, availability, and economics
> >
> > http://www.ibm.com/vrm/newsletter_10577_2548_63032_email_DYN_1IN/WKle...
> >
> > Cheers Richard Maher
>
> I think I remember a seminar some years ago down in the chi-pit here
> in ill annoy where Terry Shannon was present and infiniband and ZLE
> were discussed as up and coming.  Never heard about it again though.
IIRC it never reached critical mass and was dropped.  Isn't the current

plan to use IP? --=_alternative 004C2E61852573FC_=-- ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 14:56:36 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Eunice Message-ID: <62lc14F24939cU1@mid.individual.net> In article <13s94363o93qtb6@corp.supernews.com>, "John Wallace" writes: > > "Bill Gunshannon" wrote in message > news:62ikaaF23nhf1U2@mid.individual.net... >> In article <47c34d44$0$8063$607ed4bc@cv.net>, >> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >> > In article <47C2C324.7124.6DF980@infovax.stanq.com>, "Stanley F. Quayle" > writes: >> >>I have a client running the very-ancient Wollogong IP stack. While it > works just fine, >> >>they'd like to add DCPS for printing, but DCPS doesn't support that > stack. >> >> >> >>I vaguely remember that Wollogong became TCPware. Is that correct? >> > >> > I would opin that that is INCORRECT. BTW, it's Wollongong. Wollongong, >> > IIRC, became Attachmate. >> > >> >> Speaking of Wollongong, I still have two tapes of Eunice for the VAX >> (onre says bin the other says src. I wonder how much source is actually >> there?) hanging in my tape locker. Anybody know what the status of Eunice >> might be? Anybody around who might know? Eunices biggest shortcoming >> was its speed (actually, its lack thereof!) and if it could be re-done >> today it might not perform all that bad on an Alpha or even an Itanium >> under VMS. Which then brings up the question, "Just how much of a real >> Unix environment would it provide?" So many questions, so few answers!! >> >> 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 > > Set the wayback machine to 1985. A VAX 11/725 (power of a 730 in a smaller > box, with 2 * 26MB disks, maybe 4MB memory?) with VMS V3.7 then V4, > supporting three users. An IBM PC/XT with Venix (Unix V7-alike), again > supporting three users. A nominally fast but somewhat unstable Convergent > Technologies Unix/68K box (System V) with the same three users. And, on the > 730, as well as VMS, Eunice (a BSD 4.1 derivative at that time). The office > had three software developers working on a multiplatform project (hence the > mixture). And what was the general favourite programming environment? VMS, > because it was most productive. What was the least favourite? Eunice, > because there were no circumstances in that setup where anything it offered > was preferable to any other setup. Why anybody would be interested in Eunice > today other than for historical reasons would be a mystery to me, but... But what was the reason? I would bet the primary reason was how slow it was. I worked with Eunice on an 11/780. You typed "ls^M" and then went for a cup of coffee. But technology has eliminated that problem. The big question, and the one I don't remember enough about to know the answer to, is; "Just how truly Unix compatable was Eunice and could it be updated to provide the missing pieces today?" If it truly emulated a Unix Kernel running on top of VMS (damn, doesn't that sound like virtualization?) and as such provided things like a true fork() and exec() it might be a solution who's time has finally arrived. As I have stated here and in other threads and even in other places, there was much done in the past that were really good ideas but the technology just wasn't ready for them at the time the forward thinking people came up with the idea. Many of these have, in fact, reappeared to day, like the P-machine/JavaVM. If the owner of Eunice is contactable and if they are agreeable to releasing the source from it's current copyright status, maybe, just maybe, it is worth at least taking a look at. For those who still shy away from the stigma of the name Eunice we could always call the new project "Virtual Unix for VMS". :-) 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, 27 Feb 2008 05:21:03 -0800 (PST) From: tadamsmar Subject: Re: how to convert lba to file name Message-ID: <27e99b8c-6fb3-4ffb-a166-fd014e5eb119@t66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Feb 22, 10:53=A0pm, "R.A.Omond" wrote: > Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: > > > On Feb 22, 2:42 pm, tadamsmar wrote: > > >>An old post said to use dfu > > >>I just installed dfu. > > >>dfu search requires an integer. =A0 Do I need to convert the lba hex > >>value to an integer decimal? > > > Anyone getting discombobulated by hex vs decimal issues has no > > business hunting for LBA's > > > Just an opinion, > > Gosh, exactly what I first thought too, so, seconded :-) > > Hein, so what's the Dutch word for "discombobulated" - it wasn't > the first word one was taught in the Netherlands :-))) Blame it on DEC. They were too good. I have been managing DEC systems for 20 years, but they rarely break, so I get very little practice with this stuff! ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 12:10:37 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <62l29tF23p6l3U1@mid.individual.net> In article <47c4a89a$0$90272$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, Arne Vajhøj writes: > Richard B. Gilbert wrote: >> Fifteen or twenty years ago, there was an archiving format known as ARC >> which has since been superceded by ZIP. Can anybody read ARC today? >> Where will ZIP be fifteen or twenty years from now? Will there be a >> readable copy remaining? Will there still be any old machines and >> operating systems that can run it? > > ZIP can be read in 20 years. A pretty ambitious claim considering you don't even know the physical medium chosen will be readable in 20 years. How many people today have the necessary hardware to read 8" floppies? Or even 5.25" for that matter? 9-track tape? All of those were still in use 20 years ago and two of them were very common. Today? > > The compression algorithm (not not the file format) has been > standardized. Compress used to be a standard, too. > > The file format is widely available. > > ZIP is a requirement for Java. > > ZIP is used in both ODF and OOXML. > > ZIP can be read in 20 years. None of the above guarantees that last statement. And, it also ignores my first comment. In this industry there is nothing you can do today that you can guarantee will still be usable in 20 years. Heck, 20 years ago I know places that were still using punched cards. > > I will not guarantee for 50 years. I would not put my money on even 10 years at this stage of the game. 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: 27 Feb 2008 12:32:02 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <47c55842$0$25047$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article , Rich Alderson writes: >JF Mezei writes: > >.... >> Since BACKUP save sets are essentially proprietary to VMS, one can't >> move those savesets to a platform that will outlive VMS and expect to >> ever be able to unpack those savesets in the future. >.... >> Any recommendation on which of those I should use, and whether there >> might be other formats I could choose ? > >Let me second the recommendation of SimH virtual disk and virtual tape images. >If need be, package a copy of the SimH souces with them. > >Use a ZIP or StuffIt! program to compress them for space savings, if you like. >NB: StuffIt! provides tar, zip, and other archive formats as well as its own >proprietary ones. ...and 20 years from now do you believe that there will still be a Weendoze box that will run this? -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 14:45:35 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <62lbcfF22a0a1U1@mid.individual.net> In article <47c55842$0$25047$607ed4bc@cv.net>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > > ...and 20 years from now do you believe that there will still be a Weendoze > box that will run this? Sadly, there is a much better chance of that than a VMS system still in operation. :-( 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: 27 Feb 2008 15:55:18 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <47c587e6$0$8094$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <62lbcfF22a0a1U1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: >In article <47c55842$0$25047$607ed4bc@cv.net>, > VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >> >> ...and 20 years from now do you believe that there will still be a Weendoze >> box that will run this? > >Sadly, there is a much better chance of that than a VMS system still >in operation. :-( I didn't mean to imply that. -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:32:39 -0500 From: "Stanley F. Quayle" Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <47C56677.856.ABBF6E1@infovax.stanq.com> > Fifteen or twenty years ago, there was an archiving format known as ARC > which has since been superceded by ZIP. Can anybody read ARC today? Got it right here on my Winbox. Actually, it's PKPAK, which can read ARC files. There was some legal battle over the name "ARC". > How many people today have the necessary hardware to read 8" floppies? Amazing how many 8" floppies that some government labs have, written on a PDP-11, that contains data that can't be replaced. ('cuz we don't do nuclear weapons tests anymore.) > Or even 5.25" for that matter? 9-track tape? I can read both of those. > All of those were still in use 20 years ago and two of them were very > common. Today? [Shameless Plug Alert (tm)] http://www.stanq.com/conversion.html I have a similar story -- I did my master's thesis on a nice Xerox 820 word-processor (circa 1980, 8", hard-sectored). At a second job, they have a way to convert it to their word-processing system. I did that. That company changed to a different system, and they offered me a choice of conversion to the new system, or to text. Thought that ASCII would be around forever. http://www.stanq.com/quayle-thesis.html And so it is... --Stan Quayle Quayle Consulting Inc. ---------- Stanley F. Quayle, P.E. N8SQ Toll free: 1-888-I-LUV-VAX 8572 North Spring Ct., Pickerington, OH 43147 USA stan-at-stanq-dot-com http://www.stanq.com/charon-vax.html "OpenVMS, when downtime is not an option" ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 18:50:05 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Long term archiving of VMS stuff Message-ID: <62lpmsF237d23U2@mid.individual.net> In article <47C56677.856.ABBF6E1@infovax.stanq.com>, "Stanley F. Quayle" writes: >> Fifteen or twenty years ago, there was an archiving format known as ARC >> which has since been superceded by ZIP. Can anybody read ARC today? > > Got it right here on my Winbox. Actually, it's PKPAK, which can read ARC files. There > was some legal battle over the name "ARC". > >> How many people today have the necessary hardware to read 8" floppies? > > Amazing how many 8" floppies that some government labs have, written on a PDP-11, that > contains data that can't be replaced. ('cuz we don't do nuclear weapons tests anymore.) Really? Send them (the copntacts, not the disks :-) to me. I still have a number of machines that can do 8" floppies and I have a system that can do RX02 all the way down to raw transfer of disk images set up right now as I am looking at some disks for a bloke in England. I can probably help them. And, believe it or not, if this involved classified data I can probably put together a system at a secure facility to help them recover this data. If it really is valuable enough that they want to get it back. > >> Or even 5.25" for that matter? 9-track tape? > > I can read both of those. Which formats? RX50? All 500 different CPM formats? OS9? Tandy? :-) 9-track is really a no-brainer, But it is interesting to note that most people have gotten rid of all their 9-track drives, this place for example. I periodically have people come to me with tapes they need read. the datacenter sends them to me as the last resident dinosaur here at the University. > >> All of those were still in use 20 years ago and two of them were very >> common. Today? > > [Shameless Plug Alert (tm)] http://www.stanq.com/conversion.html > > > I have a similar story -- I did my master's thesis on a nice Xerox 820 word-processor > (circa 1980, 8", hard-sectored). At a second job, they have a way to convert it to their > word-processing system. I did that. That company changed to a different system, and > they offered me a choice of conversion to the new system, or to text. Thought that ASCII > would be around forever. > > http://www.stanq.com/quayle-thesis.html > > And so it is... How about if I one-up you again. I have a brand new, still in the box, never had the components installed Xerox-820 motherboard still up in my attic. And, yes, I could put my hands on it anytime I wanted. I really should build it before the parts all disappear. It would make a nice new :-) CPM machine. 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, 27 Feb 2008 05:21:05 -0800 (PST) From: AEF Subject: Re: Samba and text files Message-ID: On Feb 26, 2:22 pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: > In article , > Dean Woodward writes: > > > On Feb 24, 2:50 pm, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: > >> In article , moro...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes: > >> >{...snip...} > >> >This may actually not be an issue after all. I've been checking regular > >> >(created with EDT) text files with Notepad from a PC to see if things > >> >worked. I read that Notepad is rather brain damaged when working with > >> >Samba-served files so I opened a file with Wordpad, and it works correctly. > >> >Other tools seem to work as well. > > >> Something brain damaged in Weendoze? Who'd of thunk it? > > > Yeah, well, I bet nobody's seriously looked at notepad since Windows > > 3.1. It works for them, why fix it? Myself, I use PSPad, a decent free > > text editor. I digress. > > You can't believe how funny this sounds. No wonder the industry has stopped > taking VMS people seriously. Notepad isn't btoken, people. It does exactly Say what? People don't take VMS seriously because a brain-dead editor can't read some files transfered by a brain-dead transfer protocol? Say what? Notepad? IT worker: Hey boss, let's by some VMS systems. Boss: No you idiot. If I transfer files from there to Notepad via SAMBA, I won't be able to read them in Notepad! I want a system that can work with Notepad!!! All out clients are always using Notepad. Notepad forever!!! > what it was designed to do. The fact that it can not deal with non MSDOS > files is not a bug. Other editors suffer the same kinds of problems like > opening a MSDOS file in (real) vi. Ever notice all those ^M at thend of > every line? Of course, EMACS automatically converts all of these formats > but that's probably because it's internal format is linked-list rather > than record format. Like I said in my other posts in this thread, Notepad accepts only pairs as line terminators, but nothing else. OTOH, Wordpad and Word can accept that AND or as line terminators. When I FTP a variable-length file from VMS to Windows (using MS-DOS FTP) it works fine in all three programs: Notepad, Wordpad, and Word. The resultant file contains pairs as line terminators. Oh, and MS-DOS EDIT likes LF and CRLF, but not CR or LFCR. This is a reason to take Microsoft seriously? I just tried FTP-ing an MS-DOS file to my account on a Solaris SunOS 5.8 box and vi reads it just fine without any ^M's. Maybe you need new FTP software. > > > > > Serendipitously, I've got a file transfer issue, sending files to > > (apparently) a PC-based sftp server, and I'm having the same issue, > > and google led me to this thread. The 'administrator' (sic) lo on the > > other side wants me to "turn word wrap off on my word processor". > > > There are no words to explain to him that none of the 30+ submitters > > are constructing hundreds of fixed-length records by typing them into > > a word processor. *sigh*. > > > So, meanwhile, I'm poking at CONVERT to get it to add CR/LF to the end > > of my data files... > > Gees.... At least in the early days of IT we knew enough not to expect > systems automagically convert all our files for us. We had to know what > the differences were and usually write our own utilities (which were > usually shared and this is long before the FSF and GNU) to handle it. > Anybody remember getting C programs over BITNET on an IBM mainframe and > receiving a file with all the "{" and "}" changed into some thing else? You can't have it both ways, Bill. First you complain that VMS doesn't automagically convert files (or be more cooperative with such). Now you complain that we're all ninnies because we expect it to. Please. > > 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 AEF ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 2008 13:53:57 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Samba and text files Message-ID: <62l8bkF2466hrU1@mid.individual.net> In article , AEF writes: > On Feb 26, 2:22 pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: >> In article , >> Dean Woodward writes: >> >> > On Feb 24, 2:50 pm, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >> >> In article , moro...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes: >> >> >{...snip...} >> >> >This may actually not be an issue after all. I've been checking regular >> >> >(created with EDT) text files with Notepad from a PC to see if things >> >> >worked. I read that Notepad is rather brain damaged when working with >> >> >Samba-served files so I opened a file with Wordpad, and it works correctly. >> >> >Other tools seem to work as well. >> >> >> Something brain damaged in Weendoze? Who'd of thunk it? >> >> > Yeah, well, I bet nobody's seriously looked at notepad since Windows >> > 3.1. It works for them, why fix it? Myself, I use PSPad, a decent free >> > text editor. I digress. >> >> You can't believe how funny this sounds. No wonder the industry has stopped >> taking VMS people seriously. Notepad isn't btoken, people. It does exactly > > Say what? People don't take VMS seriously because a brain-dead editor > can't read some files transfered by a brain-dead transfer protocol? > Say what? Notepad? No, that's not what I said. The IT industry doesn't take VMS upporters (and, as a result, VMS) seriously because they frequently make statements the originakl in this thread thus demonstrating how little they really understand the industry outside of their little legacy world. Read my lips - Just because Notepad doesn't edit files it was not designed to edit it doesn't mean their is a bug or even a shortcoming in Notepad. It means the user chose the wrong tool for the job. Now, who's fault is that? > > > IT worker: Hey boss, let's by some VMS systems. > > Boss: No you idiot. If I transfer files from there to Notepad via > SAMBA, I won't be able to read them in Notepad! I want a system that > can work with Notepad!!! All out clients are always using Notepad. > Notepad forever!!! Truer than you care to accept. Or haven't you noticed that the system of choice throughout the IT world is the one that has files that work with Notepad. :-) > > >> what it was designed to do. The fact that it can not deal with non MSDOS >> files is not a bug. Other editors suffer the same kinds of problems like >> opening a MSDOS file in (real) vi. Ever notice all those ^M at thend of >> every line? Of course, EMACS automatically converts all of these formats >> but that's probably because it's internal format is linked-list rather >> than record format. > > Like I said in my other posts in this thread, Notepad accepts only > pairs as line terminators, but nothing else. As it was designed to do. So, where is the bug or shortcoming in that? If you want to edit files with other record separators choose an editor that was designed to do that. How hard is that to understand? > OTOH, Wordpad > and Word can accept that AND or as line terminators. So then, where is the problem? MS provided the tools to use when Notepad is not the right one. Sure makes perfect sense to me. > > When I FTP a variable-length file from VMS to Windows (using MS-DOS > FTP) it works fine in all three programs: Notepad, Wordpad, and Word. > The resultant file contains pairs as line terminators. Oh, > and MS-DOS EDIT likes LF and CRLF, but not CR or LFCR. This is a > reason to take Microsoft seriously? Why would you think the opposite is true? MS doesn't use those formats so why should they worry about support for them? IBM mainframes used EBCIDIC and Univac 1100's used Fielddata. Is it somehow a bug or even a shortcoming that they didn't (don't?) use ASCII? I have bad news for you. The whole world is not using VMS. As a matter of fact, it is rapidly becoming the most irrelevant OS on the planet. And blaming other OSes for VMS's shortcomings (ie. not using the formats other systems use rather than their wierd RMS stuff) is just as much a short- coming in VMS as it is any other OS. > > I just tried FTP-ing an MS-DOS file to my account on a Solaris SunOS > 5.8 box and vi reads it just fine without any ^M's. Maybe you need new > FTP software. If you FTP files between dis-similar systems using ASCII mode the file get's converted twice. Once to netdata format (which, by the way, is the same as Unix format) as it goes out and then to native text file format when it arrives at the destination. But then, the original complaint was about SAMBA and not FTP. And, if you FTP a text file in binary mode you deserve what you get!! But people here should not feel too bad as this whole thing seems to be an up and coming trend in the IT world. Just this week I have seen, in other groups, a complaint that AWK couldn't deal with multiple byte characters for which it was not designed to deal. And, even better, someone who was complaining that the FreeBSD install was totally screwed up because he had to keep switching CD's to install the packages he wanted. There are ,at last count, either two or three CD's of pacakages. And he thought it was FreeBSD's fault that the one's he personally wanted were not all (with all dependencies) on disk one. In some ways I am glad I am approaching retirement. Things do not look well for the future of this industry. 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: 27 Feb 2008 14:41:57 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Samba and text files Message-ID: <47c576b5$0$25065$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <62l8bkF2466hrU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: >In article , > AEF writes: >> On Feb 26, 2:22 pm, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote: >>> In article , >>> Dean Woodward writes: >>> >>> > On Feb 24, 2:50 pm, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >>> >> In article , moro...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes: >>> >> >{...snip...} >>> >> >This may actually not be an issue after all. I've been checking regular >>> >> >(created with EDT) text files with Notepad from a PC to see if things >>> >> >worked. I read that Notepad is rather brain damaged when working with >>> >> >Samba-served files so I opened a file with Wordpad, and it works correctly. >>> >> >Other tools seem to work as well. >>> >>> >> Something brain damaged in Weendoze? Who'd of thunk it? >>> >>> > Yeah, well, I bet nobody's seriously looked at notepad since Windows >>> > 3.1. It works for them, why fix it? Myself, I use PSPad, a decent free >>> > text editor. I digress. >>> >>> You can't believe how funny this sounds. No wonder the industry has stopped >>> taking VMS people seriously. Notepad isn't btoken, people. It does exactly >> >> Say what? People don't take VMS seriously because a brain-dead editor >> can't read some files transfered by a brain-dead transfer protocol? >> Say what? Notepad? > >No, that's not what I said. The IT industry doesn't take VMS upporters >(and, as a result, VMS) seriously because they frequently make statements >the originakl in this thread thus demonstrating how little they really >understand the industry outside of their little legacy world. Read my >lips - Just because Notepad doesn't edit files it was not designed to >edit it doesn't mean their is a bug or even a shortcoming in Notepad. >It means the user chose the wrong tool for the job. Now, who's fault >is that? This isn't a VMS issue Bill. SAMBA, not VMS, is serving these files! I tried this past summer to install SAMBA at a site as a replacement for Advanced Server they were using. With A.S. they had absolutely NO issue reading files served from VMS with A.S. HOWEVER, using SAMBA these files were all mucked up. Now, you can potty-mouth VMS and detract its propon- ents all you want, but the truth of the matter is that this is NOT a VMS issue. Notepad can only read a select microcosm of formats. If they're not exactly to its liking the result is gobbledegook. A.S. did translate the files it was asked to serve to Notepad's liking and SAMBA could not. Alan nailed this one! Can anyone say SAMBA? Now, I'll go back to corrupting files with vi by scrolling through them. ^^ Gotta love linux! Sure it corrupts files but l@@k how popular it is! -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:09:14 -0500 From: "PEN" Subject: Re: Samba and text files Message-ID: wrote in message news:47c576b5$0$25065$607ed4bc@cv.net... [snip] > This isn't a VMS issue Bill. SAMBA, not VMS, is serving these files! > > I tried this past summer to install SAMBA at a site as a replacement for > Advanced Server they were using. With A.S. they had absolutely NO issue > reading files served from VMS with A.S. HOWEVER, using SAMBA these files > were all mucked up. Now, you can potty-mouth VMS and detract its propon- > ents all you want, but the truth of the matter is that this is NOT a VMS > issue. Notepad can only read a select microcosm of formats. If they're > not exactly to its liking the result is gobbledegook. A.S. did translate > the files it was asked to serve to Notepad's liking and SAMBA could not. > > Alan nailed this one! Can anyone say SAMBA? > Works for me guys (on both ODS-2 and ODS2-5 volumes). Early versions of the CIFS External Field Test kits had this problem with any file with Variable Length or VFC record formats, but that problem is/was fixed (prior to the V1.0 SSB release) for Variable Length record formats (tested files created wtih $ CREATE, $ EDIT/EDT, $ EDIT/TPU) as long as the share stanza or the [global] section contains: vfs object = varfvc or vfs objects = varvfc vfc formats (i.e., created using $ OPEN) are not _yet_ supported. With "log level = 3" in smb.conf [global] section, the client's debug log file (samba$root:[var]log_., by default) will contain such messages as: Initialising custom vfs hooks from [varvfc] Successfully loaded vfs module [varvfc] with the new modules system I don't think this was dependent on any C RTL fixes, but regardless, you need the latest C RTL ECO (release mid-December 2007) for other CIFS issues... Paul ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:50:58 -0800 (PST) From: IanMiller Subject: VMS Audio Update - Episode #16 Message-ID: <1a87b259-fd37-4116-9d86-4c245a40c543@72g2000hsu.googlegroups.com> In this episode, we'll just be covering some of the news highlights since the last update. A short one for a short month. http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=08/02/27/3362130 Contributions, feedback etc via http://www.openvms.org/feedback ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.116 ************************