INFO-VAX Fri, 31 Oct 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 588 Contents: Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue Re: Another DST issue cli difference between HSZ50 and HSZ22 Re: cli difference between HSZ50 and HSZ22 Re: Converting CMS to a Linux based code/source management system Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Re: Name that VAX/VMS version based on banner RAID Controllers going cheap Re: Seamonkey browser port for Alpha now available Re: Seamonkey browser port for Alpha now available ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:06:17 +0100 From: "Martin Vorlaender" Subject: Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Message-ID: Chuck Aaron wrote: > Would this have an EV3 or EV5.6? The "4" in "4/500" tells it's an EV4 (at 500 MHz). cu, Martin -- One OS to rule them all | Martin Vorlaender | OpenVMS rules! One OS to find them | work: mv@pdv-systeme.de One OS to bring them all | http://vms.pdv-systeme.de/users/martinv/ And in the Darkness bind them.| home: martin.vorlaender@t-online.de ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:36:32 +0100 From: Marc Schlensog Subject: Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Message-ID: <20081030193632.4a32a462@web.de> On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:06:17 +0100 "Martin Vorlaender" wrote: > Chuck Aaron wrote: > > > Would this have an EV3 or EV5.6? > > The "4" in "4/500" tells it's an EV4 (at 500 MHz). They manufactured EV4 with 500MHz? And put them in AS800s? I kind of doubt that. IIRC, the AS800 was an EV5 machine, with all the EV5 above and including 400MHz being EV56. What's an EV3 supposed to be? PRISM? :) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:34:51 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: Alpha 800 4/500 Message-ID: On 30 Oct, 17:47, Chuck Aaron wrote: > Would this have an EV3 or EV5.6? > > Thanks. Plenty of AlphaServer 800 info is still available at http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/archive/800/ (assuming that you mean AlphaServer 800; there don't seem to be other obvious candidates). Is there a particular reason you want to know whether it's EV5.6 (aka 21164A) rather than the other (remote) possibility (EV5/21164)? I'm reasonably confident this family were EV56, but not 100%. If your interest is byte/word addressability, please check section 14.9 of the VMS FAQ at http://hoffmanlabs.org/vmsfaq/vmsfaq.txt which may shed more light on the subject, depending on your needs. I'm not aware of any EV3 boxes that saw light of day as commercial products. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:48:51 -0700 (PDT) From: tadamsmar Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: <48dc4719-d3a9-4ba5-ab32-6212801bfcb6@t42g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Oct 30, 1:35=A0pm, norm.raph...@metso.com wrote: > moro...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) wrote on 10/30/2008 > 11:56:00 AM: > > > > > > > We have an application that until this spring was running on a VAX > running > > V7.3. =A0It has been ported to an Itanium running V8.3. =A0The applicat= ion > is > > (very) old and does not handle DST time changes. =A0What they've done i= n > the > > past for DST time changes is wait until a quiet time, stop the > > application, manually set the time and restart the application. > > > However, the new system has been set up using NTP and with SYSGEN > parameter > > AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV set to 1. =A0This means that VMS will automatically set > the > > clock back this Sunday for us. =A0However, this parameter is _not_ > dynamic. > > Is there a way to change things so as to not set the time back, short o= f > > rebooting with AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV 0? =A0(I've already set it back to 0 in = the > > CURRENT parameters so this won't bite us again this spring (assuming > there > > is a reboot before then, not a good assumption with VMS!) > > > Stopping NTP is simple enough, it's the auto time change that's the > issue. > > We can't predict when there will be a quiet time. > > Someone should correct me if I'm wrong and provide details if I'm not, bu= t > if > you remove the TimeZoneRule from the logical name tables the reset should > fail.- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - Also, you might be able to modify the timezonerule logical or configure to a different time zone so that the NOV 2 is a NOOP. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:15:32 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: <490a15e8$0$22542$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Michael Moroney wrote: > We have an application that until this spring was running on a VAX running > V7.3. It has been ported to an Itanium running V8.3. The application is > (very) old and does not handle DST time changes. Could you provide some background on why the application does not handle the time change ? When I worked with the ST400 (SWIFT) application, they would disconnect from the network between 01:00EDT and 02:00EST to ensure no message came in or out during a period where time stamps could be duplicated. But the application itself had no problems with it. So having some background on why your app can't handle the time change might help with finding a solution. There was some application some time ago which tweaked the clock speed and allowed the system to take 2 hours to go from 01:00 to 02:00. This way, no time stamp would be duplicated and no message would be stamped with a time that was before the previous transaction. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:03:30 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: norm.raphael@metso.com writes: >Someone should correct me if I'm wrong and provide details if I'm not, but >if >you remove the TimeZoneRule from the logical name tables the reset should >fail. I think I figured out a way to sort of do the same thing. Use sys$manager:UTC$TIME_SETUP.COM and set the timezone to EST. The time change becomes a no-op. They manually set the time back an hour when convenient. So far testing shows this is what will happen. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:04:32 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: tadamsmar writes: >Also, you might be able to modify the timezonerule logical or >configure to a different time zone so that the NOV 2 is a NOOP. Great minds think alike. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:19:04 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: JF Mezei writes: >Michael Moroney wrote: >> We have an application that until this spring was running on a VAX running >> V7.3. It has been ported to an Itanium running V8.3. The application is >> (very) old and does not handle DST time changes. >Could you provide some background on why the application does not handle > the time change ? >So having some background on why your app can't handle the time change >might help with finding a solution. It's very old, has no concept of time zones (or needs to), it uses time as returned by SYS$GETTIM(). It implicitly assumes time is monotonically increasing, and having events end before they ever begin really throws a monkey wrench into things. Stopping and immediately restarting the application is what they've been doing so far. >When I worked with the ST400 (SWIFT) application, they would disconnect >from the network between 01:00EDT and 02:00EST to ensure no message came >in or out during a period where time stamps could be duplicated. But the >application itself had no problems with it. Being down for an hour isn't acceptible. >There was some application some time ago which tweaked the clock speed >and allowed the system to take 2 hours to go from 01:00 to 02:00. This >way, no time stamp would be duplicated and no message would be stamped >with a time that was before the previous transaction. To them, something timestamped 4:10 AM (EDT) which really happened at 3:10 AM (EST) is acceptible as it is easily traceable to a specific time. Something with a time 3:56 AM which really happened at 3:10 AM (EST) isn't. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:31:28 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: <490a35c3$0$18960$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Michael Moroney wrote: > as returned by SYS$GETTIM(). It implicitly assumes time is monotonically > increasing, and having events end before they ever begin really throws a > monkey wrench into things. How long do "transactions" last ? Milliseconds, seconds, minutes ? tens of minutes ? Hours ? If transactions last just a few seconds, then you could stop them coming in say 10 seconds before the time change at 02:00 EDT. All transactions would have time to complete before the time change. Once time has changed, you can then let new transactions come in.People would just think there was a temporary glitch lasting a couple of seconds. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:01:30 +0100 (CET) From: BRAD@rabbit.turquoisewitch.com (Brad Hamilton) Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: In article , Michael Moroney wrote: >JF Mezei writes: > >>Michael Moroney wrote: >>> We have an application that until this spring was running on a VAX running >>> V7.3. It has been ported to an Itanium running V8.3. The application is >>> (very) old and does not handle DST time changes. > >>Could you provide some background on why the application does not handle >> the time change ? > >>So having some background on why your app can't handle the time change >>might help with finding a solution. > >It's very old, has no concept of time zones (or needs to), it uses time >as returned by SYS$GETTIM(). It implicitly assumes time is monotonically >increasing, and having events end before they ever begin really throws a >monkey wrench into things. [...] If you can take advantage of using UTC on the system, you might avoid these problems. Hoff has written a nice article: ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:57:40 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: JF Mezei writes: >Michael Moroney wrote: >> as returned by SYS$GETTIM(). It implicitly assumes time is monotonically >> increasing, and having events end before they ever begin really throws a >> monkey wrench into things. >How long do "transactions" last ? Milliseconds, seconds, minutes ? tens >of minutes ? Hours ? Tens of minutes to many hours, though some can be closed in seconds. But this is all barking up the wrong tree. What happens when the time goes backwards is well understood to be bad, and there is a deadline of 2:00 AM, NOV 2 2008 to get the setback to happen in a controlled manner. Others have suggested running off GMT or something and I suggested that as well once but they have to keep local time. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:12:08 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Another DST issue Message-ID: <490a778d$0$22527$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Michael Moroney wrote: > Others have suggested running off GMT or something and I suggested that as > well once but they have to keep local time. Moving to GMT may advance the time (I assume you are in north america). But eventually you want to switch the time back and you will get problems at that time. You might consider changing to a time zone which does not have daylights savings time. For instance, Saktaschewan Canada doesn't change time. (it is central time). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:22:08 -0400 From: "David Turner, islandco.com" Subject: cli difference between HSZ50 and HSZ22 Message-ID: As we don't do much of the older stuff, I thought I would ask here. We have a customer using HSZ50s in house (Government Nuke Facility) connected to DS10 systems running Unix 4.0G I suggested going to something newer as these HSZ50s are getting v old now (as is the HSZ22) and harder to find reliable working parts... don't get me wrong, they work ... but for how long is my issue. Is there much difference between the CLI for the HSZ50 and the HSZ22 ?? I know the HSZ22 was designed by CMD so I would assume there are differences... Also - customer wants to use 36GB 10KPM UW Disks in BA356 shelves - that's fine - but once connected to the HSZ50 they are god-awful slow - Wide to narrow conversion - and errors up the wazoo ! Comments and experiences welcomed. David -- David B Turner ============================================= Island Computers US Corp PO Box 86 Tybee GA 31328 Toll Free: 1-877 636 4332 x201, Mobile x251 Email: dturner@islandco.com International & Local: (001)- 404-806-7749 Fax: 912 786 8505 Web: www.islandco.com ============================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:38:49 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: cli difference between HSZ50 and HSZ22 Message-ID: <05711a77-8733-4c8c-934b-a838a1163a9e@y29g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Oct 30, 4:22=A0pm, "David Turner, islandco.com" wrote: > Comments and experiences welcomed. I can't answer regarding the CLI similarity or difference between HSZ50 and HSZ22. My only comment would be that an HSG80 solution using one of the BA370- based cabinets (RA8000, ESA10000, ESA12000) would be a relatively inexpensive upgrade (compared with EVA, which is likely the only thing HP would want them to buy). It uses the same blue SBB that they're using in the BA356, so they're not spending money to get the new slimline drive caddies. Granted, the HSG80 is also end-of-life, but they work wonders compared to HSZ-class controllers and fully support wide drives up to 146gb. I also have 300gb drives running on firmware v8.7, but it's not a supported configuration. I moved a client from HSZ70 to HSG80 years ago, and the CLI (from what I can recall) wasn't too significantly different. I suspect the CLI comparison between HSZ50 and HSG80 wouldn't find many differences either. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:37:48 -0500 From: "Craig A. Berry" Subject: Re: Converting CMS to a Linux based code/source management system Message-ID: Ken Robinson (GMail) wrote: > Has anyone converted files stored in CMS to a Linux based code/source > management system? If so, which Linux system was the target and could it be > done automatically? > > We are currently running CMS Version V4.2 on OpenVMS 7.3-2. I haven't done this, but I have looked at various conversions among other version control systems. I assume by "converted files stored in CMS" you mean preserving revision history and other data recorded in the CMS library. That's a non-trivial task and it seems pretty unlikely there are any ready-made tools to do it. There are two basic approaches. One is to acquire a deep knowledge of the internals of both origin and target systems and do a wholesale conversion of the repository. The other approach is to use the published interfaces to pull one change at a time from the old repository and apply it to the new one. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Either way you need to know a fair amount about how the concepts of the two VCSs differ and how they can be mapped to each other and how much information really needs to be preserved after the conversion. Do CMS classes and groups correspond to branches, tags, or what exactly in the system you would move to? Do you need to preserve the username responsible for each change, or do you need to map it to a new username on the target system? Do ACLs need to be translated to some form of access control on the new system? Can you live with having the date of each change look like the date of the conversion, or do you need to preserve the date as recorded in the original system (which generally means faking it on the new system)? This is a small subset of the questions likely to come up when looking for or building a conversion tool. As far as what to convert to, that's a pretty open question. I would hate to be a commercial VCS provider these days since there are so many excellent free options. Subversion is probably the most similar to CMS conceptually. git is what the Linux kernel developers use and is very popular among Linux people. I've had a look-see at porting it to VMS and may get back to it someday. Mercurial is used by Java, Mozilla, Netbeans, and OpenSolaris and has the advantage of being available on VMS (without being able to do the conversion locally, the second approach mentioned above would be pretty much impossible). There are *lots* of other options. You'll have to define what features you want and look around. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:09:11 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Message-ID: <490a146a$0$18948$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Bob Koehler wrote: > Yes, but if he's in COM instead of CUR, then he's not doing I/O, > which is what he wants to know about. What is the definition of "doing I/O" ? What if he is doing IO to a device that requires a driver calculate PI to 5 million decimals for every character received ? That would put the process in COM while it is doing IO. Also, you need to consider asynchronous IO. Your process could be busy computing the meaning of live in its main loop while there are asynchronous IOs that complete and trigger ASTs. Or, after realising there is no meaning to life, your process could decide to SYS$HIBER indefinitely, at which point, it will be in HIB and not computing much, but IOs would still be able to be done and complete via triggering of ASTs. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Oct 2008 15:52:21 -0600 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Message-ID: In article <490a146a$0$18948$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei writes: > Bob Koehler wrote: > >> Yes, but if he's in COM instead of CUR, then he's not doing I/O, >> which is what he wants to know about. > > What is the definition of "doing I/O" ? > > What if he is doing IO to a device that requires a driver calculate PI > to 5 million decimals for every character received ? That would put the > process in COM while it is doing IO. In which case he's CUR, not doing I/O. When doing I/O you are generally in LEF. > Also, you need to consider asynchronous IO. Your process could be busy > computing the meaning of live in its main loop while there are > asynchronous IOs that complete and trigger ASTs. In which case he's CUR, while doing I/O. > Or, after realising there is no meaning to life, your process could > decide to SYS$HIBER indefinitely, at which point, it will be in HIB and > not computing much, but IOs would still be able to be done and complete > via triggering of ASTs. And you point is? I don't think you're following up on issues that the OP is interested in. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:32:44 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: IO TIME vs COMputable Message-ID: <0KpOk.3738$U5.23869@newsb.telia.net> JF Mezei wrote: > > What is the definition of "doing I/O" ? Usualy, in 9 cases of 10, the definition is "waiting". And knowing how long your process is "waiting" can in many cases be just as interesting as knowing how much time it's actualy "working"... Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Oct 2008 15:53:54 -0600 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Name that VAX/VMS version based on banner Message-ID: In article <6mtrt5FidnapU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: > > I am seeing the replies, but not the original (year old) messages. > Are you people using Google Groups? Nope, not Google. All of a sudden my unread counter had jumped to match the total available counter. Don't know why, maybe some work on the server misalligned the IDs. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:59:42 -0400 From: "David Turner, islandco.com" Subject: RAID Controllers going cheap Message-ID: Want to run RAID in your DS10/15/20/20e/25/ES40 or ES45??? We have cheap controllers with software as follows: Smartarray 5302a 2 Channel 128MB U160 $499 Smartarray 5304a 4 Channel 256MB U160 w/ADG $799 Smartarray 6402a 2 Channel U320 128MB $599 Smartarray 6404 a 4 Channel U320 256MB w/ADG $899 PCI/PCI-X compatible 64Bit (will also work in 32bit slot) -- David B Turner ============================================= Island Computers US Corp PO Box 86 Tybee GA 31328 Toll Free: 1-877 636 4332 x201, Mobile x251 Email: dturner@islandco.com International & Local: (001)- 404-806-7749 Fax: 912 786 8505 Web: www.islandco.com ============================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:03:20 +0100 (CET) From: BRAD@rabbit.turquoisewitch.com (Brad Hamilton) Subject: Re: Seamonkey browser port for Alpha now available Message-ID: In article <49093611$0$2092$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei wrote: >Brad Hamilton wrote: > >> want to do with it is to play with Mail and Newsgroups. I'm going to attempt >> to find out how to invoke *only* the mail program, since the browser, although >> more stable than yesterday, is *slow*. >> [...] > >With Mozilla, this is in the preferences panels where you specify what >window you want to begin with. ( mail&newsgroup or navigator/browser) Thanks - it's been years since I used Mozilla. This works fine; now to try to actually configure a couple of newsgroups... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:05:17 +0100 (CET) From: BRAD@rabbit.turquoisewitch.com (Brad Hamilton) Subject: Re: Seamonkey browser port for Alpha now available Message-ID: In article <6mu80qFip6mnU1@mid.individual.net>, Michael Unger wrote: >On 2008-10-30 03:03, "Brad Hamilton" wrote: > >> [...] >> >> Seamonkey works better for me today, after the nightly reboot. All I really >> want to do with it is to play with Mail and Newsgroups. I'm going to attempt >> to find out how to invoke *only* the mail program, since the browser, although >> more stable than yesterday, is *slow*. >> [...] > >The Windows version has a command line switch "-mail" -- you might try >that on VMS as well ... Yes, I tried that after visiting the Seamonkey website - unfortunately, it doesn't work on VMS. See JF's previous reply for the proper method of invoking Mail & Newsgroups at Seamonkey startup. Thanks anyway. [...] ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.588 ************************