From: CRDGW2::CRDGW2::MRGATE::"SMTP::CRVAX.SRI.COM::RELAY-INFO-VAX" 30-NOV-1989 01:47 To: MRGATE::"ARISIA::EVERHART" Subj: Monthly Posting Part 2 Received: From UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU by GIZMO.SRI.COM with TCP; Wed, 29 NOV 89 18:45:07 PDT Received: by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (5.61/1.40) id AA17175; Wed, 29 Nov 89 18:23:24 -0800 Received: from USENET by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU with netnews for info-vax@kl.sri.com (info-vax@kl.sri.com) (contact usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU if you have questions) Date: 30 Nov 89 02:17:15 GMT From: njin!limonce@rutgers.edu (Tom Limoncelli) Organization: Drew University/NJIN Subject: Monthly Posting Part 2 Message-Id: Sender: info-vax-request@kl.sri.com To: info-vax@kl.sri.com The Info-VAX Monthly Posting ---------------------------- PART 2 -- Beginner "Common Questions". (Coordinated by Tom Limoncelli, written by many others) (Part 1 is an introduction to Info-VAX. Part 3 is Advanced Common Questions.) [ Changes since last month: The note at the end of ,LIC ] Save this message for future reference! Table of Contents: ,GEN -- General beginner questions (the Top 7 quickies) updated 1989-10-03 Many, many authors ,NEW -- News and announcements about this message updated 1989-10-03 limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) ,MAI -- Mail tips added 1989-09-29 CADS_COLE@GALLUA.BITNET (Kevin Cole) ,QU1 -- Disk quotas updated 1989-09-02 Rollo.Ross@levels.sait.oz.au ,QU2 -- Diskquota Discrepency updated 1989-09-02 R602MS5U@vb.cc.cmu.edu (Marc Shannon) [There are two articles on disk quota because I couldn't decide which to use. If someone would like to edit them into one article and submit it, fine. -TAL] ,CPD -- How to copy an entire directory structure updated 1989-08-03 bfoss@goofy.apple.com (Brad Foss) ,TIM -- Why does VMS time start at November 17, 1858 updated 1989-08-28 billy@vaxb.acs.unt.edu (Billy Barron & DEC) ,LIC -- Linking and VAX C updated 1989-11-10 pjt@yin.cpac.washington.edu (Larry Setlow) (the ",REQ", ",GEN", etc are keywords. If you search for that text (including the ",") you will be brought to the beginning of that article.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,GEN General questions answered (from various sources) 1. Where can I get old Info-VAX messages? The archives are held at SRI.COM (128.18.10.1), in files with obvious names like "info-vax.txt.1". Ramon Curiel does the thankless job of maintaining them. (Yea Ramon!) In the UK, archives are accessible via a mail server. People should send a message, with EITHER the subject field OR the message body containing HELP, to info-vax-request@Uk.Ac.Ulcc.Ncdlab (addresses in the UK are the opposite way round from the rest of the worlds ... sigh...) The server will tell you what to do. Two years worth of Info-VAX messages are stored at VTVM2 which is a Bitnet redistribution point. If you have an account there, it is best to use the database searcher. Otherwise send the commands to LISTSERV@VTVM2 using TELL (on an IBM system) or SEND (on a VMS system) or "netwrite" (on a Unix system with the UREP software). Send HELP and INFO commands to get started. A sample command is something like: "$ SEND LISTSERV@VTVM2 SEND INFO-VAX LOG8901B" which will get you some of the messages from Jan 1989. You can also use INDEX to get a list of the Info-VAX files archived. [Any more places? Please tell me! -TAL ] 2. How do I reset my new mail count when it gets out of sync? In other words, what do I do when it says, "You have 1 new mail message" but I really don't? Simple: Send yourself a mail message OR have someone else mail you a message. If you are in MAIL, exit and re-enter mail. At the MAIL> prompt, type READ/NEW until it tells you that there are no new messages. Then enter READ/NEW one more time. Everything is fixed. 3. What is the plural of VAX? VAXen, VAXln, VAXlen, VAXs, VAXes and just about everything else you can imagine. It's been discussed on the net many times and there has never been a conclusion. Therefore, you may call it anything you want. 4. Where do I get VI, Kermit, (X,Y,Z)Modem, UUCP, ANU news, GNU software, LZW/Compress/Decompress ? See the monthly "Where do I get xxx?" posting. 5. What's DECUS? There is a separate monthly posting about DECUS. Look for it. 6. What do you do about "undeliverable mail" messages that bounce back to you from various sites when you post a message to Info-VAX? If the reason is "MTA congestion" just delete them. If the reason is a bad address, contact the postmaster at the destination site, suggesting that he request that the addressee be removed from the Info-VAX mailing list. 7. How can I submit a correction or addition to this monthly posting? Check out the signature for addresses. Additions are always welcome, corrections are prefered to be in VMS DIFF format if they are specific. Unix DIFF format isn't as human-readable and almost never matches up with the text I have stored here. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,MAI From: "Kevin Cole at Gallaudet U. Washington DC" Subject: Mail tips [Some of these symbols may conflict with those in the ,SIGS posting, but the information is still good. -TAL] To tell MAIL to use an editor, include the following line in your LOGIN.COM: $ MAIL :== MAIL/EDIT=(SEND,REPLY=EXTRACT,FORWARD) (Remove the "=EXTRACT" from the above line if you do not want the text from old messages to be included in replies and forwarded messages.) MAIL will default to CALLABLE_EDT as it's choice of editor. If you would prefer to use EVE/TPU, put the folllowing in your LOGIN.COM as well: $ DEFINE/NOLOG MAIL$EDIT CALLABLE_TPU Another option is to have MAIL spawn a seperate process for editing. You might wish to do this if you have a COM file which you want executed every time you use MAIL. For example, I have one which turns off broadcasts before starting the editor so that I do not get interrupted while sending mail. In that case, just define the logical MAIL$EDIT to point to your COM file instead of a callable editor. Like so: $ DEFINE/NOLOG MAIL$EDIT SYS$LOGIN:MAILEDIT.COM Finally, if you wish to redefine the numeric keypad functions while within mail you can create a file (say, for example MAIL.INI) which contains the new definitions: DEFINE/KEY PF2 "SHOW KEY/ALL"/TERMINATE DEFINE/KEY PF2/IF_STATE=GOLD "SHOW KEY/ALL/STATE=GOLD"/TERMINATE DEFINE/KEY PF3 "EXTRACT"/TERMINATE DEFINE/KEY PF4 "IN%"""INFO-VAX@KL.SRI.COM""""/TERMINATE DEFINE/KEY PERIOD "DELETE"/TERMINATE DEFINE/KEY ENTER ""/TERMINATE And add a line in your LOGIN.COM which points the logical MAIL$INIT at the file $ DEFINE/NOLOG MAIL$INIT SYS$LOGIN:MAIL.INI --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,QU1 From: Rollo.Ross@levels.sait.oz.au Subject: Diskquotas Date: Sat, 2 Sep 89 22:52 +0930 Users often complain that their disk usage as shown by SHOW QUOTA doesn't match the total size of their files. Here are some reasons why this happens: 1) Every file consists of at least one 1-block header and some number of clusters, which are usually 3 blocks long. You may have only 1 block of data, but you have removed 4 blocks from the space available to others, and your quota shows 4 blocks gone. To see the effect of this, use $ DIR [...]/SIZE=ALL/GRAND The "SIZE=ALL" shows both the space used and the number of blocks allocated to the file. It does not show the 1 block header for each file, but you can see how much this adds up to by looking at the count of files shown. So, if you add together the LARGER of the two sizes shown in the grand total given by the command above, and the total number of files, you have a better idea of the total number of blocks allocated to you. 2) You may have files owned by you but stored in other directories. Your own top-level directory is an example - it is is a xxxxx.DIR file stored in the directory "above" where you log in. You can check the size of that file using the command DIR/SIZE=ALL/BY [-] 3) The quota file is sometimes inaccurate. For example, it may not get updated if the system crashes just after you increase or decrease your usage. Bugs in VMS on a cluster also cause the quota file to drift out of touch with reality. Your system manager may need to do some disk maintenance (ANALYZE/DISK/REPAIR dev) to fix this problem. Check with him/her to see if this is the case. So, your problem is probably partly misunderstanding of how your disk quota works (items 1 and 2 above), possibly confused by a bug in the system (item 3). Rollo Ross, Network Manager Comp Centre, Sth Aust Institute of Technology, The Levels, SA 5095, Australia Voice: +61 8 343 3158 Old way: Rollo.Ross@levels.sait.oz{.au} Fax: 349 6939 DTE 505282622004 Standard way: Rollo.Ross@sait.edu.au --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,QU2 Subject: Diskquota Discrepency From: Marc Shannon Date: Sat, 2 Sep 89 16:35:58 The SHOW QUOTA returns the number of blocks you have allocated over the entire disk. Presuming that all of your files are in your directory tree, use the DIRECTORY/SIZE=ALLOC/GRAND [...] command (from your home directory) to see just how many blocks you are using. Note the "/SIZE=ALLOC" qualifier; this has DIRECTORY report the number of blocks which each file is *allocated*, not just in actual use. (Most systems have a "cluster-size" of 3 which means that every file must take up a multiple of 3 blocks, so even files with one line in them take up 3 blocks.) Okay, now you're getting close, but VMS still charges you a bit more. For every file you own, you are also charged 1 block so that VMS can store information in the INDEXF.SYS file on your disk about how to find your file. So, take your total number of blocks and add the number of files and directories found in your directory tree. Now you should be almost at the number reached by SHOW QUOTA. Don't forget your main directory. Use DIR/SIZE=ALLOC [-]username.DIR to see how large your main directory file is and add that (plus 1 for its INDEXF entry) to your total. This final total should be what SHOW QUOTA returns. --Marc --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,CPDIR From: bfoss@goofy.apple.com (Brad Foss) Subject: Copy-Directory to Remote Host Organization: Network Innovations Lines: 26 > Does anyone know why DECNET doesn't support the copying of directories > with unknown sub-directory structure? Right now, to copy a directory > between 2 vaxes I must login to the destination host, create all the > sub-directories required in the destiation directory and use individual > copy commands to pull the files from each source host sub-directory into > the destination directory. I've had occasion to move directory structures, even whole disks to a remote node. The only way I've succeeded at it is to use BACKUP to create a saveset on the remote host, then log in to the remote host and backup (restore) the saveset to the desired disk. Like this; (at local host) $ BACKUP/LOG DISK:[DIR...]*.*;* REMOTE::DISK:[DIR]SAVESET.BCK/SAVE ( at remote host) $ BACKUP/LOG DISK:[DIR]SAVESET.BCK/SAVE DISK:[*...] You said any help would be appreciated, and this sure beats having to create directories and use COPY. BACKUP will create the directories as needed. I expect others will suggest that you create the saveset on the local host, then DECnet it to the remote host. It seems to run a little quicker that way. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,TIM [ DEC wrote it, Billy Barron submitted it, I edited it down (it included a complete history of time telling and calendars) -TAL ] COMPONENT: SYSTEM TIME OP/SYS: VMS, Version 4.n LAST TECHNICAL REVIEW: 06-APR-1988 SOURCE: Customer Support Center/Colorado Springs QUESTION: Why is Wednesday, November 17, 1858 the base time for VAX/VMS? ANSWER: November 17, 1858 is the base of the Modified Julian Day system. The Modified Julian Day was adopted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Obser- vatory (SAO) in 1957 for satellite tracking. Eighteen bits would allow the Modified Julian Day (the SAO day) to grow as large as 262,143 ((2 ** 18) - 1). From Nov. 17, 1858, this allowed for seven centuries. Using only 17 bits, the date could possibly grow only as large as 131,071, but this still covers 3 centuries, as well as leaving the possibility of representing negative time. The year 1858 preceded the oldest star catalog in use at SAO, which also avoided having to use negative time in any of the satellite tracking calculations. This base time of Nov. 17, 1858 has since been used by TOPS-10, TOPS-20, and VAX/VMS. Given this base date, the 100 nanosecond granularity implemented within VAX/VMS, and the 63-bit absolute time representation (the sign bit must be clear), VMS should have no trouble with time until: 31-JUL-31086 02:48:05.47 At this time, all clocks and time-keeping operations within VMS will suddenly stop, as system time values go negative. Note that all time display and manipulation routines within VMS allow for only 4 digits within the 'YEAR' field. We expect this to be corrected in a future release of VAX/VMS sometime prior to 31-DEC-9999. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ,LIC Subject: Another frequently asked question From: Larry Setlow Date: Fri, 8 Sep 89 10:35:48 -0700 A recent posting (maybe you saw it) reminds me of another frequently-asked question: "How come we have to have the vaxcrtl explicitly added to the LINK command?" I'm not sure I know the whole answer, other than "the C library's names are too likely to conflict with user-named routines, so we can't do it automatically without pissing a lot of people off, and we don't like C very much, anyway, so nyah." but I know it's been covered a few times before. Larry [Another note: You don't have to list it in the LINK command if you add: $ DEFINE LNK$LIBRARY SYS$LIBRARY:VAXCRTL to your LOGIN.COM (or type it before you use the C compiler). For even more information, try $ HELP CC LINK. -TAL] -- Tom Limoncelli -- limonce@pilot.njin.net -- tlimonce@drunivac.bitnet rutgers!njin!tlimonce -- Drew University, Madison, NJ -- 201-408-5389 "All's well that ends well... if your a functional rationalist."