SUBMISSION: VARIOUS SOFTWARE ITEMS FROM COMPASSION INTERNATIONAL AND/OR KEN RICHARDSON - 05-Dec-1990 Submitted by: Ken Richardson Compassion International PO Box 7000 Colorado Springs, CO 80933 Phone: (719) 594-9900 FAX: (719) 594-6271 TELEX: (025)910-380-9380 (CMPASHUN) Easylink: 62868920 Disclaimer: This software is made available to the public with no warranties, guarantees, or liability for its use or any consequences thereof. After all, it's free. However, I wouldn't submit it if I didn't think it worked correctly. And the code written at our site tends to be well-structured, efficient, clean, and debugged. Contacting the contributor: If you have any questions or comments, you can find me at the address or phone number listed above. I don't mind phone calls. However, I'm not easy to reach by phone, so feel free to leave a message. General description: This submission contains my "standard" DECUS contribution. Some items have been upgraded since the last Fall DECUS tape. Some have not. Executables are provided for every program; source code for most. Probably the most popular programs are SYSTATUS and ENPAGE. New this year: EATCPU. Philosophical comments: In the past, I've rarely included the sources. Why? Because I wanted to know that if any bugs were ever reported, they weren't due to program changes that I didn't know about. (As it turns out, no bugs have ever been reported, although I've heard from several sites that use this software.) However, I've had a change of heart about including the sources. This is because I read a notes file on DECUSERVE that praised one of my programs, but lamented that the source code wasn't provided. I guess I'm willing to risk some spurious bug reports if the source code will really be useful to somebody. (It sure warms your heart to hear one of your programs praised!) I've also read that many sites won't use contributed software without the sources, because of the security risk. That makes sense. However, I GUARANTEE that none of my software does anything inappropriate. Now, won't your security manager be THRILLED to hear that there's nothing to worry about, because Ken said so! :-) Anyway, I go to the DECUS symposia every year, so contributing rogue software would be a good way to commit suicide. I'd have 7,000 people taking turns wringing my neck. Of course, I'm assuming that 100% of the attendees have the good sense to use MY wonderful software. They do, don't they? Detailed descriptions: The following are descriptions of most of the files you'll find in this submission. CLOSE_VMS_ACCT.COM We use this command procedure to close our VMS accounting files every month. This facilitates usage analysis and archiving of accounting data by month. Nothing fancy, but if you don't have it, here it is. CONCATENATE_SIXEL.EXE This program concatenates SIXEL graphs side-by-side. At our site, we do Datatrieve graphs of CPU performance statistics. Lots of them. So I wrote this program to minimize paper by printing these graphs in two columns. First we run our REGIS graphs through RETOS, which gives us SIXEL graphs. Then we run the SIXEL graphs through this program. CONCATENATE_SIXEL_EXAMPLE.COM This little command procedure shows the basics of using CONCATENATE_SIXEL. COUNTREC.EXE I got tired of copying files to the null device in order to find out how many records they contain (copy/log file.dat nl:), which can be quite slow and resource-intensive with large files, so I wrote this simple record-counting program. If you define it as a foreign command, you can specify the input file on the command line. Otherwise, it prompts you. Wildcards are not implemented yet; however, COUNT_RECORDS.COM provides this. COUNT_RECORDS.COM This procedure allows wild-carded counting with COUNTREC.EXE. We have a COUNT command defined as @CI$COMMAND:COUNT_RECORDS.COM, which lets us type "COUNT filespec" to count records in a bunch of files. DIALUPINI.EXE We use US-ROBOTICS hayes-compatible modems on our dialups (the kind that use the AT command set). They work fine; we use the same lines both for dialing in and for dialing out. However, when the modems power up, they default to sending extra information to VMS (like "RING<CR>" and "CONNECT<CR>") every time someone dials in. This causes VMS to complain that username RING is trying to break in. So we run DIALUPINI.EXE to tell the modems to be quiet, and everything works much better. DIALUPINI.EXE expects a logical name (DIALUP) to point to the port that needs to be reset, and it expects you to already have allocated the port and set the appropriate speed (assuming you are using autobaud on the port). You might need a privilege to allocate the dialup port, depending on how your ports and system parameters are set. I think it's SYSPRV. For more info about DIALUPINI.EXE, see INIT_DIALUPS.COM. DROIDS.EXE This game lets you get chased by robots on a 24x40 field. Only in a weak moment will I confess who wrote it. It runs efficiently, using only one QIO per screen update and one per input. It requires write access to a CI$GAMES directory, which is where it stores the "droids champions" list (droids.dat). If more than one player will be using the same droids.dat file, you need to SET FILE/PROT=W:RW to the file after the first player creates it. EATCPU.EXE This program consumes an (almost) exact percentage of a VAX's CPU capacity. It is typically used to test the response time of various software packages under controlled load conditions. For example, "How fast (slow) is product X when the CPU is Y% saturated?" If you are considering using a slower processor for an application, response times on slower processors can also be predicted fairly reliably by slowing down the faster processor by the appropriate ratio. EMPTY.SIXEL This "empty" sixel graph is used by CONCATENATE_SIXEL_EXAMPLE.COM. It is used as the "left-hand" graph in a concatenation operation in order to indent a SIXEL graph. It has the minimum SIXEL codes needed by CONCATENATE_SIXEL for a successful concatenation operation. ENPAGE.DOC ENPAGE.DOC is a documentation file describing the ENPAGE utility. For more info, see ENPAGE.EXE or read ENPAGE.DOC. ENPAGE.EXE When we got our nifty new LN03 laser printers, we needed a way to put all that power in the hands of our office staff. ENPAGE is how we did it. This version uses less CPU time than the Fall 1989 version. ENPAGE reformats a text document, adjusting margins (left, right, top, & bottom), pitch (both vertical & horizontal), orientation (portrait or landscape), point-size, and stuff like that. It compensates for embedded tabs regardless of the left margin you specify. If you've never encountered that problem, please ignore the previous sentence. For people who write letters, ENPAGE can optionally output the first page separately from the rest of the document. We use this feature because we have one printer loaded with letterhead and one loaded with plain-bond. ENPAGE output can be directed either to devices or to files. ENPAGE output is suitable primarily for LN03 laser printers (it inserts LN03 control sequences into the results). To use the output on some other printer, you'd probably have to edit the device control sequences out of the first and last lines of the output files. FORCEX.EXE Have you ever had a program get into an infinite loop? Well, neither have I, but just in case it ever happens, this program will exercise the VMS system services just enough to list out all the processes on the system and ask you if you want to force-exit any of them. The display format has been upgraded since Fall 1989. It's not any fantastic new discovery, but it does have the advantage of stopping just the current image rather than the entire process. The process returns to the $ if it's interactive, or to the next line in the command procedure if it's batch. FORCEX requires WORLD privilege, GROUP privilege, or the same username, depending on the target process. INIT_DIALUPS.COM We have three dialup lines; they are known by system-wide logicals ci$dialup_1, ci$dialup_2, and ci$dialup_3. We initialize the modems on those lines during system startup and once per hour (in case someone has been using a modem and left it in a non-standard condition). The INIT_DIALUPS.COM command procedure looks for all devices pointed to by ci$dialup_n. For each such unallocated device, INIT_DIALUPS.COM allocates the device, sets the speed, initializes the modem (using DIALUPINI.EXE), and deallocates the device. The maximum speed for each modem must be specified by the logical ci$dialup_max_speed_n (e.g. ci$dialup_1 = "TXA0" and ci$dialup_max_speed_1 = "2400"). LASER2.COM This is the procedure that drives the ENPAGE utility. Actually, at our site we have another procedure that provides novice users with somewhat simple access to rather sophisticated printer characteristics on several printers throughout the office, including our plain-bond laser printer. However, LASER2.COM shows the basics of using ENPAGE.EXE when driving a letterhead/plain-bond printer combination. LOCK_TERMINAL.EXE This is a simple program that accepts and verifies a password, then locks your terminal until you type the password again. Useful for leaving an account logged in while you go away for a couple of minutes. It traps CONTROL-C and CONTROL-Y. However, if you are logged-in remotely using $SET HOST, CONTROL-Y could still be used by a malicious user to return to your original process on the local node. For this reason, I use it mainly on local nodes. REMINDPRT.COM This is a simple command procedure to provide access to REMINDPRT.EXE. REMINDPRT.EXE We are using a REMINDER utility that came from a DECUS tape a few years ago. It was written by someone at AT&T. If you are using the same REMINDER program, you might find REMINDPRT.EXE useful. It is NOT compatible with other reminder programs from more recent DECUS tapes! We needed more flexibility in printing out reminders, so we wrote this program to print simple calendars from the reminder file. No REMINDER user should be without it. Output goes to CI$OUTPUT. REMRESCHD.EXE One of the annoying things about that AT&T REMINDER utility is that it deletes old reminders automatically, even if you never got to see it. Well, every night right after midnight I run REMRESCHD.EXE to reschedule old reminders up to today. That way REMINDER becomes a to-do list that won't let me forget a reminder unless I explicitly delete it. Caution: If your login.com automatically displays your reminders ($REMIND ME) like mine does, you need to jump over that line when f$mode is "BATCH" so your midnight rescheduling job can run REMRESCHD on your reminder file before REMINDER gets to it. SHUT_LOGS.COM We use this command procedure to close our OPERATOR.LOG file nightly and open a new one. It also closes our database monitor logfiles, which are produced by VAX DBMS. It resubmits itself nightly, skipping weekends automatically. Again, nothing fancy, but if you don't have it, here it is. For some reason, the VMS developers wrote the $REPLY/LOG command to require a terminal as its sys$command device. Therefore, in order to shut OPERATOR.LOG, this procedure temporarily grabs the operator console as its sys$command device. Back when I wrote this procedure, it wouldn't work from batch unless it did some sort of trick like this. I haven't checked to see if VMS has lifted this requirement since. SYSTATUS.EXE This is SYSTATUS version 5.5 for VMS version 5.2 or later. It's a system status monitor with some interesting display flexibility. We use it constantly at our site. I frankly don't know how people can manage a VAX without being able to see the info that SYSTATUS provides (like which program everyone is running). One of the most useful features is the ability to limit the display just to busy processes (this can reduce a 100-process display down to 20 or so processes). To try this feature, run SYSTATUS and type the three letters SAD (Select Attribute Dormant). To use SYSTATUS, you just type RUN SYSTATUS at the $ (we have a STATUS foreign-command defined to do this). Most commands are one character (no <CR>). On-line help is available by typing the letter "H" while SYSTATUS is running. Significant changes since SYSTATUS version 5.2 (on the Fall 1989 DECUS tape): 1. Several efficiency upgrades. SYSTATUS now uses less CPU time (it wasn't bad before). 2. A bug fix. SYSTATUS would occasionally "hang" when the user entered a scan time during program activation. 3. Improved avoidance of inswapping other processes. Prior to VMS V5.2, SYSTATUS avoided inswapping through knowledge of which GETJPI items caused inswapping and which didn't. However, this no longer worked as of VMS V5.2, so the GETJPI flag jpi$m_no_target_inswap, a new feature in VMS V5.2, became important to use in SYSTATUS. 4. Delete-pending processes are now visible. These are processes that you've tried to delete, but they're waiting for something important, like a MUTEX semaphore for example. (I think I said that right.) These processes have always shown up on SHOW SYSTEM, but a new feature in VMS V5.2 made them available to SYSTATUS. So naturally I took advantage of it. Setting up SYSTATUS: SYSTATUS is easy to set up. Minimally, you can just RUN it. However, it needs GROUP or WORLD privilege to look at processes outside your own UIC. We install it without these on most of our machines, so that only users who normally have these privileges can watch other users' processes. If you want everyone to be able to look at other processes in their UIC group, install it with GROUP. If you want everyone to be able to look at all other processes, install it with WORLD. We have SYSTATUS installed SHARED to save memory when multiple people use it at the same time. I recommend you install it with ALTPRI. If you do, SYSTATUS temporarily boosts its own priority to 16 during each brief data-collection interval, thus improving the accuracy of the results. It disables control-y before boosting the priority, and restores the previous state of control-y (usually enabled) after dropping back down to the original base priority. If you're running any realtime stuff on your system at priority 16, I suppose you wouldn't want to install SYSTATUS with ALTPRI (nor run it from an account with ALTPRI turned on). For the other 99% of VAX sites, I do recommend that you install it with ALTPRI for the most accurate results. SYSTATUS automatically senses your terminal width and height. If your terminal is in 132-column mode, you get more info than in 80-column mode. If you have a terminal with more or fewer than 24 lines, the display will scroll correctly. This all assumes that you have done a $SET TERMINAL/WIDTH=n/PAGE=n type of command. SYSTATUS does screen output with as few QIOs as possible, usually just one. If it can't display its buffer with one QIO, it tells you why and exits. The reason for the QIO failure is usually EXQUOTA. This can be corrected by increasing the SYSGEN parameter MAXBUF, which I have set at something like 10000 for our systems. SYSTATUS_VMS_V3.EXE This is an older version of SYSTATUS for VMS version 3. SYSTATUS_VMS_V4.EXE This is SYSTATUS version 5.0 for VMS version 4. USING COMPASSION INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE If you use any of the software in this submission, you will probably need to edit our command procedures or define logical names to account for the conventions that we use at Compassion. The items you will probably need to change or define include: LOGICAL NAMES: ci$command The directory that holds our local command procedures. ci$dialup_n The dialup ports at our site (n = 1, 2, 3, etc.). ci$dialup_max_speed_n The dialup port speeds at our site (n = 1, 2, 3, etc.). ci$games The directory that holds games and related files. ci$images The directory that holds our local images. ci$input The primary input device for a program. ci$output The primary output device for a program. ci$output_2 The secondary output device for a program. ci$workfiles The intermediate directory commonly used at our site. QUEUE NAMES: laser$print_1 The name of our plain-bond print queue. laser$print_2 The name of our letterhead print queue. normal$batch The name of our priority-4 batch queue. FORM NAMES: letter1 The form type normally mounted on laser$print_2. plain_bond The form type normally mounted on laser$print_1.