INFO-VAX Sat, 12 May 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 260 Contents: RE: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet? Re: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet? Re: Digital *is* a Software Company? (Was Re: Sun Studio 11 (Solaris IDE)) IDE)) Re: Digital *is* a Software Company? (Was Re: Sun Studio 11 (Solaris)) How to reset X-window Re: How to reset X-window Re: How to reset X-window LDdriver V9.0 has been released. Re: LDdriver V9.0 has been released. Re: PID for detached process. Re: SET CONF SMTP/QUEUES Re: SET CONF SMTP/QUEUES Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability: FALSE and invalid VMS usernames Re: Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability: FALSE and invalid VMS usernames Re: SYSMAN problem Re: SYSMAN problem Re: wha' happen? Re: wha' happen? [Completely OT] A useful service for Boob: Atheist offers to send letters post- Re: [Completely OT] A useful service for Boob: Atheist offers to send letters p ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 09:23:47 -0400 From: "Main, Kerry" Subject: RE: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet? Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Repacholi [mailto:prep@prep.synonet.com] > Sent: May 11, 2007 8:09 AM > To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com > Subject: Re: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet? >=20 > jbigboote writes: >=20 > > On May 9, 10:57 am, JF Mezei wrote: > >> Larry Kilgallen wrote: > > ... >=20 > >> Also, do not forget that Cerner has a deal where cerner customers > can > >> contiune to purchase Alpha systems for the foreseable future. >=20 > > Too bad Cerner decided to drop VMS and replace it with HP-UX. If I'm > > an existing Cerner client looking to port from VMS, and my choices > > are AIX or HP-UX, why would I choose HP-UX? Maybe because I already > > have Alpha servers, which can run HP-UX, but sooner or later you'll > > have to move to Itanium, and then you'll have to port again, no? > > And if I'm going to buy new hardware, I might as well go with IBM, > > who for better or worse have done fairly well with AIX and the POWER > > platform, and appear poised to continue doing so for the foreseeable > > future. I administer both AIX and VMS systems, and I can say that in > > the last 18 or so months getting support for VMS software and Alpha > > hardware has become noticeably more irksome. >=20 > And if you have P5s now, you can plug in P6 4.5Ghz CPUs in a few weeks > to > upgrade them. >=20 > So where is the itanic that will outperform them? Or deliver twice the > performance of the Alpha come to think of it. Lets get beyond this performance thing. Yes, it is important in some areas, but look at it from the typical CIO perspective looking across all their servers. The question most CIO's have today for vendors today is "when the majority of my servers are running at 10 to 20% utilization (and that's being kind since most Wintel servers are running at less than 10%), why would we want to decrease this utilization even further overall?" With respect to OpenVMS vs Wintel, the typical comparison is one app on Wintel vs one app on OpenVMS. However, what happens when you compare 10 apps to be consolidated vs 10 apps on OpenVMS?=20 Know any Cust's who would do App stacking on Wintel? Not likely. Hence, you end up with 10 Wintel OS images to manage, license, monitor etc. With OpenVMS, you do not have the technical and cultural issues with App stacking as you do with Wintel/Linux. And OS image numbers are directly related to FTE counts - by far the biggest component of any IT budget. Based on the typical current state priorities one typically hears from CIO's today, it is usually along the lines of: - 60+% App / DB concerns - 30+% OS related (since app often takes advantage of and is integrated with OS features) - 10-% HW (and if OS hides issues with HW, and new HW can outperform current HW - regardless of whether its best on the block, then this concern becomes even less. Sun's server performance record in the past is a great example of this) Regards Kerry Main Senior Consultant HP Services Canada Voice: 613-592-4660 Fax: 613-591-4477 kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom (remove the DOT's and AT)=20 OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 12:29:03 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet? Message-ID: <4d1fe$4645eb64$cef8887a$19874@TEKSAVVY.COM> Main, Kerry wrote: > The question most CIO's have today for vendors today is "when the > majority of my servers are running at 10 to 20% utilization (and that's > being kind since most Wintel servers are running at less than 10%), why > would we want to decrease this utilization even further overall?" Adding a VMS server that runs on a different proprietary platform that is useless to the rest of the world (IA64) doesn't helo because you can't *really* run windows on it with all the applications. You might be able to run Linux on it, but then you have to build all your executables from open source since so little is distributed with IA64 executables. Now, if VMS ran on the 8086 and itself provided virtualisation, it could then host Windows and Linux as applications while running he real apps on VMS. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 08:12:10 -0500 From: Hunter Goatley Subject: Re: Digital *is* a Software Company? (Was Re: Sun Studio 11 (Solaris IDE)) IDE)) Message-ID: Martin Krischik wrote: > Hunter Goatley schrieb: > >> BLISS is the one I thought of first. ;-) > > Then start BLISS Websites, BLISS Blogs, Discuss BLISS on the usenet - > and make sure the phrase "BLISS Programming" is used as well. > I did all of that in the early '90s (back in the days when the only people on the 'net were computer people). But at the time, DEC charged so much for the compiler that few of the companies that would have really benefited from it could afford it. When Alpha came out, DEC didn't even plan to release BLISS for Alpha at all. I lobbied long and hard to get them to release it, and thanks to the help of some key people inside DEC, BLISS ended up on the Freeware CD, where it can still be found. However, by then, too many people had too much C experience to want to give BLISS a try, and MACRO-32 programming was disappearing quickly, too. My BLISS, MACRO-32, VMS-Internals, and Alpha-IDS lists all died out around '96 or so due to lack of interest. In fact, it's been quite a while since I've written something new in BLISS, as even I don't think BLISS like I used to. -- Hunter ------ Hunter Goatley, Process Software, http://www.process.com/ PreciseMail Anti-Spam Gateway for OpenVMS, Tru64, Solaris, & Linux goathunter@goatley.com http://www.goatley.com/hunter/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 08:38:20 +0200 From: Martin Krischik Subject: Re: Digital *is* a Software Company? (Was Re: Sun Studio 11 (Solaris)) Message-ID: <4696115.SWe76lTpJf@linux1.krischik.com> Bob Koehler wrote: >> Now AFAIK TPU is a programming language - so you have me confused here. >> Maybe you are looking for: > TPU is a programming language for writing text editors and a basic > editting engine on top of which that language runs.  Any time you're > using TPU you're using both. Yes that is indeed the beauty of TPU. Sad that active development halted. >> If you don't like that you can also use Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme, or >> Tcl - provided the language is installed on the System. Strange but >> true: the only extra language I got working in Vim/VMS is Ruby ;-) . > None of the above were designed to write text editors.  It can > be done, but why bother?  I will look into the scripting language > to see what it can do. I don't use any of them either. And since Vim 7.0 now has Directroy and List as data structures some of the Perl, Python etc. scripts have actually been rewritten in VimScript. Martin -- mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 08:42:42 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: How to reset X-window Message-ID: PuTTY SSH window on W2K to Alpha 7.3 ran program with garbage output to display causing it to go into funny state, printing odd chars. It is a simple enough matter to kill the display and open a new one, but is there a way to reset it? It appears that characters have been remapped. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 16:22:50 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: How to reset X-window Message-ID: <00A67818.B8BE8F37@SendSpamHere.ORG> In article , "Tom Linden" writes: > > >PuTTY SSH window on W2K to Alpha 7.3 ran program with garbage output to >display causing it to go into funny state, printing odd chars. It is a >simple enough matter to kill the display and open a new one, but is there >a way to reset it? It appears that characters have been remapped. I only use putty around the base of the toilet and the bathtub. :) -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 12:32:55 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: How to reset X-window Message-ID: <3d70d$4645ec4c$cef8887a$19874@TEKSAVVY.COM> Tom Linden wrote: > PuTTY SSH window on W2K to Alpha 7.3 ran program with garbage output to > display causing it to go into funny state, printing odd chars. It is a > simple enough matter to kill the display and open a new one, but is there > a way to reset it? It appears that characters have been remapped. @SYS$MANAGER:DECW$STARTSERVER.COM RESTART But this will kill all your apps and you'll need to login again. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 12:28:42 +0200 From: Jur van der Burg <"lddriver at digiater dot nl"> Subject: LDdriver V9.0 has been released. Message-ID: <464596e7$0$327$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl> LDdriver V9.0 has just been released, it includes virtual tape support. Enjoy! http://www.digiater.nl/lddriver.html Jur van der Burg. ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 2007 13:47:40 +0200 From: peter@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) Subject: Re: LDdriver V9.0 has been released. Message-ID: <4645c57c@news.langstoeger.at> In article <464596e7$0$327$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, Jur van der Burg <"lddriver at digiater dot nl"> writes: >LDdriver V9.0 has just been released, it includes virtual tape support. Many thanks for your efforts. -- Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER Network and OpenVMS system specialist E-mail peter@langstoeger.at A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 08:27:09 +0200 From: Martin Krischik Subject: Re: PID for detached process. Message-ID: <2691094.HR3ZdfaAft@linux1.krischik.com> Larry Kilgallen wrote: > I prefer the old style, so something in mixed case (easier to read) > is going to be a comment (or literal string). But comments are grey and strings are blue - should that be not enough to make them out easily ;-) . And yes we use a colour laserjet to print sources when needed. Martin -- mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 09:59:01 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: SET CONF SMTP/QUEUES Message-ID: In article , JF Mezei writes: > Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote: > > That's the big question: HOW does it bounce right off? Obviously, I > > If you TCPIP> SET SERVICE SMTP/LIMIT=2 > > then, when the 3rd call comes in, it is immediatly terminated. (as if > the system were down). A legitimate SMTP sender will retry in 15 minutes > or more. In my case, not good. Essentially, this is greylisting. However, in my case, the spammer might connect to my external backup MX server. While on the one hand it will reject obvious spam, on the other hand if it accepts email to a non-existent user on my system which I later reject due to Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability being set to false, then my backup MX server will bounce the message (since it initially accepted it), creating backscatter spam. The limit is 10 at the moment in my case. If I crank it up to, say, 15, are there any other changes (system parameters) which need to be made? ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 2007 13:47:03 +0200 From: peter@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) Subject: Re: SET CONF SMTP/QUEUES Message-ID: <4645c557$1@news.langstoeger.at> In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >However, in my >case, the spammer might connect to my external backup MX server. While >on the one hand it will reject obvious spam, on the other hand if it >accepts email to a non-existent user on my system which I later reject >due to Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability being set to false, then my backup >MX server will bounce the message (since it initially accepted it), >creating backscatter spam. Then you need to accept the mails on the backup MX server locally (means checking for valid usernames) and then forward it (one-by-one username) to the primary MX server (with the real mailboxes) instead. -- Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER Network and OpenVMS system specialist E-mail peter@langstoeger.at A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:26:17 +0200 From: Martin Krischik Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Message-ID: <1387024.qUcPMCgmMH@linux1.krischik.com> JF Mezei wrote: > Is it really worth fighting against HP for the survival of VMS ? > > What would happen if the VMS community were to start to help HP in very > visible and public ways and convince the press and people that HP is > truly winding down VMS and expecting people to switch to HP-UX ? I saw this all before (yep I was a Team OS/2 member). And somehow the OS/2 compunity managed to rescue OS/2: http://www.ecomstation.com But then there is difference: OS/2 is desktop OS which more rewarding for the hobby user. It got Firefox, OpenOffice etc. pp. Can you surf the Net with VMS? Can you write an E-Mail with VMS? Can you write an Letter with VMS? That's the three main tasks I do at home with a computer. Note: Software which has not been upgraded (mayor update) in the last 10 years or so (as is the case with DecMail, DewWrite etc. pp.) are not acceptable the answer. Martin -- mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 2007 08:46:45 GMT From: Doc Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Message-ID: David J Dachtera wrote in news:4645349E.FCE48126@spam.comcast.net: > JF Mezei wrote: >> [snip] >> Is there really a point in fighting for VMS ? > > When I first read the subject, I rather expected Rev. Boob to pipe up > about God only helping those who help themselves, and to be like God > we should ... > > ...but I digress. > > Since HP won't help themselves, there is precious little for us to do > but stand alongside those just finishing out their careers and do what > we can here to support the installed base, so long as VMS has one. > David, don't be so pessimistic. Please add a link to Deathrow to your OpenVMS marketing page instead. Perhaps introduce it as... "They banned VMS from DefCon - so some guys stuck a couple of boxes on the Internet and said 'hack this!'". Remember, our machines are named after serial killers. I think Beave has rescued another box so suggestions for a name would be in order. Doc. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:44:00 +0200 From: Martin Krischik Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be helping HP ? Message-ID: <3973973.OD8Flv16RI@linux1.krischik.com> Martin Borgman wrote: > JF Mezei wrote: >> As long as HP sees VMS as a potential competitor, they won't sell it. > > As usual, you do have a good point, but I would like to up the stakes > > How serious is HP about HP-UX these days? > Hasn't HP-UX been dead in the water even longer than OpenVMS... Yep - I would not consider HP-UX > And how serious is IBM about AIX? If SCO wasn't suing IBM for its Linux > involvement, would AIX still be on the market today... Yep - must be 5 years since I last saw AIX - at it looked more old fashioned even then. > And look at Sun. Sun started to open source Java and Solaris... Look at > the OpenSolaris web site and see all the different OpenSolaris > distributions starting to take shape. Beware! Read: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/10/030226 When have you seen VMS last on /. and did it get 300+ replies? But most importantly: Sun refreshes the user land tools. On VMS that would mean refresh DCL and TCL. > Didn't AT&T once state that the problems in UNIX were to deep to be > fixed... And didn't the sell all their rights to UNIX and the UNIX name > because they didn't believe in it... Indeed they are. I don't like Unix-Kernel all that much. > Hasn't Apple become the number one reseller of UNIX... Maybe - but Apple mainly sells desktop OS. > And lets up the stakes even more. Who is making any real money on making > pc's today... ??? > Isn't even the Windows market slowly dying... The Market is saturated. > How will our computers evolve from this point on if nobody is seriously > making any money from making software for it? > > Is Linux or OpenSource in general the cause of this? > > Did OpenSource haven any impact at all? You can make money with OpenSource. My favorite example is AdaCore which charges ¤15.000 per year for a 5 seat license of an open source Ada compiler which you can download for free from http://gcc.gnu.org Martin -- mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 09:54:21 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability: FALSE and invalid VMS usernames Message-ID: A while back, after upgrading to TCPIP 5.4 on VMS 7.3-2, I set Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability to FALSE. This stopped 90% of my spam (several hundred messages a day). I don't want to bounce such messages due to backscatter spam. Only occasionally did such a message come to a syntactically invalid username, so bounces were rare. I think this bug has been fixed. In what version of TCPIP (or was it with a patch) and what is the minimum VMS version required)? In the last couple of days, however, I got 360 messages to invalid usernames. They were all backscatter spam, i.e. a spammer used my domain with non-existent (and syntactically invalid) usernames and spammed other computers, which (since the recipients were invalid) bounced them back to me (OK, they should have rejected them instead of bouncing them, but that is not under my control). They then end up in my Postmaster account. 360 in 2 days is too many. Thus, I need to upgrade to a version of TCPIP which has this bug fixed. I plan to upgrade from 7.3-2 soon (assuming that I can upgrade to a version which will be supported for a reasonable time into the future AND is clusterable with 7.3 VAX; it would take some killer features to convince me of getting rid of the VAXes in the cluster), but probably not until summer. Thus, I would like to upgrade TCPIP with 7.3-2 if possible. ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 2007 13:42:36 +0200 From: peter@langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER) Subject: Re: Symbiont-Checks-Deliverability: FALSE and invalid VMS usernames Message-ID: <4645c44c$1@news.langstoeger.at> In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >I plan to upgrade from 7.3-2 soon (assuming that I can upgrade to a >version which will be supported for a reasonable time into the future >AND is clusterable with 7.3 VAX; IIRC, V8.3 is clusterable with 7.3 VAX but better RTFM (SPD) > it would take some killer features to >convince me of getting rid of the VAXes in the cluster), ADVANCEDSERVER, APACHE, AVAIL_MAN, JAVA, MMOV, MOZILLA, NETBEANS, ODS5, SAMBA, SSL (and newer versions of Compiler, DFU, KERBEROS, LD, MOTIF) come to mind ;-) > but probably >not until summer. Whis is then a year after OpenVMS V8.3 came out. After VMS83A_UPDATE V1 (some months ago) would have been good, but OTOH better late then never... > Thus, I would like to upgrade TCPIP with 7.3-2 if >possible. TCPIP V5.5 is OpenVMS V8.2 only, TCPIP V5.6 is OpenVMS V8.2 & V8.3 only. You stick with V5.4 (ECO6) for the forseeable future (until VMS V8.3)... -- Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER Network and OpenVMS system specialist E-mail peter@langstoeger.at A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 07:52:07 -0500 From: John Subject: Re: SYSMAN problem Message-ID: <4645B877.3090308@tx.rr.com> Bob Koehler wrote: >In article <31781$4643e312$cef8887a$29845@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei writes: > > > And the current public roadmap shows plans to VMScluster over an IP > network. Now that is a change. > > SCS over IP - firt thought is that IP may allow for longer distance clusters. What is the intent of SCS over IP? Any thoughts? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 00:10:16 +0800 From: Paul Repacholi Subject: Re: SYSMAN problem Message-ID: <877ireyqdz.fsf@k9.prep.synonet.com> John writes: > What is the intent of SCS over IP? Any thoughts? Buzz word compliance. Study the demands of SCS/MSCP vs what IP can deliver, and see the cluster fuck heading for you. It's not the stupidist idea, but bloody close... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 07:12:54 -0500 From: bradhamilton@comcast.net (Brad Hamilton) Subject: Re: wha' happen? Message-ID: In article <464534F4.A6B4C69D@spam.comcast.net>, David J Dachtera wrote: >"Bradford J. Hamilton" wrote: >> >> I haven't seen any posts here for a while, OT or otherwise. Has the rapture occurred? :-) > >By the time one killfiles all the crap, there's very few valid posts left to >come through! Just for the sake of completeness, it looks as though my ISP is to blame - I received quite a bit of traffic this morning, which made up for the lack of traffic yesterday. So I guess we'll have to wait awhile for the rapture. :-) Now back to your regularly-scheduled posts, OT and otherwise. ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 2007 16:26:00 +0100 From: pmoreau@ath.cena.fr (Patrick MOREAU, DTI Athis ex CENA, Tel: 01.69.57.68.40) Subject: Re: wha' happen? Message-ID: In article , hamilton@Encompasserve.org >(Bradford J. Hamilton) writes: > I haven't seen any posts here for a while, OT or otherwise. Has the >rapture occurred? :-) Hum, there are LOTS of post, mainly off-topic now. Patrick -- =============================================================================== patrick.moreau@aviation-civile.gouv.fr DSNA/DTI/EOS (ex SDER/CENA) ______ ___ _ Pôle XPE / / / / /| /| Athis-Mons France / /___/ / / | / | __ __ __ __ BP 205 / / / / |/ | | | |__| |__ |__| | | 94542 ORLY AEROGARE CEDEX / / :: / / | |__| | \ |__ | | |__| http://www.ath.cena.fr/~pmoreau/ http://membres.lycos.fr/pmoreau/ =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 15:06:25 +0100 From: Roy Omond Subject: [Completely OT] A useful service for Boob: Atheist offers to send letters post- Message-ID: With the impending Rapture our good friend and saviour, Boob, has been telling us is about to happen, here's a useful service he might want to take advantage of: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-05-08-post-rapture_N.htm (p.s. apologies :-) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:53:25 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: [Completely OT] A useful service for Boob: Atheist offers to send letters p Message-ID: <4645D4E5.9040004@comcast.net> Roy Omond wrote: > With the impending Rapture our good friend and saviour, Boob, > has been telling us is about to happen, here's a useful service > he might want to take advantage of: > > http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-05-08-post-rapture_N.htm > > > > > > > > (p.s. apologies :-) When I was a kid, the newspapers, when there was little real news, would publish "silly season" announcements that "The World will end next Tuesday". So many Tuesdays have gone by and the world is still here. . . . ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.260 ************************