INFO-VAX Sat, 22 Sep 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 517 Contents: Cutler wins award Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair Re: despair RE: despair Re: DS10 - with pedestal BA350+kzpac-xv Re: Hypervisor Re: Lock problem with SAMBA/NMBD MySQL failover on a OpenVMS Cluster Re: MySQL failover on a OpenVMS Cluster Re: TCP/IP Re: VMS Update Re: VMS Update ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:50:35 -0700 From: "Alex_nospam_Daniels@themail.co.uk" Subject: Cutler wins award Message-ID: <1190422235.309993.320000@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137076-c,companynews/article.html "legend Dave Cutler was awarded the new Bill Gates Award, a technical award which one blogger dubbed "the new ultra-supreme award..." "Cutler helped develop the VAX and VMS operating systems." "employees to call him both the "greatest programmer/engineer project leader they've ever seen" as well as the "angriest and scariest person they've ever worked for,"" Alex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:07:19 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <46F40857.6070702@comcast.net> Ron Johnson wrote: > On 09/21/07 11:30, JF Mezei wrote: > >>Bob Koehler wrote: >> >>> So what do you think you can do in C that can't be done in Macro-32 >>> on any VMS system? >> >> >>Since all languages eventually get translated into machine code, >>obviously there is nothing that can be done in a higher level language >>that cannot be done in Macro. >> >> >>I really do not understand why some people go out of their way to >>criticise C. C gives you the flexibility of assembler while giving you >>higher level language tools. So you can write applications with much >>greater efficiency than with some assembly language. >> >>And you know, I've never really had problems with lack of bounds >>checking. Especially with dynamically allocated structures, you still >>need to keep track of how many items you have used and how many have >>been pre-allocated. >> >>And C has become quite pedantic with regards to type checks, so when you >>want to cheat and take 4 bytes from a string and load then into an >>integer, you need to be specific about it so the compiler won't bother >>you. But you can do it. >> >> >>C is not for kids. You need good programming skills and experience to >>write good C code that has proper architecture to prevent problems >>and/or detect them. > > > But not everyone on your team will have good programming skills, and > neither will the all of the maintainers who come after you. > > IMNSHO, there are languages which are just *better* for writing > large apps in specific "spaces". > > Why use a language designed to fit a time-sharing OS and > text-processing apps onto a PDP-11 to write: Sometimes you are constrained by the available compilers! The last time I looked (quite a while ago) compilers for the machines I was using were about $5000 US each! At my last job we had ONE compiler license. It was for C. We ran it on our development system, an Alphaserver 2100. Nobody was about to spring for another compiler for my convenience. I used it for maintaining a few Unix style utilities (make, grep, and gawk). The make was posted by Tony Ivanov back in the late 80's or early 90's! I don't recall where the grep and gawk came from but I've found them quite handy over the years. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:18:21 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <2OUIi.108961$lZ7.98588@newsfe20.lga> On 09/21/07 12:34, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: [snip] > > I believe that a good programmer will do that no matter what language he > is coding in. I recall doing something of the sort in IBM Fortran IV > back in the 1970s. You could say DEFINE N=123 (or was it PARAMETER > N=123?) or something like that and then DIMENSION X(N). . . . I'd use N > for the upper limit of the array everywhere in the program. If the > world changed a little and we needed to handle 273 widgets instead of > 123, I just changed the value of N and recompiled. That's the one thing I didn't like about COBOL-85 and younger. Maybe COBOL-99(?) changed that. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:22:16 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: On 09/21/07 13:07, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > Ron Johnson wrote: >> On 09/21/07 11:30, JF Mezei wrote: [snip] >> >> >> But not everyone on your team will have good programming skills, and >> neither will the all of the maintainers who come after you. >> >> IMNSHO, there are languages which are just *better* for writing >> large apps in specific "spaces". >> >> Why use a language designed to fit a time-sharing OS and >> text-processing apps onto a PDP-11 to write: > > Sometimes you are constrained by the available compilers! The last time > I looked (quite a while ago) compilers for the machines I was using were > about $5000 US each! At my last job we had ONE compiler license. It > was for C. We ran it on our development system, an Alphaserver 2100. > Nobody was about to spring for another compiler for my convenience. Excellent point. But... Why did "they" (or you) spec C? Why not a language more suited to the primary task? -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:24:21 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: On 09/21/07 12:40, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > JF Mezei wrote: >> Bob Koehler wrote: >> >>> With the C library a simple I/O call can write to locations you >>> don't own and the programmer must work hard to prevent that. >> >> >> If you make a "read" call to SYS$QIO in COBOL or other languages, and >> give the address of a 20 character string and then specify a length of >> 512, will the COBOL run time detect that QIO is being told to write >> way beyond the bounds of the integer ? >> >> >> Yes, the scanf and fscanf functions in C are dangerous, but gets and >> fgets provide for a "maxchar" limit, and you can specify >> "sizeof(variable)" for the "maxchar" argument which means that it will >> not write beyond the variable's boundary. >> >> I really do not understand why some people are so keen to bash C when >> many of their arguments are not an issue for good programmers. > > Because C gives bad programmers more scope than they can safely handle?? Not just "bad" programmers, but also "average" programmers, and "good" programmers who are either (a) in a rush, or (b) having a bad day. > Remember Robert T. Morris? Bad programmers are STILL writing code that > allows buffer overruns! Microsoft is still combing them out of Windows! -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:52:47 -0700 From: Doug Phillips Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <1190404367.979033.279380@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com> On Sep 21, 2:22 pm, Ron Johnson wrote: > On 09/21/07 13:07, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > > > > > > > > > Ron Johnson wrote: > >> On 09/21/07 11:30, JF Mezei wrote: > [snip] > > >> But not everyone on your team will have good programming skills, and > >> neither will the all of the maintainers who come after you. > > >> IMNSHO, there are languages which are just *better* for writing > >> large apps in specific "spaces". > > >> Why use a language designed to fit a time-sharing OS and > >> text-processing apps onto a PDP-11 to write: > > > Sometimes you are constrained by the available compilers! The last time > > I looked (quite a while ago) compilers for the machines I was using were > > about $5000 US each! At my last job we had ONE compiler license. It > > was for C. We ran it on our development system, an Alphaserver 2100. > > Nobody was about to spring for another compiler for my convenience. > > Excellent point. But... > > Why did "they" (or you) spec C? > > Why not a language more suited to the primary task? > I don't know what the subject environment was, but businesses often just spec the application and take whatever language that's written in. For non-development environments, system's are often purchased with only run-times and *no* additional compiler. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:02:47 -0700 From: Doug Phillips Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <1190408567.975199.3440@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com> On Sep 21, 12:49 pm, bri...@encompasserve.org wrote: > In article <3c20a$46f3f3d9$cef8887a$30...@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei writes: > > > Bob Koehler wrote: > >> With the C library a simple I/O call can write to locations you > >> don't own and the programmer must work hard to prevent that. > > > If you make a "read" call to SYS$QIO in COBOL or other languages, and > > give the address of a 20 character string and then specify a length of > > 512, will the COBOL run time detect that QIO is being told to write way > > beyond the bounds of the integer ? > > With Cobol (or Ada, Fortran, PL/I or BASIC) you have a choice. You > don't need to call an I/O routing passing address and length as > separate parameters. You have a language-integrated I/O system > with language-integrated bounds checking available. > > With C you have no choice. There is no language-integrated > I/O system. You need to call run time library routines. And > you need to call them with address and length specified separately > since there's no language-defined syntax for call by descriptor. > > I'm not an anti-C bigot. I understand that it's perfectly > possible for a programmer or a programming team to exert the > requisite self-discipline to produce reliable overrun-free > code even without the crutch of automatic bounds checking to > rely upon. (In the embedded systems world, you need static > assurance that array bounds are not overrun. Blowing up the > application with a stack dump on a bounds violation detected > at run time will usually do more harm than good). > Doesn't this go back to the basics of writing portable code and building a developer's toolkit? You write and use wrappers/subroutines/ macros/functions to do platform specific things & repetitive tasks that take more than just a standard RTL call, and where the language or platform has an inherent weakness (as in this case.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:02:59 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <46F43183.1060006@comcast.net> Ron Johnson wrote: > On 09/21/07 13:07, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > >>Ron Johnson wrote: >> >>>On 09/21/07 11:30, JF Mezei wrote: >> > [snip] > >>> >>>But not everyone on your team will have good programming skills, and >>>neither will the all of the maintainers who come after you. >>> >>>IMNSHO, there are languages which are just *better* for writing >>>large apps in specific "spaces". >>> >>>Why use a language designed to fit a time-sharing OS and >>>text-processing apps onto a PDP-11 to write: >> >>Sometimes you are constrained by the available compilers! The last time >>I looked (quite a while ago) compilers for the machines I was using were >>about $5000 US each! At my last job we had ONE compiler license. It >>was for C. We ran it on our development system, an Alphaserver 2100. >>Nobody was about to spring for another compiler for my convenience. > > > Excellent point. But... > > Why did "they" (or you) spec C? > > Why not a language more suited to the primary task? > We already had the C compiler and license when I got there. What language would YOU use to interface with Sybase in order to store small, maybe 1500 character, text records in the database and to retrieve the records when wanted? Whatever the reason, C was what we had and it was use that or code in Macro! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:39:23 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: On 09/21/07 16:02, Doug Phillips wrote: [snip] > > Doesn't this go back to the basics of writing portable code and > building a developer's toolkit? You write and use wrappers/subroutines/ > macros/functions to do platform specific things & repetitive tasks > that take more than just a standard RTL call, and where the language > or platform has an inherent weakness (as in this case.) And if for the sake of "standardization" the project leaders decide they don't want you to use your toolkit but the their inadequate toolkit, or say, "we want progress, not wasted tool writing", or the project is filled with contractors whose primary goal is to pad their time sheets, or whatnot, you're stuck. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:06:22 -0700 From: Doug Phillips Subject: Re: despair Message-ID: <1190412382.495164.284390@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Sep 21, 4:39 pm, Ron Johnson wrote: > On 09/21/07 16:02, Doug Phillips wrote: > [snip] > > > > > Doesn't this go back to the basics of writing portable code and > > building a developer's toolkit? You write and use wrappers/subroutines/ > > macros/functions to do platform specific things & repetitive tasks > > that take more than just a standard RTL call, and where the language > > or platform has an inherent weakness (as in this case.) > > And if for the sake of "standardization" the project leaders decide > they don't want you to use your toolkit but the their inadequate > toolkit, or say, "we want progress, not wasted tool writing", or the > project is filled with contractors whose primary goal is to pad > their time sheets, or whatnot, you're stuck. > Then that project will likely fail, undoubtedly go over budget, and that project leader will either become a shoe-salesman or be promoted to Vice President. Whatever else happens, someone's going to lose their job and if the cost is high enough, there will be at least one management shake-up before the project is completed or abandoned. I've been in each of the situations you describe, and others just as sad that you haven't even touched upon, more times than I care to think about. Your examples make for good case-studies of failure, but we don't want to use them as a benchmark, do we? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:35:26 -0500 From: "Paul Raulerson" Subject: RE: despair Message-ID: <008101c7fcb0$7858aef0$690a0cd0$@com> > -----Original Message----- > From: Doug Phillips [mailto:dphill46@netscape.net] > Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 4:03 PM > To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com > Subject: Re: despair > > On Sep 21, 12:49 pm, bri...@encompasserve.org wrote: > > In article <3c20a$46f3f3d9$cef8887a$30...@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei > writes: > > > > > Bob Koehler wrote: > > >> With the C library a simple I/O call can write to locations you > > >> don't own and the programmer must work hard to prevent that. > > > > > If you make a "read" call to SYS$QIO in COBOL or other languages, > and > > > give the address of a 20 character string and then specify a length > of > > > 512, will the COBOL run time detect that QIO is being told to write > way > > > beyond the bounds of the integer ? > > > > With Cobol (or Ada, Fortran, PL/I or BASIC) you have a choice. You > > don't need to call an I/O routing passing address and length as > > separate parameters. You have a language-integrated I/O system > > with language-integrated bounds checking available. > > > > With C you have no choice. There is no language-integrated > > I/O system. You need to call run time library routines. And > > you need to call them with address and length specified separately > > since there's no language-defined syntax for call by descriptor. > > > > I'm not an anti-C bigot. I understand that it's perfectly > > possible for a programmer or a programming team to exert the > > requisite self-discipline to produce reliable overrun-free > > code even without the crutch of automatic bounds checking to > > rely upon. (In the embedded systems world, you need static > > assurance that array bounds are not overrun. Blowing up the > > application with a stack dump on a bounds violation detected > > at run time will usually do more harm than good). > > > > C isn't meant to be a high level language - it is a portable implementation of PDP-11 Assembly Language, and as such, the library calls are equivalent to quite complete macro libs. Yes, you can shoot yourelf in the foot, or just about any other part of your anatomy, but you do have a lot more power with the language than with say, Ada. Ada, does *everything* in the language, threading, callbacks, exception handling (Ada has the best exception handling in my opinion... :) and so forth. You have to follow the rules, and you can even write low level drivers in Ada. I like most computer languages (well Lisp is not my favorite, and after NextGen Weather Radar I can do without Fortran too...) and have a passion about studying them to understand their lineage and best applications. > Doesn't this go back to the basics of writing portable code and > building a developer's toolkit? You write and use wrappers/subroutines/ > macros/functions to do platform specific things & repetitive tasks > that take more than just a standard RTL call, and where the language > or platform has an inherent weakness (as in this case.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:04:00 -0700 From: "Alex_nospam_Daniels@themail.co.uk" Subject: Re: DS10 - with pedestal BA350+kzpac-xv Message-ID: <1190433840.786649.274950@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On 22 Sep, 04:05, Michael Austin wrote: > Reads floppy - Screen turns black - then nothing. If you hit any key (or > may have not found that magic key yet...) it immediately returns to the > AlphaBios menu. > > I am trying to work this issue remotely, so I cannot tell you every nuance > of what happens. > > If you just type ARC - you don't get any menu at all I would expect to > see somthing to the effect of: > Boot Menu > Boot Windows NT > Boot an alternate operating system > Run a program > Supplementary menu ... > Use the arrow keys to select, then press Enter. > > But you get nothing. Just "hit F2 for AlphaBios" at the bottom. > > Is this normal for a DS10? > > Any other ideas on why this is not working? The keymappings are probably wrong. Ctrl-I = Tab Ctrl-Enter = Enter or Next Menu Ctrl-+ = Change Month Setting and Time Settings - = Previous Menu Number Keys = Number Keys (For Changing Date (PGUP & PGDN Do not Work) Letter Keys = Letter Keys (For Changing Menu Selections) F1 Ctrl/A F2 Ctrl/B F3 Ctrl/C F4 Ctrl/D F5 Ctrl/E F6 Ctrl/F F7 Ctrl/P F8 Ctrl/R F9 Ctrl/T F10 Ctrl/U (For saving changes) Insert Ctrl/V Delete Ctrl/W Backspace Ctrl/H Escape Ctrl/[ (For going to previous Menu) Alex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:12:20 +0200 From: "P. Sture" Subject: Re: Hypervisor Message-ID: In article , koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: > In article , "P. Sture" > writes: > > > > Or Virtual Machine Services? > > Very Many, Simplified Very Many. Solid On second thoughts I'm hearing folks talking of VMware skills being a desirable thing to have, so Simplified sounds good. -- Paul Sture Sue's OpenVMS bookmarks: http://eisner.encompasserve.org/~sture/ovms-bookmarks.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 23:31:20 +0200 From: "Martin Vorlaender" Subject: Re: Lock problem with SAMBA/NMBD Message-ID: Albrecht Schlosser wrote: > Volker Halle wrote: >> You can use the File-ID field in the F11B$S >> resource name to find out about the filename involved. > > I can't see anything obvious :-( Can you tell me how to > find the file-ID ? $ MCR DFU SEARCH /FID=3D where you specify 'x' if the FID is (x,y,z). HTH, 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/martin= v/ And in the Darkness bind them.| home: martin.vorlaender@t-online.de ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:55:48 -0700 From: "Jeffrey H. Coffield" Subject: MySQL failover on a OpenVMS Cluster Message-ID: I now have to support MySQL on a OpenVMS cluster and need to have some sort of way to switch it to another node in case the one it is running on fails. It appears you can't have a copy on each node using the same database files so I have thought of four possible ways. 1. Trigger some .COM file when a cluster transitions occurs that starts MySQL on the node the cluster alias goes to. 2. Set up a replication slave on each other member but that means I would have to set up some way to sync up the master when it came back for writes to the database that occurred when the master was down. 3. Set up a MySQL cluster. I have only read about this and don't know how stable this is. 4. Notify enough people that something has failed and that manual action is needed. This is a new Itanium cluster so the most likely time the master database would be down is when I am doing some sort of upgrade that required more than just a quick reboot. As a related question, what is the best way to have a program launched on a cluster transition. I currently have a program that needs a constant tcpip connection so it gets an error when the cluster alias fails over. Jeff Coffield ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:04:41 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: MySQL failover on a OpenVMS Cluster Message-ID: On 09/21/07 18:55, Jeffrey H. Coffield wrote: > I now have to support MySQL on a OpenVMS cluster and need to have some > sort of way to switch it to another node in case the one it is running > on fails. It appears you can't have a copy on each node using the same > database files so I have thought of four possible ways. > > 1. Trigger some .COM file when a cluster transitions occurs that starts > MySQL on the node the cluster alias goes to. That's what I'd do. Simple, sweet, uncomplicated. > 2. Set up a replication slave on each other member but that means I > would have to set up some way to sync up the master when it came back > for writes to the database that occurred when the master was down. > > 3. Set up a MySQL cluster. I have only read about this and don't know > how stable this is. > > 4. Notify enough people that something has failed and that manual action > is needed. This is a new Itanium cluster so the most likely time the > master database would be down is when I am doing some sort of upgrade > that required more than just a quick reboot. > > As a related question, what is the best way to have a program launched > on a cluster transition. I currently have a program that needs a > constant tcpip connection so it gets an error when the cluster alias > fails over. > > Jeff Coffield -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:50:19 -0700 From: "Alex_nospam_Daniels@themail.co.uk" Subject: Re: TCP/IP Message-ID: <1190422219.756228.291540@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On 15 Sep, 23:17, "Richard B. Gilbert" wrote: > I believe that all three were derived from the BSD code. Multinet and > TCPware are far older than UCX The TCPware kernel is not derived from any BSD or *nix code. Alex ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:05:23 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: VMS Update Message-ID: Sue wrote: > 5.1 On OCTOBER 26 at There will be a one hour web cast sponsored by > Encompass, hosted by Ann McQuaid and the Speaker will be Martin Fink. > Here is the page: https://www.encompassus.org/events/webcasts/MartinFink.cfm I went to the above page with Mozilla on VMS and it went into an infinite loop. I suspect it is because I live in a different dimension where things never quite work out the same way as the dimention you all live in. But a note to Sue: On my MAC, I went to both http://www.hp.com/go/vms and http://www.encompassus.org and did not find an obvious mention of this upcoming webcast. You might wish to have this announced right on the VMS home page. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:16:45 -0500 From: Ron Johnson Subject: Re: VMS Update Message-ID: <1z1Ji.305623$5y.273418@newsfe18.lga> On 09/21/07 23:05, JF Mezei wrote: > Sue wrote: >> 5.1 On OCTOBER 26 at There will be a one hour web cast sponsored by >> Encompass, hosted by Ann McQuaid and the Speaker will be Martin Fink. > >> Here is the page: >> https://www.encompassus.org/events/webcasts/MartinFink.cfm > > I went to the above page with Mozilla on VMS and it went into an > infinite loop. What looped? Linux FF 2.0.0.6 rendered it (seemingly) perfectly. > I suspect it is because I live in a different dimension > where things never quite work out the same way as the dimention you all > live in. > > But a note to Sue: > > On my MAC, I went to both http://www.hp.com/go/vms and > http://www.encompassus.org and did not find an obvious mention of this > upcoming webcast. > > > You might wish to have this announced right on the VMS home page. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.517 ************************