HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: harvey@indyvax.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Disk Defrag & System Disk
Organization: Purdue University, Indianapolis
Date: 1 Oct 92 21:55:56 -0500

In article <6314@m1.cs.man.ac.uk>, mzagsaa@v4.cgu.mcc.ac.uk (Tony Arnold) writes:
>
> We run Diskeeper from Executive software. Our system disk is still quite
> fragmented, but when I look to see which files are most fragmented they are
> files suchs as ACCOUNTNG.DAT and OPERATOR.LOG files. To be honest, I
> don't really care about these as they are mostly write only and then not
> written very often. I would appreciate seeing other comments on this
> subject though.

Log files and accounting data files exhibit this problem because they are
appended to frequently in small amounts.  Thus they will tend to consist
of small fragments on the order of the extension size, which is pretty small
by default.  This problem can be minimized by using a larger RMS extend
quantity on these files.  There are several of ways to do this:

o   Specify an explicit file extension quantity in the FAB in the RMS $OPEN
    call.  Not usually a good idea, since it eliminates all the other options
    for changing it by changing the default.  Plus you obviously can't do
    this to applications you can't rebuild from source code.  The FAB field
    to set is FAB$W_DEQ.

o   Change the default extend quantity for a particular file.  See HELP SET
    FILE /EXTENSION.  This is the best way to do it for operator logs and
    accounting data (we do it this way for these files here at IUPUI).

o   Change the default for a process.  See HELP SET RMS /EXTEND_QUANTITY.

o   Change the default for a volume.  See HELP INITIALIZE Device /EXTENSION.

o   Change the default system-wide.  See HELP SET RMS /SYSTEM.

The file extension quantity is always rounded up to a multiple of the
volume's cluster size.

As an example, I have a process that logs usage reports from a telephone
switch.  Data appears on the terminal line it monitors irregularly and
amounts to about 4500 blocks per day.  It is cutoff and shipped off to
another system each night.  Changing the default RMS extend quantity of
the logging process to 150 blocks reduced the fragmentation of these log
files considerably.

Another option (especially if usage is particularly predictible like my
telephone switch stuff) is to just pre-allocate space for the file.

Finally, if you have a disk volume that is only used to store a few extremely
large files, you can reduce fragmentation by increasing the cluster size of
the volume.  This can only be done when the volume is initialized.

If a volume is badly fragmented, log files will tend to "scoop up" the
fragments since disk space allocation in RMS is "first fit" unless one
specifies contiguous or contiguous-best-try allocation.  So it's best to
defragment first before changing default extension quantities to minimize
fragmentation of these files.

--
James Harvey    IUPUI OIT Technical Support
harvey@iupui.edu  uucp: iugate!harvey  bitnet: harvey@indyvax
From: bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Utility to delete 0 block file
Date: 29 Sep 92 01:29:06 GMT
Organization: Applied Information Systems, Chapel Hill, NC

In article <1992Sep28.100636.1@woods.ulowell.edu>, welchb@woods.ulowell.edu writes:
>> I am looking for a file utility that deletes 0 block file. Is such a utility
>> available?
> 
> I have thought of doing this, so as to clean up the entire installation of
> useless files.  But, I have been afraid there might be some system situations
> whereby the file was needed.  One case which comes to mind might be where
> in real time the file just got created, but has not been written into yet.
> 
> Can any guru give some examples which are more exotic?

Well, ANU-News uses a 0-block file to determine the last time a skim for
expired articles was done - it only looks at the time the file was created.
Deleting it would mean that you would do extra news skims - which might
take a fair amount of extra machine time :).

Some programs ported from Unix use 0-block files as a primitive form of
lock management.  Deleting the file may create problems in, say, the
program's updating of its database or whatever it is that requires the
use of the lock.

Sometimes you want to run a program with one of its input files being
empty - say a list of exception records in some kind of update process,
but for this particular run there aren't any such records.

I can also imagine situations where a program uses some of the other
things you can attach to a file - say an ACL, as a quick and dirty way
to control access to some feature of the program.

Those are the major situations I can think of ... if any of them might
apply to your installation you should exercise due caution :-).  I had
been sort of assuming that you had a pretty good idea of why the files
had been created and just wanted to clean up a bunch of garbage files.
If you have a pretty heterogeneous user community and don't know
everything that the users are doing, I'd be sort of reluctant to just
purge the entire disk of 0-block files.  Some of them are fairly
obvious though ... like things ending in .TPU$JOURNAL 8-).

Bruce C. Wright
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: bear@nuc.anu.edu.au (Bernhard Fabricius)
Subject: DIY version of EWS ?
Reply-To: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU
Organization: Nuclear Physics, ANU
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 07:10:52 GMT


Hi there,

We finally got the September CDs - and I can't find EWS (the VAX/ELN Window
Software that will turn an old VAXstation into a reasonable X terminal) on 
any of the disks.

Does anyone know how to build an ELN based X terminal kernel for the VAXstation
3100 (plain vanilla monochrome) from the ELN 4.3 distribution. Or do I have to
bite the bullet and actually _buy_ the EWS media + doc kit just to get the
right combination of ELN files that I already have the right to use ?

Cheers

Bernhard

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bernhard Fabricius              |
Academic VAX/VMS Support           |  "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,
Department of Nuclear Physics      |           and long words Bother me."
Australian National University     |
                                   |                           - A.A. Milne
InterNet: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |
    POSTMASTER@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: When is TT_ACCPORNAM setup?
From: rief@bbs.mdcbbs.com
Date: 5 Oct 92 12:47:23 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Caco Pacific
Nntp-Posting-User: perschau

In article <00961983.2F20FE60.15794@max.queens.edu>, ault@queens.edu (Richard Ault) writes:
> I am attempting to detect network logins in sylogin.com and I am trying to use
> f$getdvi("tt","tt_AccPorNam") to determine the remote host domain.  The DCL
> code works perfectly if I run it anytime AFTER the account's login.com starts.
> However, when I run it in sylogin.com, I come up with a null string.  Show
> terminal behaves exactly the same way (i.e. remote host & port is absent on
> show term in sylogin, but present on later show terms).  I'm running V5.4-3 and
> UCX 1.3.  Is this some sort of UCX bug or is it intentional (and if
> intentional, WHY?)

I use the following in SYLOGIN.COM with no problem. Perhaps TT has not yet been
established ??

$       port = f$getjpi("","terminal")
$       acc_port = f$getdvi(port,"tt_accpornam")

-- 
* Mark Rief   =8*)              rief@bbs.mdcbbs.com                 *
* Caco Pacific, 813 N. Cummings Rd, Covina CA 91724  818-331-3361   *
From: PRICE@PHGRAV.DNET
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Sharing data with a subprocess through lib$get_vm
Date: 2 Oct 92 16:00:22 GMT
Organization: Louisiana State University

In article <1992Sep25.085627.693@cmkrnl.com>, jeh@cmkrnl.com writes:
>In article <01GP3RGLKQQQI50YKO@LSUVAX.SNCC.LSU.EDU>, PRICE@PHGRAV.DNET writes:
>> [...] most PVAs map to SVAs (System Virtual Address) which are shared by 
>> and are the same in all processes on the system, but I
>> don't think this is the approach you want to use. [...]
>
>No, they don't.  Proces virtual addresses, like system virtual addresses,
>map to physical addresses.  

Sigh.., mea culpa -- my statement that PVAs map to SVAs is totally bogus. I
was thinking of something completely different when I wrote that.. Thanks
to Jamie for pointing out the error. Boy, for someone who appreciates
factual postings I really blew this one (even more reason to consult IDS or
the ARM, eh?).

Anyways, another approach that Jeff, the original poster, may want to check
out is DECthreads. I haven't had a chance to use the package yet, but it
essentially multithreads a "program", so it shares the same VA space. There
seems to be a thread scheduler (not sure how flexible it is), and
primitives for concurrency (i.e. mutexes, atomic queues), etc. This
approach may be simpler than AST/nonAST or PPL threading, and it should be
more portable since POSIX is working on a threading standard. DECthreads
didn't appear until a fairly recent version of VMS (5.2 or .3??), though.

Brad Price, LSU Experimental Relativity Group
SPAN     -- 7620::price
BITnet   -- phpric@lsuvax.bitnet
internet -- price@phepds.dnet.nasa.gov

Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: edbis@solomon.technet.sg (Koh Eng San)
Subject: Re: Utility to delete 0 block file
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 05:52:12 GMT

Koh Eng San (edbis@solomon.technet.sg) wrote:
: Hi there,
: 
: I am looking for a file utility that deletes 0 block file. Is such a utility
: available?
: 
: Cheers.
: 

Perhaps I have not myself clear. My apologies. What I am looking for is a
command or utility that allow s me to delete all 0 block files such as
"DELETE/SIZ=0 *.*;*". I know there is no such VMS command...

Cheers
Xref: sparky comp.os.vms:16054 vmsnet.vms-posix:44
From: ucapbap@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,vmsnet.vms-posix
Subject: TCSH for VMS Available
Summary: now available
Keywords: TCSH, C-Shell, VMS Posix
Date: 5 Oct 92 11:59:53 GMT
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium

Hi,
 I am pleased to announce that TCSH, the extended C-Shell for VMS Posix 
 has now been ported, and will be generally released as part of tcsh 
 version 6.03 in a few weeks. In the meantime a beta version is available
 if people need a c-shell desperately. 

   Features of tcsh - all the CSH stuff, plus command/filename/environment
 variable completion, spell checking, better tty handling, plus assorted
 other bells and whistles. 

   Also included is a document outlining the problems we encountered in this
 port, compiler bugs(features), plus an quick intro for our users to posix.

 Question: Is there an FTP site that deals with VMS Posix? 
 	   If not can some kind soul make one? 
	    I am willing to contribute a port of MicroEmacs (with EDT keypad
	    macros) and a version of compress.

     Comments welcomed, 
	Andy Phillips,
	Mullard Space Science Lab.
	Holmbury St. Mary,
	Dorking,
	Surrey, UK.

     Please reply to atp@uk.ac.ucl.mssl or 19709::ATP (for SPAN folks)

   Attempt #2 This post was brought to you by the letters V, M, S and the 
		number 5.5
From: simons/G=Colin/I=CB/S=Sewell/O=H.A.Simons.Ltd/OU=CORP@mhs.attmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Wanted:Program code to SET UIC
Date: 2 Oct 92 18:45:12 GMT
Organization: The Internet


	to be perfectly thorough when changing your username, you
	should also modify the username in the process control
	region at address CTL$T_USERNAME, as well as in your
	JIB. I'm not sure why the username is stored in
	two places.
From: rankin@EQL.CALTECH.EDU (Pat Rankin)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VAX C - missing strftime???
Date: 27 Sep 92 04:57:12 GMT
Organization: The Internet

> I find this hard to believe, but me and my linker are unable to
> locate the ANSI C library routine strftime().  It does exist,
> doesn't it?

     Yes and no.  It is present in VAXCRTL.OLB (not sure which version
of VMS added it), but not accessible from VAXCRTL.EXE.  So, if you link
with the shareable image you won't find it, but if you link with the
object library instead, you will.  Unfortunately, that's backwards from
the recommended way of linking things.

     VAXCRTL's strftime() appears to work correctly, although it is not
documented.  The current source distribution for GAWK (GNU awk) includes
source code for strftime for use on systems which don't have it; you may
want to obtain that.  (The older version of GAWK available from the
vmsnet.sources archives does not have particular code.)

      As an aside, mktime() is present in both versions of VAXCRTL, but
also not documented.

		Pat Rankin, rankin@eql.caltech.edu
From: eychaner@suncub.bbso.caltech.edu (Another casualty of applied metaphysics)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: A mysterious SMG behaviour...
Date: 1 Oct 1992 21:34:21 GMT
Organization: Big Bear Solar Observatory, Caltech
Reply-To: eychaner@suncub.bbso.caltech.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: suncub.bbso.caltech.edu

I'm still writing a user interface using SMG$ routines.  I have some displays
on the pasteboard, including a large output display just above a small 1-row
input display, both pasted in column 1 and the same width as the pasteboard.
I get the behaviour that when the large display is viewported, reads from the
small display ($READ_STRING, $READ_KEYSTROKE) abort with SMG$_INVCOL.  When
the large display is NOT viewported, reads from the small display work fine.
Output to the small display always works.  Is this normal behaviour, and what
can I do about it?  (I need the large display viewported; sometimes it needs
to be larger than the screen space available.  By the way, it STARTS without
a viewport, and then is unpasted and pasted with a viewport later; is this
important?)  Sorry I can't describe the problem better, but if you want any
clarifications, I'll be happy to provide them.

Thanks, -G.
******************************************************************************
Glenn Eychaner, Big Bear Solar Observatory, California Institute of Technology
NSI/DECnet: SUNCUB::EYCHANER        Internet: eychaner@suncub.bbso.caltech.edu
USmail: 40386 North Shore Lane                eychaner_g@caltech.edu
        Big Bear City, CA  92314    Phone: (714) 866-5791 or (818) 356-4014
                                           (909) after November 14, 1992
"I don't do Windows."
"Even the hardest concrete never quite sets.  And the sun never sweats."
From: leichter@lrw.com (Jerry Leichter)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: re: CMKRNL as an image priv:  Security problem?
Date: 5 Oct 92 01:38:35 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Internet


	If a process has an image privilege (as opposed to a process
	privilege), is it possible for that process to acquire the priv?

No, not in any direct way.  VMS is very careful to ensure that, when an image
with amplified privileges exits, the process's privileges are restored to
what they were.  Further, it is careful to make sure that the image remains
intact.  For example, such an image can't be patched with DEPOSIT, and it
can only use installed (thus presumably trusted) shareable images.

									  How?

All that said, a sufficiently privileged image - and CMKRNL means that the
image has unlimited access to the system - can do what it wants, or whatever
an attacker can fool it into doing.  It can, for example, change the process
privilege mask permanently.  It can change the process's UIC to a system UIC.
It can, with a little work, override any protection in the system.

	What can I do to prevent a possible security problem like this? 

A privileged image is within the VMS security boundary.  It is effectively
part of the "TCB", Trusted Computing Base.  It must be coded carefully to
ensure that it doesn't accidentally, or as the result of an attack, do things
it is not supposed to do.  VMS closes off some of the common paths (like using
a logical to try to make the privileged image execute what it THINKS is a
system shareable image, but is really the attacker's code), and it helps with
others (e.g., you can ask RMS to only consider inner-mode logical names when
YOU open files, thus preventing an unprivileged user from fooling you about
what file you should be accessing; you can have VMS do the same access checks
for you that it would have done for the user if he had asked for something
himself, without the amplified privileges).  Ultimately, however, the only
way a privileged image can be safe is if it's designed that way.  Depending
on exactly what the image does that can be very easy (if privileges are needed
only in for a few particular operations, disable them on entry, then enable
them only to perform those operations - like opening an otherwise-inaccessible
file - then turn them off again) or quite difficult.

If, as I suspect from the tone of the question, it is "how can I be sure that
my system is safe if I install some random image with CMKRNL", the answer is
"you can be quite sure it is NOT safe".
							-- Jerry
From: steve@yogi.hsc.ucalgary.ca
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: RMS Journaling Problem
Date: 29 Sep 92 22:19:31 GMT


We are having a VERY intermitent problem with RMS journaling.  Every once in a
blue moon, our application dies with a "ACC_AIJ, after-image journal can not be
accessed" message.  This will happend only to new processes.  The ones
currently attached are fine (until they log out and go back in).

The journal/directory/device has world:rwed.  I've checked everything I could
relating to file access.  We just create a new jounal file and the problem goes
away (most of the time).  We are on VMS 5.4.  Does anyone know what gives??

Thanks.
-- 
[*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*]
[*]                                 [*]                                 [*]
[*]    Steve Hocevar                [*]                ravecoH evetS    [*]
[*]    Calgary, Alberta, Canada     [*]     adanaC ,atreblA ,yraglaC    [*]
[*]                                 [*]                                 [*]
[*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*]
From: hansg@risken.vd.volvo.se (Hans Granqvist)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Utility to delete 0 block file
Date: 29 Sep 92 06:22:51 GMT

[someone] writes:

> I am looking for a file utility that deletes 0 block file. Is such a utility
> available?

Don't know of a utility, but a RENAME of that file to another will cause
RMS to "lose the file", i.e., it will be deleted.
--
Hans Granqvist, Volvo, Gothenburg, Sweden. Thank you for reading!
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: dinn@ug.cs.dal.ca (Michael 'Moose' Dinn)
Subject: Needed: Conferencing Software for VMS 4.7
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:36:54 GMT


I need something that does conferencing for VMS 4.7.

Something like NEWS, Bulletin -- anything like that.

Keep in mind a) I have no Multinet or equivlalent, and b) I don't have C or
Pascal compilers. Just Fortran/Macro.

Anyone got something they'd like to share?

--
 Michael Dinn               | School: dinn@ug.cs.dal.ca
 System Administor          | Work:   dinn@appliedmicro.ns.ca
 Halifax Public Access VMS  | VAX:    Unknown as of yet
 (902) 461-4773 HST/V.32    | "You just can't keep a good Vax down"

 
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: welchb@woods.ulowell.edu
Subject: Re: Utility to delete 0 block file
Organization: University of Lowell
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 15:06:36 GMT

> I am looking for a file utility that deletes 0 block file. Is such a utility
> available?

I have thought of doing this, so as to clean up the entire installation of
useless files.  But, I have been afraid there might be some system situations
whereby the file was needed.  One case which comes to mind might be where
in real time the file just got created, but has not been written into yet.

Can any guru give some examples which are more exotic?
-- 
Brendan Welch, UMass/Lowell, W1LPG,  welchb@woods.ulowell.edu
From: ARNE@ko.hhs.dk (Arne Vajhxj)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Utility to delete 0 block file
Date: 30 Sep 92 14:14:10 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Internet

> : I am looking for a file utility that deletes 0 block file. Is such a utility
> : available?
> 
> Perhaps I have not myself clear. My apologies. What I am looking for is a
> command or utility that allow s me to delete all 0 block files such as
> "DELETE/SIZ=0 *.*;*". I know there is no such VMS command...

Write a little piece of DCL. Something like this:

$ loop:
$    fnm=f$search("*.*;*")
$    if fnm .eqs. "" then goto endloop
$    if f$file_attributes(fnm,"EOF") .eq. 0
$    then
$       delete fnm
$    endif
$    goto loop
$ endloop:
$ exit

Hope it helps !

                                                          Arne

Arne Vajhxj                             local DECNET:  KO::ARNE
Computer Department                     PSI:           PSI%23831001304030::ARNE
Business School of Southern Denmark     Internet:      ARNE@KO.HHS.DK


Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
From: jweiss@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Jerry Weiss)
Subject: Re: UCX 2.0
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 03:12:56 GMT

In article <AekpPbO00WB8JV=wtZ@andrew.cmu.edu> Tod McQuillin <tm8t+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>stevem@ms.uky.edu (Stephen McNatton) writes:
>
>I don't have any experience with using LPD or NFS in UCX 2.0, and
>Telnet and FTP seem to work perfectly well both incoming and outgoing.
>But the SMTP mail service is hopelessly broken.  Incoming messages
>were sometimes lost, and the outgoing message queues would freeze up
>and stop transmitting for no apparent reason, with no obvious way to
>restart them, causing hundreds of outgoing mail messages to back up.
>We were on the phone with DEC support over the course of almost two
>weeks; they were unable to resolve the problem.  In fact, the CSC
>suggested we go back to using CMU-TEK and MX, instead of UCX, since
>they could not figure out what was wrong.  They told me they had
>received many other calls from people with the same problem.
>
>So as long as you don't want to use SMTP mail, I guess it would work
>fine, though I never tried the LPD service.
>
>
I wouldn't call it STMP under ucx 2.0 hopeless, but is a tough system to
configure properly.  Its taken me a few weeks only and off to configure it
properly.  A few suggestions:

1) Make sure any mail gateway is in the local host table.  It mentions
   this during the install, but its easy to overlook.

2) Under the configuration for Communications (set/show com) make sure
   that you don't use a fully qualified name for the local (set com/local),
   just the node name.  Then make sure the (set com/domain) domain name is 
   the remainder of your fully qualified name.  Don't confuse this with
   set name/domain which configures and links to name servers.
   For me they are NOT the same.

3) I still have trouble sending to a local site that was using MX (matt
   madisons  mail system).  Someone else posted the possible reason for this.  
   In any case, I used mx_records to route the mail for this node to
   through a local mail server.

4) I had to fiddle with UCX and ucx$inet_set_interfaces.com and then reboot
   to get things straightened out.  Someone mentioned problems with 
   virtual terminals and possible solutions in vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.ucx.

5) Some friendly types with addresses ending in .dec.com helped me with
   this.  That doesn't mean I know or really understand this.  If you  
   want to flame, send me email.  If it bounces back, you may assume my
   local users are flaming me.

6)  I have used MX 2.3 under UCX 2.0.  Do a stop mail and disable service
    smtp first.  No changes to MX are necessary if you ran it under UCX 1.3a.

IMHO  the fixes to telnet and ftp far outweigh the hassle with STMP.

Jerry S. Weiss	  "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the antimatter!"
j-weiss@nwu.edu    Dept. Medicine, Northwestern Univ. Medical School