Story Time
Sue
Dear Newsgroup,
A short story for you.
I was in the process of changing jobs I wanted to leave the Networking
group. If folks remember we had amazing products, Gigaswitches,
DEChubs, routers and so on I had a couple of opportunities which is
pretty amazing since I really did not have a resume (and really still
do not). Anyway back to the story.
One of the opportunities was with the VMS group. Now up to that point
of course, just like everyone else at DEC, I had used VMS and had my
own login.com file, played Adventure and Lunar Lander and had rebooted
a MicroVAX with my knee (the basics). What I did know was that who
ever created VMS were brilliant even if I did not understand. But of
course I had a choice to make and there were loads of people willing
to help me. One of the VERY helpful people told me "don't go to the
VMS group it will be dead in a year, there is no future" That was July
1994, I hired into the VMS group the next week.
So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
everyday saying the same thing.
We have a roadmap that we meet and have done so for years and we keep
our word that should count for something.
We announced VMS on Blades last week do you know how cool that is? If
not look at the web site before saying anything. VMS has been on VAX,
Alpha now Integrity what other OS has done that? Thats cool too. We
had a 19 year old and a 70 year old at the boot camp and they spoke
DCL thats really cool.
Epilog - the helpful person stayed in Networking, which was bought by
another company that is now out of business. You decide
Sue
David J Dachtera
> [snip]
> Epilog - the helpful person stayed in Networking, which was bought by
> another company that is now out of business. You decide
One of my stories...
Having been laid off from my first VMS job ((mis-)management stuffed it down the
commode, as usual, but I digress), I wound up on a site with a little no-name
UNIX box ("Pixel Computer" running a vendor-branded AT&T System-III, if you can
handle that).
As the company grew, the UNIX box got flakier and flakier until it became
impossible to go 24 hours without a kernel panic.
I drew on my "strong suit" MicroVAX-II, Q5 with an RA81 and a TK50 (!).
Managemant was well pleased, if a bit stodgy.
I left after three years for another VMS site. The UNIX->VMS site is, needless
to say, no longer VMS. Windows stuff.
Like many here, I've "ridden the wave" from VMS's heyday, through its free-fall
into obscurity and now into its waning days as it goes deeper into obscurity.
If you're like Sue and your VMS future (until you retire) is more or less
assured (or you are offered a generous severance package), then I say: by all
means - stay with it.
If, on the other hand, your situation, like mine, is more "Darwinian" (adapt or
face "extinction"), ... well, I'm sure that's enough said.
--
David J Dachtera
dba DJE Systems
http://www.djesys.com/
Unofficial OpenVMS Marketing Home Page
http://www.djesys.com/vms/market/
Unofficial Affordable OpenVMS Home Page:
http://www.djesys.com/vms/soho/
Unofficial OpenVMS-IA32 Home Page:
http://www.djesys.com/vms/ia32/
Unofficial OpenVMS Hobbyist Support Page:
http://www.djesys.com/vms/support/
dav...@montagar.com
> Dear Newsgroup,
> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
> everyday saying the same thing.
True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me (and
others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what next
faux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS, yada
yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is back-
spinned into a loss.
By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money, no
support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it exists.
Because for the most part, people don't complain, they contribute.
There's fewer applications available you say? Then port something.
There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would be
great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS. After
all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
anyway.
Technically, there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to run Gnome/
KDE on OpenVMS. Port a library or app, make a PCSI kit for it, and
someone, SOMEWHERE will find a place to host it- I'd wager Warren
would be happy to host/link to the kit directly off the OpenVMS page.
There's thousands of hobbyists and other out there. Certainly we can
make a difference.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<susan_s...@hotmail.com> writes:
> One of the VERY helpful people told me "don't go to the
> VMS group it will be dead in a year, there is no future" That was July
> 1994, I hired into the VMS group the next week.
>
> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
> everyday saying the same thing.
VMS itself is still alive, yes. VMS in academia, for example, is dead
in many parts of the world. I remember a DECUS presentation once where
an HP executive had a map with little flags everywhere there was a
campus license at a university. The number of flags hadn't changed much
in the previous 10 years, but in one case---probably representative---I
know about, this went from a university where thousands of students had
accounts, the university itself war running VMS etc to ONE GUY running
VMS on a machine under his desk.
> We have a roadmap that we meet and have done so for years and we keep
> our word that should count for something.
Yes, but what good is a rolling roadmap? For example, what is the fate
of VMS 8.2 for VAX? It was on the roadmap at one time, but it is no
longer.
Main, Kerry
Phillip -
A roadmap is a guide. It is not cast in stone and there are all sorts of
statements on the roadmap stating "subject to change". This has been
discussed many times on comp.os.vms.
Can you point me to any other large OS/server vendor that has as
detailed (versions etc) future roadmaps on their storage, OS,
networking, HW etc available on their public web site?
For that matter, can you provide me with any OS software vendor that
still provides current versions of their OS for HW that is 20+ years
old? I wonder what Microsoft would say if I asked them to support
Windows XP or Windows 2003 on a 286 or even a 386 or 486 system?
Regards
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)
OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works.
Robert Deininger
(Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
>Yes, but what good is a rolling roadmap?
None whatsoever. It's best to ignore them.
>For example, what is the fate
>of VMS 8.2 for VAX?
I expect it will NEVER happen. If there's another VAX release, it will
probably be called V8.3, or something later.
>It was on the roadmap at one time, but it is no
>longer.
Yup. That's because a new VAX release isn't even in the top 100 list of
things customers are asking for.
Bill Gunshannon
dav...@montagar.com writes:
> On Jun 4, 5:13 pm, Sue <susan_skonet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear Newsgroup,
>> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
>> everyday saying the same thing.
>
> True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me (and
> others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what next
> faux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS, yada
> yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is back-
> spinned into a loss.
>
> By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money, no
> support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it exists.
But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you denigrate
have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of crap
like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>
> Because for the most part, people don't complain, they contribute.
> There's fewer applications available you say? Then port something.
> There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would be
> great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS. After
> all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
> anyway.
Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>
> Technically, there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to run Gnome/
> KDE on OpenVMS. Port a library or app, make a PCSI kit for it, and
> someone, SOMEWHERE will find a place to host it- I'd wager Warren
> would be happy to host/link to the kit directly off the OpenVMS page.
>
> There's thousands of hobbyists and other out there. Certainly we can
> make a difference.
There were thousands upon thousands of MG and Triumph owners (still are,
actually) but even that didn't save BLM from bad management.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bi...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
Bill Gunshannon
hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes:
> In article <1180995199.6...@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, Sue
> <susan_s...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> One of the VERY helpful people told me "don't go to the
>> VMS group it will be dead in a year, there is no future" That was July
>> 1994, I hired into the VMS group the next week.
>>
>> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
>> everyday saying the same thing.
>
> VMS itself is still alive, yes. VMS in academia, for example, is dead
> in many parts of the world. I remember a DECUS presentation once where
> an HP executive had a map with little flags everywhere there was a
> campus license at a university. The number of flags hadn't changed much
> in the previous 10 years, but in one case---probably representative---I
> know about, this went from a university where thousands of students had
> accounts, the university itself war running VMS etc to ONE GUY running
> VMS on a machine under his desk.
This is more meaningful than you might think. We still have a VMS
machine here for academic use. And every faculty, staff and student
has an account on it. How does this show up in the VMS constant? I
am sure that the existence of this machine is counted in HP's numbers
somewhere. Only problem is, no one uses it. Students haven't used
it for years. The last users were dinosaur faculty who still read
their email there. But the University Datacenter fixed that. They
stopped letting it receive or send email. Now, it sits int he computer
room consuming electricity and generating heat. I ran the last VMS
machines for academic use and as everyone here already knows, they
were shutdown last year. So, I guess at least here, I was that ONE
GUY.
It's nice to hear from someone at HP that VMS's future is secure, but
those of us who have been here for any length of time heard the same
thing about Alpha right up until the day it died. And people not here
will never hear anything because HP keeps it hidden. So, what does
that tell you?
Main, Kerry
> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
> Sent: June 5, 2007 8:50 AM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Story Time
>
> dav...@montagar.com writes:
> > On Jun 4, 5:13 pm, Sue <susan_skonet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> Dear Newsgroup,
> >> everyday saying the same thing.
> >
Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX way of
doing IO), that its future is doomed?
Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform is
doomed because it does not support fork either.
There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there are
better ways of doing the same thing.
As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
look at the initial cost only).
However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener on
the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring, change
management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements like
FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.
And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
what some might call "internal hackers".
What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than what
is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities .. same thing
happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
Ron Johnson
> In article <1181020029.5...@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
> dav...@montagar.com writes:
>>
>> By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money, no
>> support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it exists.
>
> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you denigrate
> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of crap
> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
(Time to pick up Linux's banner.)
Back in the early days, Linux had *no* marketing.
What it had was enthusiastic developers.
Enthusiastic developers created more interest and more interest
created more enthusiastic developers which created more good software.
Even now, IMNSHO (in my possibly wrong opinion), it's the dichotomy
of enthusiasm (on the desktop) and cold business calculation
(Windows-like costs without the viruses and crashes and a fear of a
return to Unix Wars) (on the server) that keeps Linux growing.
--
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!
Anton Shterenlikht
> room consuming electricity and generating heat. I ran the last VMS
> machines for academic use and as everyone here already knows, they
> were shutdown last year. So, I guess at least here, I was that ONE
> GUY.
nevermind, I received a 15k GBP grant from the Royal Society in 2007, part
of which is for setting up a vms cluster. Whatever they say, with
educational licenses and reasonably priced alphas and integrity, e.g. rx2660,
why not give it a go.
If all works at least half well, why not let my students explore parallel/
distributed computing on a cross architecture cluster with wery high bandwidth.
It might at least be worth considering this as an alternative to a
beowulf cluster, in particular, a vms cluster might even be more
energy efficient.
Obtaining the media and general information, though, was hard, and I'd
like to take this opportunity to thank first Ray Turner, UK VMS
ambassador, Ian Miller and others from openvms.org, Colin Butcher, and
all others, including this mailing list and some people from HP, who helped me.
--
Anton Shterenlikht
Room 2.6, Queen's Building
Mech Eng Dept
Bristol University
University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 928 8233
Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
> fork (a UNIX way of
> doing IO)
Say what?
[snip]
>
> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
> technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
> look at the initial cost only).
If the staff is already paid for...
[snip]
>
> What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than what
> is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities .. same thing
> happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
> multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
On to VMS?
Bill Gunshannon
"Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@hp.com> writes:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
>> Sent: June 5, 2007 8:50 AM
>> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
>> Subject: Re: Story Time
>>=20
>> In article <1181020029.5...@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
>> dav...@montagar.com writes:
>> > On Jun 4, 5:13 pm, Sue <susan_skonet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Dear Newsgroup,
>> >> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
>> >> everyday saying the same thing.
>> >
>> > True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me
>> (and
>> > others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what next
>> > faux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS, yada
>> > yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is back-
>> > spinned into a loss.
>> >
>> > By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money, no
>> > support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it
>> exists.
>> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you
>> denigrate
>> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
>> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of
>> crap
>> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>> >
>> > Because for the most part, people don't complain, they contribute.
>> > There's fewer applications available you say? Then port something.
>> > There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would be
>> > great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS. After
>> > all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
>> > anyway.
>> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
>> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
>> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
>> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>
> Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
>
> Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX way of
> doing IO), that its future is doomed?
That's not what I said at all. Someone else hinted that porting
Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
done by the people here in their spare time. I merely pointed out
that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
>
> Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform is
> doomed because it does not support fork either.
Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they need.
They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I can't
say if they have it now, too.)
>
> There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there are
> better ways of doing the same thing.
OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
way" stop keeping it under your hat.
>
> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
> technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
> look at the initial cost only).=20
Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for academic
use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would that be?
>
> However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener on
> the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
> monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring, change
> management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements like
> FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=20
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new Itanium
VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
>
> And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
> what some might call "internal hackers".
Not sure what that's supposed to mean. The days of the student hacker
are long gone. Most of these kids would much rather spend an evening
in the local bar than in a computer lab today. As for "internal" vs.
"external", read any security trade rag. The majority of threats are
from inside, University or business. That's just the way it is today.
>
> What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than what
> is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities ..
Really?? We have a course here that runs every Spring that still
has the students installing, configuring, administering and developing
software on Solaris. We still have a Sparc system in the lab. This
course does not now and never has included any, even casual, mention
or exposure to VMS, even whe we were still running it here in the
department. Read my lips, there is academic use of BSDUnix, Linux,
Solaris, Windows, QNX, BrickOS, etc. etc. There is no academic use
of VMS.
> same thing
> happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
> multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
Oh, you are talking about administrative use. Well, that's is different.
We still use VMS administratively. But the University is tied to Banner
and Oracle, not the OS. If Banner moved to Windows Server 2005 tomorrow,
so would the University. It's just what people have been saying for
ages here. It's the applications, not the OS. As more and more people
(like CDC) begin to see VSM as not in their future the applications will
move off of VMS and we all know what the current users of those application
will do.
It really is time to read the handwriting on the wall. If the people
inside of HP can't convince them to start pushing VMS in order to
strengthen it's position in the industry, what chance do outsiders
have? While I am in the market for a new position and would love to
work on VMS, I am not likely to bet my future on it.
Tom Linden
Anton, I would be pleased to donate a PL/I license so your students can
have the opportunity to learn a powerful programming language. If
interested
contact me offline.
--
PL/I for OpenVMS
www.kednos.com
Main, Kerry
> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
> Sent: June 5, 2007 10:12 AM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Story Time
>
> <FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.ne
There are major UNIX applications that have been ported to OpenVMS and
other platforms for that matter and while there are always some OS
specific things that might need to be done another way, it certainly is
not something that is a showstopper.
Hey, what do you think Oracle does for OpenVMS? For Windows?
> Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
>
> >
> > Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform
> is
> > doomed because it does not support fork either.
>
> Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they
> need.
> They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
>
> Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
> I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I
> can't
> say if they have it now, too.)
>
> >
> > There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there
> are
> > better ways of doing the same thing.
>
> OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
> OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
> way" stop keeping it under your hat.
>
Simple - you start with research 101 and enter "fork OpenVMS" into
google or you read the VMS FAQ's.
As examples:
http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2002-March/001754.html
> >
> > As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge
> pressure
> > to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
> > University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because
> it is
> > technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when
> you
> > look at the initial cost only).=20
>
> Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for
> academic
> use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would
> that be?
>
Probably because they do not even know it is there or what ever IT
service is offered on the OpenVMS system is not of interest to them.
> >
> > However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener
> on
> > the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
> > monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring,
> change
> > management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements
> like
> > FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=20
>
> Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
> bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new
> Itanium
> VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
>
They are struggling big time "no staff, to many patches, to many
regulatory concerns, to many things to do etc etc .." were common
complaints from the IT survey we did (and this environment was all
Windows and Solaris.
Their big mandate was to migrate from Solaris to Linux - ASAP was the
speed I was told. Which was technically better made no difference as up
front costs were all they were worried about. Unfortunately, when I
pointed out all of the monthly security patches for Linux, they were
amazed (shocked?) because they were not aware that there are so many
released every month.
I suspect the same story is true of many sites (OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX,
HP-UX) that are migrating to Linux i.e. similar to Windows sites a few
years ago, they are only looking at short term savings and how to deal
with all of the monthly Linux security patches will somehow work itself
out.
> >
> > And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
> > what some might call "internal hackers".
>
> Not sure what that's supposed to mean. The days of the student hacker
> are long gone. Most of these kids would much rather spend an evening
> in the local bar than in a computer lab today. As for "internal" vs.
> "external", read any security trade rag. The majority of threats are
> from inside, University or business. That's just the way it is today.
>
That's not what the IT folks at the University I was at stated.
> >
> > What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than
> what
> > is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities ..
>
> Really?? We have a course here that runs every Spring that still
> has the students installing, configuring, administering and developing
> software on Solaris. We still have a Sparc system in the lab. This
> course does not now and never has included any, even casual, mention
> or exposure to VMS, even whe we were still running it here in the
> department. Read my lips, there is academic use of BSDUnix, Linux,
> Solaris, Windows, QNX, BrickOS, etc. etc. There is no academic use
> of VMS.
>
Mmmm, so you have a UNIX based software development course environment.
Fine.
I would suggest to you that your University is likely looking at moving
your Solaris environment to Linux as well.
> > same thing
> > happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
> > multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
>
> Oh, you are talking about administrative use. Well, that's is
> different.
> We still use VMS administratively. But the University is tied to
> Banner
> and Oracle, not the OS. If Banner moved to Windows Server 2005
> tomorrow,
> so would the University. It's just what people have been saying for
> ages here. It's the applications, not the OS. As more and more
> people
> (like CDC) begin to see VSM as not in their future the applications
> will
> move off of VMS and we all know what the current users of those
> application
> will do.
>
> It really is time to read the handwriting on the wall. If the people
> inside of HP can't convince them to start pushing VMS in order to
> strengthen it's position in the industry, what chance do outsiders
> have? While I am in the market for a new position and would love to
> work on VMS, I am not likely to bet my future on it.
>
You have to go where your strengths are. Based on your postings, I would
say your future lies in UNIX administration - not OpenVMS
administration.
Nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do.
However, if I were an IT Exec looking to hire SysAdmins these days, I
would be looking for people who can manage multiple OS platforms.
Same thing goes for DBA's. I would rather have someone comfortable with
both Oracle and SQL Server with no religious preferences than just one
or the other.
Simply adds much more value to the company.
Malcolm Dunnett
"Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@hp.com> wrote in message
news:FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.net...
>As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
>to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
>University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
>technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
>look at the initial cost only).
Between the EDU license grant program and the CSLG VMS would
also be "low cost" for any University wishing to use it. We take advantage
of this to use VMS extensively for admin/support purposes ( I don't know
if we're one of the little flags or not ).
Cost and business practices are what initially drove many academic sites
out of the VMS market in the previous millenium, but nobody in academia
can make much of a case against VMS today based on cost.
While our CS department gave up on VMS some years ago ( primarily because
the faculty hadn't used it when they went to school ) they were quite
happily running Tru64 Unix - UNTIL HP KILLED IT. They're not sure where
they're going to go now, but they are certain it won't be HP-UX on
Itanium ( probably Linux on x86 ).
This is not a cost cutting measure in any sense - they were using
ES40's and HSG80's picked up on Ebay for a few thousand dollars and
the "Enthusiast" Tru64 license (yes, they had official word from
HP that teaching was a valid application of the Tru64 Enthusiast
license ) combined with CSLG.
Bill Gunshannon
>> >> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you
>> >> denigrate
>> >> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have
>> stated
>> >> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of
>> >> crap
>> >> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>> >> >
>> >> > Because for the most part, people don't complain, they
>> contribute.
>> >> > There's fewer applications available you say? Then port
>> something.
>> >> > There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would
>> be
>> >> > great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS.
>> After
>> >> > all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
>> >> > anyway.
>> >> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
>> >> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require
>> fork()
>> >> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of
>> which
>> >> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>> >
>> > Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
>> >
>> > Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX
>> way of
>> > doing IO), that its future is doomed?
>> That's not what I said at all. Someone else hinted that porting
>> Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
>> done by the people here in their spare time. I merely pointed out
>> that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
>> the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
>
> There are major UNIX applications that have been ported to OpenVMS and
> other platforms for that matter and while there are always some OS
> specific things that might need to be done another way, it certainly is
> not something that is a showstopper.
>
> Hey, what do you think Oracle does for OpenVMS? For Windows?
Are you trying to tell me that Oracle was OSS "ported" from Linux to
OpenVMS as opposed to having been written specifically for VMS?
>
>> Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
>>=20
>> >
>> > Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform
>> is
>> > doomed because it does not support fork either.
>>=20
>> Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they
>> need.
>> They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
>>=20
>> Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
>> I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I
>> can't
>> say if they have it now, too.)
>>=20
>> >
>> > There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there
>> are
>> > better ways of doing the same thing.
>>=20
>> OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
>> OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
>> way" stop keeping it under your hat.
>>=20
>
> Simple - you start with research 101 and enter "fork OpenVMS" into
> google or you read the VMS FAQ's.
I don't have to. It has been pointed out here numerous times, including
by VMS Engineer that VMS doesn't "fork". It may have a way to spaen a
new process, but it ain't a "fork". And many of those high demand OSS
programs require the functionality of a true fork().
>
> As examples:
> http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2002-March/001754.html
What was the point of this? It specifically states VMS does not have
a fork() and can not duplicate the functionality of the Unix fork()
(ie. "the child and the parent do not share any I/O context"). Many
(most?) programs using fork() would require this.
>
>> >
>> > As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge
>> pressure
>> > to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
>> > University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because
>> it is
>> > technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when
>> you
>> > look at the initial cost only).=3D20
>>=20
>> Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for
>> academic
>> use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would
>> that be?
>>=20
>
> Probably because they do not even know it is there or what ever IT
> service is offered on the OpenVMS system is not of interest to them.
Ummmm.... When I got here, the VMS system was all there was.
Everybody used it. Over time, it's usage has dropped until
today it is a glorified space heater. Your second clause is
closer to the truth. There is nothing on the system that they
can't find an easier and more functional replacement for on
some other system, primarily a PC. So, you tell me. Based on
what you think college students, faculty and staff do, what
possible use can you see for VMS at the user level?
>
>> >
>> > However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener
>> on
>> > the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
>> > monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring,
>> change
>> > management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements
>> like
>> > FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=3D20
>>=20
>> Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
>> bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new
>> Itanium
>> VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
>>=20
>
> They are struggling big time "no staff, to many patches, to many
> regulatory concerns, to many things to do etc etc .." were common
> complaints from the IT survey we did (and this environment was all
> Windows and Solaris.=20
Bull crap. Important patches (security stuff) are handled automatically
by MS every night. The last patch I absolutely had to do in the middle
of the semester was the stupid government mandated DST changes. If you
are n it running the programs that the patches are for or, if they don't
affect you, then you don't have to do them. Regulatrory? I thought
we were taklking academia here and not the machines that the administrators
use.
>
> Their big mandate was to migrate from Solaris to Linux - ASAP was the
> speed I was told. Which was technically better made no difference as up
> front costs were all they were worried about. Unfortunately, when I
> pointed out all of the monthly security patches for Linux, they were
> amazed (shocked?) because they were not aware that there are so many
> released every month.
I find that real hard to believe, unless these IT "professionals" live
under a rock somewhere. We actually dumped Sun as our main machines
back at the end of the SunOS days when Solaris was truly a joke. But
it has kept at least enough presence here for students to get their
feet wet. Sadly, VMS has not.
>
> I suspect the same story is true of many sites (OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX,
> HP-UX) that are migrating to Linux i.e. similar to Windows sites a few
> years ago, they are only looking at short term savings and how to deal
> with all of the monthly Linux security patches will somehow work itself
> out.
We are not "migrating to Linux". It is used by the students in certain
courses for the sake of information. It is significant that VMS is not
afforded the same status. It should tell people something. And before
you say something like, "Well, the faculty probably have never used it
so they don't know anything about it." Let me tell you that every faculty
member in the department except our newest (who came from the faculty of
UGA, and even bigger school than us) has more experience with VMS than with
Unix and some even prefer VMS over Unix. But, just like they use Java
int he classroom rather than the Ada we used to use, VMS is not considered
relevant enough to be included in any course.
>
>> >
>> > And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
>> > what some might call "internal hackers".
>>=20
>> Not sure what that's supposed to mean. The days of the student hacker
>> are long gone. Most of these kids would much rather spend an evening
>> in the local bar than in a computer lab today. As for "internal" vs.
>> "external", read any security trade rag. The majority of threats are
>> from inside, University or business. That's just the way it is today.
>>=20
>
> That's not what the IT folks at the University I was at stated.
Yeah, well.... Are these the same "IT folks" who didn't know about
Linux patches?
>
>> >
>> > What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than
>> what
>> > is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities ..
>>=20
>> Really?? We have a course here that runs every Spring that still
>> has the students installing, configuring, administering and developing
>> software on Solaris. We still have a Sparc system in the lab. This
>> course does not now and never has included any, even casual, mention
>> or exposure to VMS, even whe we were still running it here in the
>> department. Read my lips, there is academic use of BSDUnix, Linux,
>> Solaris, Windows, QNX, BrickOS, etc. etc. There is no academic use
>> of VMS.
>>=20
>
> Mmmm, so you have a UNIX based software development course environment.
> Fine.
I never said that. Actually, the development environment is dependant
on the course. Some is Windows, soem is Unix.
>
> I would suggest to you that your University is likely looking at moving
> your Solaris environment to Linux as well.=20
And you would be wrong on both counts. We don't have a "Solarisr
environment" we are FreeBSD on the Unix side and XP on the Windows
side. We have courses that introduce the students to other OS
environments, including Solaris and QNX. Conspicuous in its absence
is VMS. Has something to do with percieved relevance in the indugtry.
>
>> > same thing
>> > happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
>> > multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
>>=20
>> Oh, you are talking about administrative use. Well, that's is
>> different.
>> We still use VMS administratively. But the University is tied to
>> Banner
>> and Oracle, not the OS. If Banner moved to Windows Server 2005
>> tomorrow,
>> so would the University. It's just what people have been saying for
>> ages here. It's the applications, not the OS. As more and more
>> people
>> (like CDC) begin to see VSM as not in their future the applications
>> will
>> move off of VMS and we all know what the current users of those
>> application
>> will do.
>>=20
>> It really is time to read the handwriting on the wall. If the people
>> inside of HP can't convince them to start pushing VMS in order to
>> strengthen it's position in the industry, what chance do outsiders
>> have? While I am in the market for a new position and would love to
>> work on VMS, I am not likely to bet my future on it.
>>=20
>
> You have to go where your strengths are. Based on your postings, I would
> say your future lies in UNIX administration - not OpenVMS
> administration.=20
Actually, I would really rather just go back to programming. I really
miss COBOL. :-)
>
> Nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do.
>
> However, if I were an IT Exec looking to hire SysAdmins these days, I
> would be looking for people who can manage multiple OS platforms.=20
Nice thought, but that's not the way the job market seems to be shaping
up.
>
> Same thing goes for DBA's. I would rather have someone comfortable with
> both Oracle and SQL Server with no religious preferences than just one
> or the other.=20
Knowing what is involved in beng a DBA, and having had to admin multiple
different Database engines, I would disagree. Jack of all trades, master
of none.
>
> Simply adds much more value to the company.
Luckily, I will never be looking for a job as a DBA. pay may be nice
but I really don't need that kind of stress this late in my career. :-)
johnhre...@yahoo.com
> In article <FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6091F6A2B86840242D...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.net>,
> "Main, Kerry" <Kerry.M...@hp.com> writes:
> > Hey, what do you think Oracle does for OpenVMS? For Windows?
>
> Are you trying to tell me that Oracle was OSS "ported" from Linux to
> OpenVMS as opposed to having been written specifically for VMS?
>
Unfortunately, yes. Ever since v8.1.7.0 that's what they do. It was
supposed to let them release an OpenVMS version within 90 day of the
release of the major UNIX version that Oracle is based on (IIRC
Solaris Sparc). So far the best they managed was the initial 8.1.7
release which was only 120 days or so behind the UNIX version. The
first versions of Oracle were developed on VAX/VMS, but somewhere
along the way (around V6 perhaps), they switched to doing the main
development on Sun Solaris and then implemented the changes on the
other platforms they supported. The 8i release (8.1.7) I believe was
the first major release where the code was made for UNIX, then ported
to other O/S platforms. I may be somewhat off on this, but I'm close.
John H. Reinhardt
dav...@montagar.com
> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you denigrate
> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of crap
> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
The marketing came much later - after a huge amount of development,
distributions, and more were done. Not only that, but were done by a
wide variety of individuals, volunteers, and groups - not companies or
marketers. In fact, much of the actual software development still
comes from these individuals, volunteers, and groups.
> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
You see, you still declare failure before even beginning. You
rationalize porting of 100% of applications as impossible by revolving
around 2 minor things. Spinning the loss instead of attempting the
win. And the fact that there ARE applications and services that have
been ported pretty much invalidates your claim on its face. The fact
that wxWidgets and GTK+ libraries are already ported to VMS
(incidently, they both use X11), and many others use pthread rather
than fork() just makes the claim look uninformed. And there are tons
of "console" apps that require neither.
The codebase that makes up the *AMP suite (Apache, MySQL, PERL/PHP)
and Mozilla as all been successfully ported to OpenVMS. Guess what?
fork() and X11 didn't stop them.
You can see a ton of work in the VMS C library to support more of the
"glibc" features that are becoming more common in modern C/C++
development. The GNV effort makes even more of this possible.
After all, Ford got unbreakable glass by ignoring people with your
view and hiring people who didn't know better.
> There were thousands upon thousands of MG and Triumph owners (still are,
> actually) but even that didn't save BLM from bad management.
And again, exactly like I stated at the beginning - "what next faux
pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS". What I see
here is a case where there is NO circumstance where HP could succeed
in your mind. Even when there is marketing, it's "not enough" or "too
late" or whatever other excuse you want to choose for the moment. If
HP puts out something that doesn't mention VMS, its touted as another
"sure sign" that HP is trying to kill VMS.
You are actually becoming part of the PROBLEM.
I actually see a lot of work out there for porting various libraries/
apps, but part of the issue is there isn't much organization. Maybe
we need a "SourceForge" environment for OpenVMS developers where we
can work together better.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
> statements on the roadmap stating "subject to change". This has been
> discussed many times on comp.os.vms.
That's clear. However, it is somewhat frustrating to see something on
the road map which then disappears. Perhaps the roadmap should have the
milestones divided into "very certain", "probably", "maybe", "depends on
demand", "depends on demand and revenue directly associated with that
demand" etc. Whether or not it's a problem in the concrete case is a
different question, but things disappearing tend to reinforce the
feeling people have (correctly or not) that the COOV (current owner of
VMS) is less reliable than was the case 20 years ago.
> Can you point me to any other large OS/server vendor that has as
> detailed (versions etc) future roadmaps on their storage, OS,
> networking, HW etc available on their public web site?
That might be the crux of the problem. Many people compare HP today
with DEC 20 years ago, not with the competition today. They see the
downhill slide, and extrapolate.
Yes, many things are still great, and yes, many rumours are untrue.
That doesn't mean that nothing could be better, and that no impressions
are false. The decline of VMS in academia is huge and there is no way
to deny it. True, academia perhaps didn't make much of a profit, maybe
it was even a loss, but the fact is that young people introduced to VMS
at college (if not earlier) is the key to having people work with VMS in
the future. If companies can only hire older, more experienced folks at
a high salary, that is good for older, more experienced folks at a high
salary in the short term, but isn't good for the long-term viability of
VMS.
> For that matter, can you provide me with any OS software vendor that
> still provides current versions of their OS for HW that is 20+ years
> old? I wonder what Microsoft would say if I asked them to support
> Windows XP or Windows 2003 on a 286 or even a 386 or 486 system?
Again, the competition is not the issue. VMS is better than the
competition. The question is, could VMS be even better than it is now
and if so wouldn't that go a long way to taking the wind out of the
sails of the nay-sayers?
I'm reading comp.os.vms from VMS, using quite new OS version, somewhat
older newsreader software and quite old hardware. I quite literally
have enough VAX and ALPHA hardware in my house to last me until I die,
and I have every intention of doing all of my computer stuff on VMS at
least until then.
I see two Big Goofs in the last few years. First, the neglect of
academia. True, this wasn't only the problem of DEC (which is when the
decline started) and its successors, but also the "free software is
cool" mentality of the typical sysadmin which led to the proliferation
of unix in academia (interestingly, many of these guys are now teaching
folks how to use Microsoft applications). Second, the argument for
Itanium was that it would be "industry standard", which it hasn't turned
out to be. OK, this might not be the fault of HP, but it would be nice
to own up to the fact and come up with a "plan B" for the future of VMS.
After all, if a few years ago the message was that VMS has to move to
the "industry standard" hardware in order to survive, then is is only
reasonable to expect doubts when that hardware has not, after all,
turned out to be "industry standard".
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
Gunshannon) writes:
> This is more meaningful than you might think. We still have a VMS
> machine here for academic use. And every faculty, staff and student
> has an account on it. How does this show up in the VMS constant? I
> am sure that the existence of this machine is counted in HP's numbers
> somewhere. Only problem is, no one uses it. Students haven't used
> it for years. The last users were dinosaur faculty who still read
> their email there. But the University Datacenter fixed that. They
> stopped letting it receive or send email. Now, it sits int he computer
> room consuming electricity and generating heat. I ran the last VMS
> machines for academic use and as everyone here already knows, they
> were shutdown last year. So, I guess at least here, I was that ONE
> GUY.
OK, you're one guy, and I know another one guy. That's two guys. It
used to be, not 2 users, but several thousand users.
Bill Gunshannon
dav...@montagar.com writes:
> On Jun 5, 7:49 am, b...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you denigrate
>> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
>> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of crap
>> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>
> The marketing came much later - after a huge amount of development,
> distributions, and more were done. Not only that, but were done by a
> wide variety of individuals, volunteers, and groups - not companies or
> marketers. In fact, much of the actual software development still
> comes from these individuals, volunteers, and groups.
All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
BSD is stabler, more secure, more efficient and has more stuff that
was actually implemented correctly than Linux. And still businesses
are flocking to Linux and ignoring BSD. And the answer is, marketing.
Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
>
>> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
>> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
>> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
>> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>
> You see, you still declare failure before even beginning. You
> rationalize porting of 100% of applications as impossible by revolving
> around 2 minor things.
I am not spinning anything. Name the applications that people are most
likely to want. Then look at what they contain. Actually, the obsolete
version of X11 that is available for VMS is probably the bigger show
stopper as desktop apps are what sells computers today. But there are
still alot of cute little things with fork() in them. And that list
was not meant to be exclusive. It just pointed out the two most common
shortcomings frequently mentioned here everytime this subjecy comes up.
> Spinning the loss instead of attempting the
> win. And the fact that there ARE applications and services that have
> been ported pretty much invalidates your claim on its face. The fact
> that wxWidgets and GTK+ libraries are already ported to VMS
> (incidently, they both use X11), and many others use pthread rather
> than fork() just makes the claim look uninformed. And there are tons
> of "console" apps that require neither.
Console apps don't sell computers or OSes today. I have a closet full
of VT terminals the University abandoned to prove it. All they were
used for was Registration, twice a year and that is no longer done
with character cell applications. And, if it's so simple and VSM has
all the pieces needed, let me know when you have OpenOffice running.
>
> The codebase that makes up the *AMP suite (Apache, MySQL, PERL/PHP)
> and Mozilla as all been successfully ported to OpenVMS. Guess what?
> fork() and X11 didn't stop them.
>
> You can see a ton of work in the VMS C library to support more of the
> "glibc" features that are becoming more common in modern C/C++
> development. The GNV effort makes even more of this possible.
>
> After all, Ford got unbreakable glass by ignoring people with your
> view and hiring people who didn't know better.
>
>> There were thousands upon thousands of MG and Triumph owners (still are,
>> actually) but even that didn't save BLM from bad management.
>
> And again, exactly like I stated at the beginning - "what next faux
> pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS". What I see
> here is a case where there is NO circumstance where HP could succeed
> in your mind. Even when there is marketing, it's "not enough" or "too
> late" or whatever other excuse you want to choose for the moment. If
> HP puts out something that doesn't mention VMS, its touted as another
> "sure sign" that HP is trying to kill VMS.
I have never said that HP was trying to kill VMS. In fact, I doubt they
would expend the energy. It is sufficient to just continue to ignore it
while milking the cash cow until the last user finally leaves. The point
I and many others have made is that it would take minimal effort to reverse
the trend that has been seen with VMS the last daceade or so. A few thousand
dollars for marketing. Giving a few good stories to the press. Anything
to convince the people buying IT today that there is a future in buying
and running VMS.
>
> You are actually becoming part of the PROBLEM.
I can't be part of the problem because I am not even in the equation.
But if you think the solution is in sticking my head in the sand like
so many others, then I admit I am not going to be part of the solution.
>
> I actually see a lot of work out there for porting various libraries/
> apps, but part of the issue is there isn't much organization. Maybe
> we need a "SourceForge" environment for OpenVMS developers where we
> can work together better.
What stops you from using SourceForge? I haven't looked at it but I
was not aware of anything that restricted projects to Linux.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.net>,
"Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@hp.com> writes:
> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
> technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
> look at the initial cost only).
As I said, it's not all HP's fault.
> However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener on
> the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
> monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring, change
> management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements like
> FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.
Right. Unfortunately, since often these things are paid for out of a
differnt pot than initial costs, some folks don't see the total cost.
> What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than what
> is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities .. same thing
> happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
> multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
In some cases, yes, but in others, universities have moved from VMS to
Solaris or AIX. Shouldn't HP be in there and offering a VMS solution?
Bill Gunshannon
There is a big difference between maintaining two similar parallel
source trees for two OSes and porting an application that has never
been on the second OS. And, using your own example. If the application
already exists in fully functional form and yet it takes considerably
longer than planned to apply changes because the development is being
done on Unix, what would that tell you about the level of effort needed
to take an application that was never intended to run on VMS and port
it from Unix? Trust me, I have experience. :-) In one of my previous
lives I had to try and port Unix apps to Primos. Now that was a trip!!
JF Mezei
> Yup. That's because a new VAX release isn't even in the top 100 list of
> things customers are asking for.
I have quite a problem with this statement. (not directed at you, this
type of argument has often been used by the onwed of VMS to justify NOT
doing something).
Considering that a large proportion of customers are totally out of
touch with VMS management (and they many not even have any contact with
HP at all), does HP *REALLY* know what VMS customers are really
interested in ?
The VAX 8.* was in the roadmap. So customers who needed it were happy
and didn't take the trouble of telling HP they really needed it since it
was already commited. So HP then goes about and says that nobody really
asked for it, so they pulled out.
Why are so many customers stuck at 5.5-2 on VAX ? Because that was the
last version before Palmer started his slash and burn, at which point
customers heeded the call and stopped developping on VMS and put new
applications on other platforms, leaving their VAX machines static as
long as that app continues to work. (and the slash&burn also made it
harder for customers to migrate due to software/drivers not ported to
Alpha).
Now, fast forward to 2007. If HP wants to get those static VAX customers
back in the stream, it should show them it is really interested in them
and start dialogue (perhaps through DECUS or some other method) to find
out what it would take to get those customers to upgrade their VAXes.
At the very least, they could get second hand Alphas (or new ones from
that secret HP channel). By showing those customers the current VMS
version, they can see all the added functions, improvements and new
features and work to convince them to start building on VMS again.
It takes vision to see the potential of reactivating those VAX
customers. You cannot just wait in your office and wait for one or more
of them to go through the trouble of trying to contact someone at HP
that even knows what VMS is, because that is next to impossible unless
you know about Sue and she can then direct you to someone who can help you.
When HP inherited VMS, it had a perfect opportunity to show all VMS
customers that it cared and that it would want to serve them. Instead,
it went out of its way to not mention VMS. It committed to a new version
on VAX, but then retracted that promise (probably due to all the staff
cuts that require projects to be canned).
Heck, they have yet to produce a patch for MONITOR to abide by existing
SPD documents that show that 8.3 alpha will interoperate fully in a
cluster with VAX 7.3.
JF Mezei
> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
> technically better, but rather because it is low cost
There was a rather depressing (for me) article in COmputer World about
skills that are no longer needed.
In it, there was one University that decided to still teach Cobol. When
asked why ?, their response was simple: Two of the large employers in
this area still use Cobol and they want Cobol to be taught to the
students they will hire. So the university teaches Cobol.
However, most universities look around at what skills are needed and
decided to teach those. And when the trade rags and wanted ads say
"linux this" and "linux that", they rightfully teach Linux to their
students.
If nobody needs people trained in VMS, then universities don't see the
need to train people in VMS.
many years ago, I had made a suggestion to the then VMS product manager
that he should get his VMS ambassadors to become guest lecturers at
universities and make presentations on VMS clustering and teach them the
concepts of quorum, shaed locks, disk accesses, system management etc.
This would have told not only students but also teachers that VMS still
has technologies that are leading edge and worth teaching to students so
that when they start hacking in Linux, they better understand what real
clustering is really about.
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Robert Deininger wrote:
> > Yup. That's because a new VAX release isn't even in the top 100 list of
> > things customers are asking for.
>
> I have quite a problem with this statement. (not directed at you, this
> type of argument has often been used by the onwed of VMS to justify NOT
> doing something).
In this case, I think that it's probably true that it's not in the top
100 things.
> Considering that a large proportion of customers are totally out of
> touch with VMS management (and they many not even have any contact with
> HP at all), does HP *REALLY* know what VMS customers are really
> interested in ?
Well, by definition they can only evaluate what customers ask for by
examining the questions customers ask. I'm sure that if a customer
really wants a new version of VMS for VAX he will communicate this to
HP.
Of course, to make sense (and cents) here, he needs to be a paying
customer. Hobbyists aren't a business case.
> The VAX 8.* was in the roadmap. So customers who needed it were happy
> and didn't take the trouble of telling HP they really needed it since it
> was already commited. So HP then goes about and says that nobody really
> asked for it, so they pulled out.
The question is, who needed it?
> Why are so many customers stuck at 5.5-2 on VAX ? Because that was the
> last version before Palmer started his slash and burn, at which point
> customers heeded the call and stopped developping on VMS and put new
> applications on other platforms, leaving their VAX machines static as
> long as that app continues to work. (and the slash&burn also made it
> harder for customers to migrate due to software/drivers not ported to
> Alpha).
Another reason is that 5.5-2 is a relatively mature version of VMS and
many apps were mature and people wanted to avoid the upgrade costs.
There are MANY applications which are mature, which is a GOOD thing, but
they don't require a new version of VMS.
> Now, fast forward to 2007. If HP wants to get those static VAX customers
> back in the stream, it should show them it is really interested in them
> and start dialogue (perhaps through DECUS or some other method) to find
> out what it would take to get those customers to upgrade their VAXes.
Again, if the stuff runs on the VAX, and does what it should, why
upgrade? One can get enough VAXes for free to keep on running for
decades (in fact, I have), so end-of-life, end-of-support etc is not an
issue.
> At the very least, they could get second hand Alphas (or new ones from
> that secret HP channel). By showing those customers the current VMS
> version, they can see all the added functions, improvements and new
> features and work to convince them to start building on VMS again.
Again, only if those folks are interested. If they are interested in
maintaining their mature apps, there is no need to upgrade. If they are
interested in building on VMS, they have already moved to ALPHA. ALPHA
had a few good years before the decline of DEC.
> Heck, they have yet to produce a patch for MONITOR to abide by existing
> SPD documents that show that 8.3 alpha will interoperate fully in a
> cluster with VAX 7.3.
What's the status here? My personal interest (as a hobbyist) in a newer
version of VMS for VAX is to be able to continue a mixed cluster with
the latest ALPHA version. In the past, it was also a motivation that I
didn't have enough ALPHAs. Now, I do, but I want to keep the VAXes
because a) my small VAXes use less power than any of my ALPHAs and b)
the VAX hardware is more robust.
Malcolm Dunnett
news:5clpmvF...@mid.individual.net...
> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
> was never going to go anywhere).
It's dangerous to think that technical merit has any bearing on
the outcome of a lawsuit :-)
> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
>
Which is somewhat ironic considering that BSD was the "other" operating
system available for VAX when it was first released. So two of the "hottest"
operating systems from the early 80's are in the same boat today.
David Turner, Island Computers
systems we have in storage in the UK. They need memory and disks but
wouldn't eat too much into your grant money
We also sell lots of other Alpha systems
I couldn't match edu discounts from HP on Inegrity tho.
Did I mention I am English and my mother comes from Fishponds, Bristol UK?
David
dturner-at-islandco-dot-com
www.islandco.com
"Anton Shterenlikht" <me...@bristol.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:2007060513...@mech-aslap33.men.bris.ac.uk...
JF Mezei
> Well, by definition they can only evaluate what customers ask for by
> examining the questions customers ask. I'm sure that if a customer
> really wants a new version of VMS for VAX he will communicate this to
> HP.
That is the point. Most customers do not have a line of contact with VMS
management and wouln't even know how to ask.
Secondly, and most importantly, with VMS "assumed dead until proven
otherwise", the onus is on HP to contact those customers and tell them
VMS is still alive and make them deals to make them want to upgrade.
This, of course, would require some form of sales force to go visit
customers, or VMS management sending out letters to those customers,
including those who may not be suported by HP.
> The question is, who needed it?
A customer who has decided to grow IT via Solaris will not *need* yp
upgrade VMS. They still have a legacy apps on an old VAX at 5.5-2 and
they aren't thouching it. But those customers are not "contributing" to
the VMS ecosystem because they do not buy new applications, they do not
develop on VMS, nor do they need extra horsepower.
By convincing those "idle" customer to upgrade, you also open the door
for them to start adding more modern applications to their VMS systems
and grow their VMS infrastructure.
ISVs are not intererested in a platform where people don't buy any
software anymore.
johnhre...@yahoo.com
> What stops you from using SourceForge? I haven't looked at it but I
> was not aware of anything that restricted projects to Linux.
>
That's true, they don't have a restriction. There's just that niggly
little problem that they don't have any VMS systems in their build
farm. They do take donations of equipment though.
johnhre...@yahoo.com
> In article <1181065229.574964.93...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
> University of Scranton |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
Bill, you missed the point. They DON'T have any parallel source trees
anymore. Every new major version is ported fresh from the UNIX
source. I'm sure they have scripts to do standard edits and maybe a
separate set of subroutines and such, but they don't have parallel
code and transfer the changes from one to another (except for the
point release patches). They USED to do the parallel code trees, but
the last of that was V8.0.x.
I also wasn't disagreeing with you about the effort it takes to port
applications. I was just pointing out to you that Kerry was right
about what Oracle does now - as strange as it seems (Not about Kerry
being right, but that Oracle would do it that way).
johnhre...@yahoo.com
> I actually see a lot of work out there for porting various libraries/
> apps, but part of the issue is there isn't much organization. Maybe
> we need a "SourceForge" environment for OpenVMS developers where we
> can work together better.
I've thought about that too. Hopefully in a few months there may be
some help in that area.
John H. Reinhardt
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
> does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
Two words: Unix Wars.
> BSD is stabler, more secure, more efficient and has more stuff that
> was actually implemented correctly than Linux. And still businesses
> are flocking to Linux and ignoring BSD. And the answer is, marketing.
> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
And "all those eyes" are constantly looking at various pieces,
saying, "hey, I can make that part 'better' (for some definition of
'better') or 'I've found a bug, here's a patch'".
You'd be stunned by the disagreements between major kernel
developers on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml). But when
someone brings a well-written (meaning: it follows Linus' coding
standards) chunk of code to the table that implements a new feature
(usually a driver) or replaces old code (and is demonstrably better
(faster, simpler, uses less memory) it is accepted.
Ron Johnson
> In article <aacc$4665b7a0$cef8887a$30...@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei
> <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>
>> Now, fast forward to 2007. If HP wants to get those static VAX customers
>> back in the stream, it should show them it is really interested in them
>> and start dialogue (perhaps through DECUS or some other method) to find
>> out what it would take to get those customers to upgrade their VAXes.
>
> Again, if the stuff runs on the VAX, and does what it should, why
> upgrade? One can get enough VAXes for free to keep on running for
> decades (in fact, I have), so end-of-life, end-of-support etc is not an
> issue.
And then you roll over to Charon-VAX.
John Smith
<snip>
>
> And again, exactly like I stated at the beginning - "what next faux
> pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS". What I see
> here is a case where there is NO circumstance where HP could succeed
> in your mind. Even when there is marketing, it's "not enough" or "too
> late" or whatever other excuse you want to choose for the moment. If
> HP puts out something that doesn't mention VMS, its touted as another
> "sure sign" that HP is trying to kill VMS.
>
> You are actually becoming part of the PROBLEM.
>
> I actually see a lot of work out there for porting various libraries/
> apps, but part of the issue is there isn't much organization. Maybe
> we need a "SourceForge" environment for OpenVMS developers where we
> can work together better.
Oh David ....
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=100326
9&highlight=
HP estimates FY07 revenue will be approximately $100.5 billion to $100.9
billion.
Second Quarter 2007 Results
- Net revenue up 13% year-over-year to $25.5 billion
- GAAP operating profit of $2.1 billion, or $0.65 earnings per share, up 27%
year-over-year excluding a $0.15 tax settlement gain in Q2 FY06
- Non-GAAP operating profit of $2.3 billion, or $0.70 earnings per share, up
30% year-over-year excluding a $0.15 tax settlement gain in Q2 FY06
- Record cash flow from operations of $4.2 billion
Extrapolating, HP will earn somewhere in the vicinity of $8 Billion
after-tax in FY2007.
How much of this is being spent on VMS marketing and advertising, excluding
the costs of Boot Camp? Last I saw a one-off full-page ad in the Wall Street
Journal was about $100k, less if you bought a bunch of pages either in the
same edition or over multiple days.
What's $1 million in identifiable, VMS-specific advertising targeting the
C-levels that read the WSJ or Information Week vs. HP's profit this year?
According to my rocket science calculator it's 0.0125% of HP's estimated
after-tax profits. How come HP's 'rocket scientists' don't figure VMS is
worth that amount of expenditure?
It's because they've already killed VMS in the market's eyes.
Name 20 new-to-VMS customers (ie. replaced linux/unix or Windows with VMS,
or who have implemented decent-sized VMS configurations as an adjunct) since
January this year whose annual sales are $100MM or more. Betcha you can't.
Betcha HP can't either.
--
OpenVMS - The never-advertised operating system with the dwindling ISV and
customer base.
John Smith
At this rate of growth of 'continuing' academic use, pretty soon VMS will
again be running at all universities world-wide :-(
--
OpenVMS - The never-advertised operating system with the dwindling ISV
base.
Richard Maher
> If, on the other hand, your situation, like mine, is more "Darwinian"
(adapt or
> face "extinction"), ... well, I'm sure that's enough said.
It appears the prevailing wisdom is that you and a couple of mates get a keg
in, and start porting Cerner's software to Itanium yourselves. Source-code
and copyright access are left as an exercise for the reader :-)
Just out of curiosity, who is Cerner's No.1 competitor and why aren't they
now offering Cerner/VMS clients a 50% discount if they change to product X?
Sure, they'd still have to change HW platforms but having witnessed the
level of contempt that Cerner holds them in, could it not be time to
byte-the-bullet and port the data as well? If Cerner/VMS customers take it
now, do they really think that'll be the last booty-call they'll have to
face?
Cheers Richard Maher
"David J Dachtera" <djes...@spam.comcast.net> wrote in message
news:4664CAB0...@spam.comcast.net...
> Sue wrote:
> > [snip]
> > Epilog - the helpful person stayed in Networking, which was bought by
> > another company that is now out of business. You decide
>
> One of my stories...
>
> Having been laid off from my first VMS job ((mis-)management stuffed it
down the
> commode, as usual, but I digress), I wound up on a site with a little
no-name
> UNIX box ("Pixel Computer" running a vendor-branded AT&T System-III, if
you can
> handle that).
>
> As the company grew, the UNIX box got flakier and flakier until it became
> impossible to go 24 hours without a kernel panic.
>
> I drew on my "strong suit" MicroVAX-II, Q5 with an RA81 and a TK50 (!).
> Managemant was well pleased, if a bit stodgy.
>
> I left after three years for another VMS site. The UNIX->VMS site is,
needless
> to say, no longer VMS. Windows stuff.
>
> Like many here, I've "ridden the wave" from VMS's heyday, through its
free-fall
> into obscurity and now into its waning days as it goes deeper into
obscurity.
>
> If you're like Sue and your VMS future (until you retire) is more or less
> assured (or you are offered a generous severance package), then I say: by
all
> means - stay with it.
>
> If, on the other hand, your situation, like mine, is more "Darwinian"
(adapt or
> face "extinction"), ... well, I'm sure that's enough said.
>
> --
> David J Dachtera
> dba DJE Systems
> http://www.djesys.com/
>
> Unofficial OpenVMS Marketing Home Page
> http://www.djesys.com/vms/market/
>
> Unofficial Affordable OpenVMS Home Page:
> http://www.djesys.com/vms/soho/
>
> Unofficial OpenVMS-IA32 Home Page:
> http://www.djesys.com/vms/ia32/
>
> Unofficial OpenVMS Hobbyist Support Page:
> http://www.djesys.com/vms/support/
David J Dachtera
>
> On Jun 5, 7:49 am, b...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> > But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you denigrate
> > have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
> > numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of crap
> > like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>
> The marketing came much later
..., but at least it CAME!
> - after a huge amount of development,
> distributions, and more were done. Not only that, but were done by a
> wide variety of individuals, volunteers, and groups - not companies or
> marketers. In fact, much of the actual software development still
> comes from these individuals, volunteers, and groups.
>
> > Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
> > can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
> > and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
> > VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>
> You see, you still declare failure before even beginning. You
> rationalize porting of 100% of applications as impossible by revolving
> around 2 minor things.
I wouldn't have thought of the GUI under-pinnings (X11) as "minor", neither that
nor the much-sought-after fork().
That's like saying porting my RMS-based DEC BASIC application to UN*X is a minor
task, even though there's no suitable compiler or UN*X-based RMS sustitute
available (without going to third-party add-ins), or like saying that a lack of
ODS-5 would not be an issue for Oracle, SWS, Mozilla, etc. which depend on
mixed-case support in the filesystem.
C'mon, Dave - get your perspective back!
>
> The codebase that makes up the *AMP suite (Apache, MySQL, PERL/PHP)
> and Mozilla as all been successfully ported to OpenVMS. Guess what?
> fork() and X11 didn't stop them.
How many of the aforementioned require either fork() or X11 (hint: none of those
are GUI app.'s).
> [snip]
> I actually see a lot of work out there for porting various libraries/
> apps, but part of the issue is there isn't much organization. Maybe
> we need a "SourceForge" environment for OpenVMS developers where we
> can work together better.
Agreed.
I'd even be willing to host repositories, if necessary, so long it would be
economically feasible for me (would likely need dues-paying members of a formal
organization, corporate sponsorship, or some other way to pay for better than
residential broadband and electrical supplies). Given that my current VMS gig is
extremely tenuous, I don't really see that as possible any other way. I'm a
working stiff, like the rest of c.o.v.
Gremlin
I run a postrgraduate course in (amongst other things) commercial operating
systems security. We cover (in some detail) z/OS, i5/OS, OpenVMS, HP/UX
11i, Solaris 10, Windows Server and several Linuxes. This is a "hands on"
course demonstrating practical background, risks, vulnerabilities,
commercial considerations, standards and frameworks (SOX, HIPPA, ISO17799,
ISO27001, ISM3, AS/NZS4360 etc) and how "commercial" operating systems have
different risk profiles by the way they are designed and operated. Also
included is the opportunity to hack into any of these OSs as they are
installed as plain vanilla installations with a web and mail server running,
patched according to the vendors' specifications.
So, Solaris 10, Windows, Linux and HP/UX are regularly hacked and trashed.
The students all fail to get into z/OS, i5/OS and OpenVMS - then, as part of
their assignments, most arrive at the ame opinion (even the Linux
promoters), that OpenVMS seems really good - why haven't they heard of it?
So at least at this univiersity in my courses they get some exposure and
come to realise that the commerical world is not just Windows/Linux/UNIX -
perhaps HP could pay attention?
"Bill Gunshannon" <bi...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote in message
news:5cl99aF...@mid.individual.net...
> In article
> <FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.net>,
> "Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@hp.com> writes:
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
>>> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
>>> Sent: June 5, 2007 8:50 AM
>>> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
>>> Subject: Re: Story Time
>>>=20
>>> In article <1181020029.5...@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
>>> dav...@montagar.com writes:
>>> > On Jun 4, 5:13 pm, Sue <susan_skonet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> Dear Newsgroup,
>>> >> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
>>> >> everyday saying the same thing.
>>> >
>>> > True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me
>>> (and
>>> > others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what next
>>> > faux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS, yada
>>> > yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is back-
>>> > spinned into a loss.
>>> >
>>> > By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money, no
>>> > support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it
>>> exists.
>>>=20
>>> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you
>>> denigrate
>>> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have stated
>>> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of
>>> crap
>>> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>>>=20
>>> >
>>> > Because for the most part, people don't complain, they contribute.
>>> > There's fewer applications available you say? Then port something.
>>> > There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would be
>>> > great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS. After
>>> > all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
>>> > anyway.
>>>=20
>>> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
>>> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require fork()
>>> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of which
>>> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>>>=20
>>
>> Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
>>
>> Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX way of
>> doing IO), that its future is doomed?
>
> That's not what I said at all. Someone else hinted that porting
> Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
> done by the people here in their spare time. I merely pointed out
> that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
> the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
>
> Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
>
>>
>> Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform is
>> doomed because it does not support fork either.
>
> Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they need.
> They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
>
> Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
> I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I can't
> say if they have it now, too.)
>
>>
>> There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there are
>> better ways of doing the same thing.
>
> OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
> OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
> way" stop keeping it under your hat.
>
>>
>> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
>> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
>> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
>> technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when you
>> look at the initial cost only).=20
>
> Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for academic
> use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would that
> be?
>
>>
>> However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener on
>> the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
>> monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring, change
>> management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements like
>> FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=20
>
> Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
> bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new Itanium
> VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
>
>>
>> And lets not kid ourselves - the University environment is rife with
>> what some might call "internal hackers".
>
> Not sure what that's supposed to mean. The days of the student hacker
> are long gone. Most of these kids would much rather spend an evening
> in the local bar than in a computer lab today. As for "internal" vs.
> "external", read any security trade rag. The majority of threats are
> from inside, University or business. That's just the way it is today.
>
>>
>> What is happening with OpenVMS at Universities is no different than what
>> is also happening to Solaris and AIX at Universities ..
>
> Really?? We have a course here that runs every Spring that still
> has the students installing, configuring, administering and developing
> software on Solaris. We still have a Sparc system in the lab. This
> course does not now and never has included any, even casual, mention
> or exposure to VMS, even whe we were still running it here in the
> department. Read my lips, there is academic use of BSDUnix, Linux,
> Solaris, Windows, QNX, BrickOS, etc. etc. There is no academic use
> of VMS.
>
>> same thing
>> happening to them as well. I know as I just recently completed a
>> multi-platform consolidation engagement at a large US University.
>
> Oh, you are talking about administrative use. Well, that's is different.
> We still use VMS administratively. But the University is tied to Banner
> and Oracle, not the OS. If Banner moved to Windows Server 2005 tomorrow,
> so would the University. It's just what people have been saying for
> ages here. It's the applications, not the OS. As more and more people
> (like CDC) begin to see VSM as not in their future the applications will
> move off of VMS and we all know what the current users of those
> application
> will do.
>
> It really is time to read the handwriting on the wall. If the people
> inside of HP can't convince them to start pushing VMS in order to
> strengthen it's position in the industry, what chance do outsiders
> have? While I am in the market for a new position and would love to
> work on VMS, I am not likely to bet my future on it.
>
> bill
>
> --
> Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
> bi...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
John Santos
> On 06/05/07 08:23, Main, Kerry wrote:
> [snip]
>
>>
>> fork (a UNIX way of
>> doing IO)
>
>
>
I think what Kerry means :-) is VMS needs a UNIX way of doing I/O
in order to implement a UNIX style fork. (I.E. fork clones the
I/O environment so that the child process can access the FILEs
previously open by the parent process.) Yeah, that's the ticket!
--
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
781-861-0670 ext 539
Bill Gunshannon
"Malcolm Dunnett" <not...@spammers.are.scum> writes:
> "Bill Gunshannon" <bi...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote in message
> news:5clpmvF...@mid.individual.net...
>
>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>> was never going to go anywhere).
>
> It's dangerous to think that technical merit has any bearing on
> the outcome of a lawsuit :-)
I was not refering to the technical merit of the case. I meant the
techies who were still developing BSD (many of whom were former CSRG
members!). It took very little legal knowledge to see that AT&T was
happily shooting itself in the foot.
>
>
>> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
>> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
>> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
>>
>
> Which is somewhat ironic considering that BSD was the "other" operating
> system available for VAX when it was first released. So two of the "hottest"
> operating systems from the early 80's are in the same boat today.
Exactly. And it is (and has been) my contention that it is for the same
reason. Total lack of marketing. But then, you already knew that.
Bill Gunshannon
Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
> On 06/05/07 13:52, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> [snip]
>>
>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
>> does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
>> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
>
> Two words: Unix Wars.
People keep mentioning that but unless your a techie it really means
nothing. There are currently three popular BSD distributions. How
many Linux distros are out there today? And anyone running commodity
COTS boxes is going to learn with very little research that FreeBSD
is the one that concentrated on and optimized for that platform. Now,
if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
>
>> BSD is stabler, more secure, more efficient and has more stuff that
>> was actually implemented correctly than Linux. And still businesses
>> are flocking to Linux and ignoring BSD. And the answer is, marketing.
>> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
>> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
>> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
>
> And "all those eyes" are constantly looking at various pieces,
> saying, "hey, I can make that part 'better' (for some definition of
> 'better') or 'I've found a bug, here's a patch'".
Huh?? I run FreeBSD here. I upgrade the OS pretty much every
summer cause that's free time in a school. I don't make major
changes during the school year. Some boxes, doing specific tasks,
haven't been upgraded, patched or otherwise changed in years.
If it doesn't affect us, I don't patch it!! Basicly, it is no
different than what is done with commercial stuff, except that
I tend to know sooner with BSD if there is a potential problem
than I would with Solaris, IRIX, HPUX or even VMS. This notion
that anyone not running VMS has to apply patches every day is,
was and always will be hogwash. I can't speak for Linux, but
BSD today is not all that different in that respect from any
commercial OS. All OSes need periodic fixes. And, contrary
to what some VMS bigots like to think, all software has bugs.
Some may lay unfound for years, or even decades, but they are
there. I only recently applied new patches to BSD 2.11 on my
PDP-11. :-)
>
> You'd be stunned by the disagreements between major kernel
> developers on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml).
Actually, no I wouldn't. Children squabble all the time.
> But when
> someone brings a well-written (meaning: it follows Linus' coding
> standards) chunk of code to the table that implements a new feature
> (usually a driver) or replaces old code (and is demonstrably better
> (faster, simpler, uses less memory) it is accepted.
And this is different from FreeBSD in what manner?
Bill Gunshannon
What growth? This university was a net loss. I shut ours down for the
last time last year. As a matter of fact, I will be rolling the hardware
out the door this week. Attempts to save them have failed and the floor
space they occupy is worth way more than any percieved value in the actual
machines. Sad really....
Bill Gunshannon
"Gremlin" <not-...@all.mate> writes:
> Hi Bill (and all)
>
> I run a postrgraduate course in (amongst other things) commercial operating
What school?
> systems security. We cover (in some detail) z/OS, i5/OS, OpenVMS, HP/UX
> 11i, Solaris 10, Windows Server and several Linuxes. This is a "hands on"
> course demonstrating practical background, risks, vulnerabilities,
> commercial considerations, standards and frameworks (SOX, HIPPA, ISO17799,
> ISO27001, ISM3, AS/NZS4360 etc) and how "commercial" operating systems have
> different risk profiles by the way they are designed and operated. Also
> included is the opportunity to hack into any of these OSs as they are
> installed as plain vanilla installations with a web and mail server running,
> patched according to the vendors' specifications.
>
> So, Solaris 10, Windows, Linux and HP/UX are regularly hacked and trashed.
> The students all fail to get into z/OS, i5/OS and OpenVMS - then, as part of
> their assignments, most arrive at the ame opinion (even the Linux
> promoters), that OpenVMS seems really good - why haven't they heard of it?
>
> So at least at this univiersity in my courses they get some exposure and
> come to realise that the commerical world is not just Windows/Linux/UNIX -
> perhaps HP could pay attention?
I tried to make the point that this knowledge was important for our
students. It was a minority opinion.o
Bill Gunshannon
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Main, Kerry wrote:
>> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge pressure
>> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
>> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because it is
>> technically better, but rather because it is low cost
>
>
> There was a rather depressing (for me) article in COmputer World about
> skills that are no longer needed.
>
> In it, there was one University that decided to still teach Cobol. When
> asked why ?, their response was simple: Two of the large employers in
> this area still use Cobol and they want Cobol to be taught to the
> students they will hire. So the university teaches Cobol.
Well, one might argue that that is not the purpose of a University,
That's what trade schools are for. But, don't get me wrong, we used
COBOL for courses until this last semester (and on VMS until last
year). Starting next semester the course that was using COBOL will
be done in JAVA. Oh yeah, and we also have at least one large employer
(think insurance, dogs and blimps) who still uses COBOL. Sadly, even
though I have talked with people there who assured me they have no
intention of re-writting all this stuff influential faculty members
here have convinced the department that all COBOL is being eliminated
everywhere. Hmmmm.... Maybe I can get my wish to go back to being a
COBOL programmer after all!! Anybody here hiring (southern US only!). :-)
>
>
> However, most universities look around at what skills are needed and
> decided to teach those. And when the trade rags and wanted ads say
> "linux this" and "linux that", they rightfully teach Linux to their
> students.
Actually, it seems much more like academia is rapidly getting out of
touch with what is really going in and instead of providing needed
skills is much more interested in trying to drive the bus.
>
> If nobody needs people trained in VMS, then universities don't see the
> need to train people in VMS.
If you could show a need for 1,000,000 new VMS experts tomorrow I
doubt it would change the curriculum at even one University. They
have decided that VMS is irrelevant and nothing is going to change
that back now.
>
> many years ago, I had made a suggestion to the then VMS product manager
> that he should get his VMS ambassadors to become guest lecturers at
> universities and make presentations on VMS clustering and teach them the
> concepts of quorum, shaed locks, disk accesses, system management etc.
>
> This would have told not only students but also teachers that VMS still
> has technologies that are leading edge and worth teaching to students so
> that when they start hacking in Linux, they better understand what real
> clustering is really about.
I would love to have seen this. We even have available venues to
provide facilities for this to be done not only for students but also
for local business leaders. But I am not holding my breath.
John Smith
It was sarcasm .... Between you and Phillip there was a doubling of known
.edu's in the space of several hours. That's an outstanding annualized
growth rate.
John Smith
> Hi Bill (and all)
>
> I run a postrgraduate course in (amongst other things) commercial
> operating systems security. We cover (in some detail) z/OS, i5/OS,
> OpenVMS, HP/UX 11i, Solaris 10, Windows Server and several Linuxes.
> This is a "hands on" course demonstrating practical background,
> risks, vulnerabilities, commercial considerations, standards and
> frameworks (SOX, HIPPA, ISO17799, ISO27001, ISM3, AS/NZS4360 etc) and
> how "commercial" operating systems have different risk profiles by
> the way they are designed and operated. Also included is the
> opportunity to hack into any of these OSs as they are installed as
> plain vanilla installations with a web and mail server running,
> patched according to the vendors' specifications.
>
> So, Solaris 10, Windows, Linux and HP/UX are regularly hacked and
> trashed. The students all fail to get into z/OS, i5/OS and OpenVMS -
> then, as part of their assignments, most arrive at the ame opinion
> (even the Linux promoters), that OpenVMS seems really good - why
> haven't they heard of it?
>
> So at least at this univiersity in my courses they get some exposure
> and come to realise that the commerical world is not just
> Windows/Linux/UNIX - perhaps HP could pay attention?
The HP apologists would say, "Write a letter to Mark Hurd, HP's CEO."
Maybe it's not a bad idea.......
If you write what you said above - with the last sentence before your
signature, "My students want to know why something so good as VMS is not
advertised and marketed. Please advise me what I should tell them in this
regard.Your response will determine whether we contine to feature VMS in our
courses."
Richard B. Gilbert
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>
>> On 06/05/07 08:23, Main, Kerry wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>>
>>> fork (a UNIX way of
>>> doing IO)
>>
>>
>>
>> Say what?
>>
>
> I think what Kerry means :-) is VMS needs a UNIX way of doing I/O
> in order to implement a UNIX style fork. (I.E. fork clones the
> I/O environment so that the child process can access the FILEs
> previously open by the parent process.) Yeah, that's the ticket!
>
A Unix fork copies an entire process, including those data structures
that represent an open file. Unix couldn't work without fork. Every
time you run a program Unix forks a new process to run it in. Unix
does not have P0 and P1 space which lets VMS map DCL into P1 space while
running your programs in P0.
It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix style
fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I believe
that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or already have
been, ported to VMS. I have both grep and gawk for VMS as well as GVG
Make. Make is already on my web page and I'll be glad to make grep and
gawk available if anyone needs such things. There was a "tail" utility
in the days before TYPE /TAIL was implemented.
Ron Johnson
> In article <cpl9i.116255$NK5....@newsfe23.lga>,
> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>> On 06/05/07 13:52, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>>> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
>>> does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
>>> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
>>
>> Two words: Unix Wars.
>
> People keep mentioning that but unless your a techie it really means
> nothing.
I *am* a techie, and I *do* remember when all the various vendors
took BSD or licensed SVRx and "compatible" C & Unix became a
mismash, and then there was the OSF, Unix International, etc, none
of which really unified Unix.
And while the Unix vendors were fighting, VMS slid and MSFT became
unstoppably dominant.
> There are currently three popular BSD distributions. How
> many Linux distros are out there today? And anyone running commodity
> COTS boxes is going to learn with very little research that FreeBSD
> is the one that concentrated on and optimized for that platform.
I remember when ftp.cdrom.com ran off a modestly powered FreeBSD box.
Anyway, Linux has commercial products like Oracle and engineering
CAD apps, important free packages like Sun Java (although
compatibility modules might let it run on FreeBSD) and the drivers
to get full usage of my NVIDIA video card.
Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
> Now,
> if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
NetBSD, anyone? :)
Linux (Debian, specifically) will also run on most of those boxes.
Oh, you mean Theo de Raadt?? :0
>> But when
>> someone brings a well-written (meaning: it follows Linus' coding
>> standards) chunk of code to the table that implements a new feature
>> (usually a driver) or replaces old code (and is demonstrably better
>> (faster, simpler, uses less memory) it is accepted.
>
> And this is different from FreeBSD in what manner?
We're superior, just.... because.
But seriously: this quote is specifically about NetBSD, but also
makes a similar comment regarding FreeBSD.
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
Partly due to lack of people, and partly due to a more
corporate mentality, projects were often "locked". One
person would say they were working on a project, and
everyone else would be told to refer to them. Often these
projects stagnated, or never progressed at all. If they
did, the motivators were often very slow. As a result,
many important projects have moved at a glacial pace, or
never materialized at all.
[snip]
FreeBSD and XFree86, for example, have both forked successor
projects (Dragonfly and X.org) for very similar reasons.
Ron Johnson
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 06/05/07 08:23, Main, Kerry wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>>
>>> fork (a UNIX way of
>>> doing IO)
>>
>>
>> Say what?
>>
>
> I think what Kerry means :-) is VMS needs a UNIX way of doing I/O
> in order to implement a UNIX style fork. (I.E. fork clones the
> I/O environment so that the child process can access the FILEs
> previously open by the parent process.) Yeah, that's the ticket!
But I thought VMS was perfect?
Steven M. Schweda
> It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix style
> fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I believe
> that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or already have
> been, ported to VMS.
Well, duh. If people are porting UNIX utilities to VMS, then it's
just possible that those utilities are useful in a VMS environment.
It's also fairly likely that, as written, those utilities expect to use
fork(). Re-coding every one of these utilities to work around the lack
of fork() is what turns a simple exercise into a project, and a project
into a trial by ordeal.
For example, one of those already-been-ported UNIX utilities is
"tar". A modern GNU "tar" wants to use fork(). Go ahead, cite VMSTAR.
I dare you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven M. Schweda sms@antinode-org
382 South Warwick Street (+1) 651-699-9818
Saint Paul MN 55105-2547
Richard B. Gilbert
> From: "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilb...@comcast.net>
>
>>It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix style
>>fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I believe
>>that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or already have
>>been, ported to VMS.
>
>
> Well, duh. If people are porting UNIX utilities to VMS, then it's
> just possible that those utilities are useful in a VMS environment.
> It's also fairly likely that, as written, those utilities expect to use
> fork(). Re-coding every one of these utilities to work around the lack
> of fork() is what turns a simple exercise into a project, and a project
> into a trial by ordeal.
>
> For example, one of those already-been-ported UNIX utilities is
> "tar". A modern GNU "tar" wants to use fork(). Go ahead, cite VMSTAR.
> I dare you.
All right!
http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?VMSTAR
Since VMS does not have "fork", it's obviously possible to write tar
without it. A "modern" Gnu Tar? I don't know. I very seldom use tar
for anything and when I do it's almost always on a Unix box! I've used
VMSTAR but so long ago I no longer remember what I last used it for.
Bill Gunshannon
Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
> On 06/06/07 07:58, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article <cpl9i.116255$NK5....@newsfe23.lga>,
>> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>>> On 06/05/07 13:52, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>>>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>>>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>>>> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
>>>> does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
>>>> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
> >>
>>> Two words: Unix Wars.
>>
>> People keep mentioning that but unless your a techie it really means
>> nothing.
>
> I *am* a techie, and I *do* remember when all the various vendors
> took BSD or licensed SVRx and "compatible" C & Unix became a
> mismash, and then there was the OSF, Unix International, etc, none
> of which really unified Unix.
Ancient history. And irrelevant to the discussion of current BSD vs.
Linux. Considering how unlikely it is that any CIO today has ever heard
of BSD it is even more unlikely that they know what the "Unix Wars" were.
>
> And while the Unix vendors were fighting, VMS slid and MSFT became
> unstoppably dominant.
And yet, Linux is rapidly moving into the datacenter. And the whole
point of what I said was, "Why Linux? Why not BSD?" And the answer
remains the same as the answer to. "Why not VMS?"
>
>> There are currently three popular BSD distributions. How
>> many Linux distros are out there today? And anyone running commodity
>> COTS boxes is going to learn with very little research that FreeBSD
>> is the one that concentrated on and optimized for that platform.
>
> I remember when ftp.cdrom.com ran off a modestly powered FreeBSD box.
I have been running this department off of modeswtly powered FreeBSD
boxes for years. I ran a news server that actually made it into the
top 100 (I don't remember how high it actually got but it was impressive
considering my total lack of a budget to support it!) running FreeBSD
on comodity boxes.
>
> Anyway, Linux has commercial products like Oracle and engineering
> CAD apps, important free packages like Sun Java (although
> compatibility modules might let it run on FreeBSD) and the drivers
> to get full usage of my NVIDIA video card.
Which comes back to the same issue. Why not FreeBSD? It is empirically
provable that it is better, technically, than Linux. And the answer is,
once agsain the same as why ISV's are leaving the VMS camp in favor of
Linux.
>
> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
>
>> Now,
>> if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
>
> NetBSD, anyone? :)
>
> Linux (Debian, specifically) will also run on most of those boxes.
Of course it will, But if you are trying to set up an efficient operation
running on commodity COTS x86 boxes why would you want to use something
that has code in it targeted at other architectures. Give me the one
optimized for my platform every time.
Yeah, but then he doesn't control FreeBSD, does he?
>
>>> But when
>>> someone brings a well-written (meaning: it follows Linus' coding
>>> standards) chunk of code to the table that implements a new feature
>>> (usually a driver) or replaces old code (and is demonstrably better
>>> (faster, simpler, uses less memory) it is accepted.
>>
>> And this is different from FreeBSD in what manner?
>
> We're superior, just.... because.
>
> But seriously: this quote is specifically about NetBSD, but also
> makes a similar comment regarding FreeBSD.
>
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
> Partly due to lack of people, and partly due to a more
> corporate mentality, projects were often "locked". One
> person would say they were working on a project, and
> everyone else would be told to refer to them. Often these
> projects stagnated, or never progressed at all. If they
> did, the motivators were often very slow. As a result,
> many important projects have moved at a glacial pace, or
> never materialized at all.
> [snip]
> FreeBSD and XFree86, for example, have both forked successor
> projects (Dragonfly and X.org) for very similar reasons.
I sure don't see any stagnation in FreeBSD. I only upgrade once or
at most twice a year (summer is primary, between Fall and Spring is
an option if we really need to change for some reason) and it still
usually leaves me behind a version or two. How often do commercial
vendors release new versions of their OSes? Now, if you meant all
those stupid little games and less useful (I will avoid calling them
totally useless, but in the sense of running a server farm for a
production environment, they are) programs, anything goes as they
are not controlled by any central "authority".
But, to reiterate the original theme, if marketing can make such a
success out of a piece of crap like Linux, just think what it could,
no would do for a gem like VMS.
Ron Johnson
> Hi Bill (and all)
>
> I run a postrgraduate course in (amongst other things) commercial operating
> systems security. We cover (in some detail) z/OS, i5/OS, OpenVMS, HP/UX
> 11i, Solaris 10, Windows Server and several Linuxes. This is a "hands on"
> course demonstrating practical background, risks, vulnerabilities,
> commercial considerations, standards and frameworks (SOX, HIPPA, ISO17799,
> ISO27001, ISM3, AS/NZS4360 etc) and how "commercial" operating systems have
> different risk profiles by the way they are designed and operated. Also
> included is the opportunity to hack into any of these OSs as they are
> installed as plain vanilla installations with a web and mail server running,
> patched according to the vendors' specifications.
>
> So, Solaris 10, Windows, Linux and HP/UX are regularly hacked and trashed.
> The students all fail to get into z/OS, i5/OS and OpenVMS - then, as part of
> their assignments, most arrive at the ame opinion (even the Linux
> promoters), that OpenVMS seems really good - why haven't they heard of it?
Interesting, but doesn't mean much because we don't know how they
are configured and what applications you run. telnetd?
VMS is secure from the get-go, but Linux not so much. Is SELinux
enabled? If so, then what profiles are enabled/created? (SELinux
was designed to bring mainframe/VMS-style security to Linux.)
Steven M. Schweda
> http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?VMSTAR
>
> Since VMS does not have "fork", it's obviously possible to write tar
> without it. A "modern" Gnu Tar? I don't know. I very seldom use tar
> for anything and when I do it's almost always on a Unix box! I've used
> VMSTAR but so long ago I no longer remember what I last used it for.
For one thing, you could use it to unpack GNU utility source kits,
but it can't do things like this:
ALP2 $ vmstarx tfv tt_gnu_x.tar
-rw-r--r-- 4/1 10 Jun 5 23:56:11 2007 tartest/long_file_01234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678991234567899
91234567899123456789912345678991234567899123456789912345678991234567878123456787
8781234567878123456.dat
lrw-r--r-- 4/1 0 Jun 5 23:56:12 2007 tartest/long_link_long_file_0
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789.lnk
---> long_file_01234567890123456789012345678901
23456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678991234567899912345678991234567899
123456789912345678991234567899123456789912345678781234567878781234567878123456.d
at
lrw-r--r-- 4/1 0 Jun 5 23:56:12 2007 tartest/long_link_short_file_
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789.lnk
---> short.dat
-rw-r--r-- 4/1 11 Jun 5 17:38:12 2007 tartest/short.dat
lrw-r--r-- 4/1 0 Jun 5 23:56:11 2007 tartest/short_link_long_file.
lnk
---> long_file_01234567890123456789012345678901
23456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678991234567899912345678991234567899
123456789912345678991234567899123456789912345678781234567878781234567878123456.d
at
lrw-r--r-- 4/1 0 Jun 5 23:56:11 2007 tartest/short_link_short_file
.lnk
---> short.dat
ALP2 $
.. because it can't handle names longer than 99 characters, and it
can't handle symbolic links. It also can't do files bigger than 2GB,
and it doesn't set the magic SQO bit, so it's not pleasant to use when
extracting a large file. I also suspect that it's not so good with ODS5
extended file names, but I haven't looked too closely at that part yet.
It also seems to create an archive with fixed permissions on the files
(755) and directories (644), regardless of their original protections.
(I'm sure I can find more if I look harder.)
On the bright side, it is roughly twice as fast as the GNV port of
GNU "tar" on the tests I ran, and I haven't found a good way to improve
on that.
Ron Johnson
> In article <c5A9i.13333$6z4....@newsfe19.lga>,
> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>> On 06/06/07 07:58, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> In article <cpl9i.116255$NK5....@newsfe23.lga>,
>>> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>>>> On 06/05/07 13:52, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>>>>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>>>>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>>>>> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
>>>>> does not is marketing. And look at the difference in awareness and
>>>>> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
>>>> Two words: Unix Wars.
>>> People keep mentioning that but unless your a techie it really means
>>> nothing.
>> I *am* a techie, and I *do* remember when all the various vendors
>> took BSD or licensed SVRx and "compatible" C & Unix became a
>> mismash, and then there was the OSF, Unix International, etc, none
>> of which really unified Unix.
>
> Ancient history. And irrelevant to the discussion of current BSD vs.
> Linux.
I think that it *is* relevant because it was the "business friendly"
BSD license (which allows each company to keep it's own changes)
that caused the Unix Wars in the first place.
The (smart) big vendors remember these things.
Counterintuitively, the "viral" GPL (which says, in essence, "freely
you get other people's work, freely you must share your own work")
ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
almost guaranteed.
And now both IBM & HPaq are selling boat-loads of Linux-installed
servers & blades, making both very happy. IBM is probably also
selling lots of Linux-running POWER systems in compute farms where
AIX isn't needed.
> Considering how unlikely it is that any CIO today has ever heard
> of BSD it is even more unlikely that they know what the "Unix Wars" were.
>
>
>> And while the Unix vendors were fighting, VMS slid and MSFT became
>> unstoppably dominant.
>
> And yet, Linux is rapidly moving into the datacenter. And the whole
> point of what I said was, "Why Linux? Why not BSD?"
See the previous paragraphs regarding the BSD & GPL licenses.
> And the answer
> remains the same as the answer to. "Why not VMS?"
Up-front costs and COTS hardware.
>>> There are currently three popular BSD distributions. How
>>> many Linux distros are out there today? And anyone running commodity
>>> COTS boxes is going to learn with very little research that FreeBSD
>>> is the one that concentrated on and optimized for that platform.
>> I remember when ftp.cdrom.com ran off a modestly powered FreeBSD box.
>
> I have been running this department off of modeswtly powered FreeBSD
> boxes for years. I ran a news server that actually made it into the
> top 100 (I don't remember how high it actually got but it was impressive
> considering my total lack of a budget to support it!) running FreeBSD
> on comodity boxes.
>
>> Anyway, Linux has commercial products like Oracle and engineering
>> CAD apps, important free packages like Sun Java (although
>> compatibility modules might let it run on FreeBSD) and the drivers
>> to get full usage of my NVIDIA video card.
>
> Which comes back to the same issue. Why not FreeBSD? It is empirically
> provable that it is better, technically, than Linux. And the answer is,
> once agsain the same as why ISV's are leaving the VMS camp in favor of
> Linux.
>
>> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
>
> Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
> to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
> less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
> really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
> place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
I'd *REALLY* like to hear what the problem with Linux was.
>>> Now,
>>> if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
>> NetBSD, anyone? :)
>>
>> Linux (Debian, specifically) will also run on most of those boxes.
>
> Of course it will, But if you are trying to set up an efficient operation
> running on commodity COTS x86 boxes why would you want to use something
> that has code in it targeted at other architectures. Give me the one
> optimized for my platform every time.
And if you chose the losing platform...
(Not that x86 will lose any time soon, but you get my point.)
[snip]
>>>
>>>> You'd be stunned by the disagreements between major kernel
>>>> developers on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml).
>>> Actually, no I wouldn't. Children squabble all the time.
>> Oh, you mean Theo de Raadt?? :0
>
> Yeah, but then he doesn't control FreeBSD, does he?
He leads a BSD.
If techies (not sheeple) really thought that Linux was a steaming
pile of dung, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
> It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix style
> fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I believe
> that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or already have
> been, ported to VMS. I have both grep and gawk for VMS as well as GVG
> Make. Make is already on my web page and I'll be glad to make grep and
> gawk available if anyone needs such things. There was a "tail" utility
> in the days before TYPE /TAIL was implemented.
I don't necessarily *want* Unix. But I *really* like the
programming control structures in bash. On one line, you can whip
out for-looping "if-then-else"ing ad-hoc utility that would require
a 20 line script in DCL.
(No, grep and gawk aren't installed on our production boxes. I wish
they [or VMSized versions of them, and "cut" and "seq" came native
with VMS.)
Bob Koehler
> In article <aacc$4665b7a0$cef8887a$30...@TEKSAVVY.COM>, JF Mezei
> <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
>
>> Robert Deininger wrote:
>> > Yup. That's because a new VAX release isn't even in the top 100 list of
>> > things customers are asking for.
>>
>> I have quite a problem with this statement. (not directed at you, this
>> type of argument has often been used by the onwed of VMS to justify NOT
>> doing something).
>
> In this case, I think that it's probably true that it's not in the top
> 100 things.
There are so many things that are desired on VMS that would most
likely be used on faster processors that I can see that a new VAX
release would not be in the top 100.
But I'm left wondering which customers HP is listening too.
Brian2007
For years, I’ve been hearing from folks telling me that OpenVMS is
dying, and it’s been good and fun with VMS, but, it time go on something
else, blah blah blah and so forth. Let’s not forget that VMS have never
been hit by hackers, virus and Trojan for over 30 years and still
ticking.
If you're like Sue like I do and your VMS future is more or less
assured still you retired, I’m still ticking with VMS (PDP, VAX, Alpha)
for over quarter of the century.
As Major Barbour of Civil Air Patrol, I use to advice others under my
command: “If you’re good at it and have fun with it, then by all means -
stick with it!”.
There're thousands of dedicated VMS specialists, programmers, and the
like out there that certainly can make a difference and still make
OpenVMS ticking last longer, so stick with it.
Brian Barbour
Fidelity National Information Services
--
Brian2007
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian2007's Profile: http://techiegroups.com/member.php?userid=5080
View this thread: http://www.techiegroups.com/showthread.php?t=133261
Bill Gunshannon
What you call the Unix Wars is nothing different than the battling
between all proprietary OSes. It's called business and yes, it is
war. And while many of those Unixes are still around and kicking
today they don't enter into the debate because we were comparing
Free Unixes. A CIO who is going to buy AIX is going to buy AIX and
the superiority of BSD over Linux doesn't enter into it. But when
one is going to base their strategy on a Free Unix then one has to
ask why one over the other and more importantly, why did the inferior
product win the market? The only good thing that Linux has over BSD
is hype and that is totally the result of strong marketing.
>
> The (smart) big vendors remember these things.
>
> Counterintuitively, the "viral" GPL (which says, in essence, "freely
> you get other people's work, freely you must share your own work")
Is that like forced volunteerism that is all the rage today? I can't
be coerced into giving something "freely".
> ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
Not hardly. There is at least one distro that has two versions. One
they give away for free and the other you have pay for. And they openly
admit the two are different. And the one you pay for has additional
features not in the free one. And there are other GNU Programs that
while living up to the letter of the agreement do not live up to the
spirit in that they have made the source code they provide useless
without paying them for the tools to work with it.
>
> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
> almost guaranteed.
Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
etc.
>
> And now both IBM & HPaq are selling boat-loads of Linux-installed
> servers & blades, making both very happy. IBM is probably also
> selling lots of Linux-running POWER systems in compute farms where
> AIX isn't needed.
Yeah, I know and that is even more confusing (and I fear does not bode
well for the industry). Why would IBM push Linux? I admit to being
baffled by that one.
>
>> Considering how unlikely it is that any CIO today has ever heard
>> of BSD it is even more unlikely that they know what the "Unix Wars" were.
>>
>>
>>> And while the Unix vendors were fighting, VMS slid and MSFT became
>>> unstoppably dominant.
>>
>> And yet, Linux is rapidly moving into the datacenter. And the whole
>> point of what I said was, "Why Linux? Why not BSD?"
>
> See the previous paragraphs regarding the BSD & GPL licenses.
I doubt the license has anything to do with it. The BSD is much more
business friendly and the GPL is extremely dangerous (in the business
sense). The only real difference I can see is they all know what Linux
is, afterall it's in all the trade journals everyday. When have you
ever seen more than a casual mention of a current BSD in one? Sound
like VMS again?
>
>> And the answer
>> remains the same as the answer to. "Why not VMS?"
>
> Up-front costs and COTS hardware.
While that may contribute, I think the lack of knowledge caused by
the current stealth marketing is much more to blame. Even back in
my days selling systems it was always pointed out to me that the
cost of the hardware was in most cases a rather insignificant portion
of the overall cost of establishing and operating a system. And, it's
write-off money anyway.
Are you really serious? Broken LPD. Badly broken NFS. Extremely
inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
>
>>>> Now,
>>>> if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
>>> NetBSD, anyone? :)
>>>
>>> Linux (Debian, specifically) will also run on most of those boxes.
>>
>> Of course it will, But if you are trying to set up an efficient operation
>> running on commodity COTS x86 boxes why would you want to use something
>> that has code in it targeted at other architectures. Give me the one
>> optimized for my platform every time.
>
> And if you chose the losing platform...
The industry has chosen x86. Why would I want to run a version of an
OS that had to do or not do something in order to maintain support for
Sparc or PARisc? That was my point. Of course, I assume Linux falls
into the same catagory as Open|Net BSD as it also claims support for
all these other oddball systems. Hmmmm... Maybe that explains some
of the inefficiency.
>
> (Not that x86 will lose any time soon, but you get my point.)
>
> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> You'd be stunned by the disagreements between major kernel
>>>>> developers on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml).
>>>> Actually, no I wouldn't. Children squabble all the time.
>>> Oh, you mean Theo de Raadt?? :0
>>
>> Yeah, but then he doesn't control FreeBSD, does he?
>
> He leads a BSD.
And not the one I would recommend to anyone planning on using x86 COTS
boxes. So, irrelevant to the discussion at hand. When someone says,
"It's my ball and we play by my rules." I usually just go find another
game.
What techies? All those prepubescent teens without girlfriends who
put up a website in their parents basement during the dot.com boom
who now skew the unemployment numbers by claiming to be "un-employed
IT professionals" today?
As for the success of a "steaming pile of dung", just look at Windows XP.
Bill Gunshannon
s...@antinode.org (Steven M. Schweda) writes:
> From: "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilb...@comcast.net>
>
>> It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix style
>> fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I believe
>> that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or already have
>> been, ported to VMS.
>
> Well, duh. If people are porting UNIX utilities to VMS, then it's
> just possible that those utilities are useful in a VMS environment.
> It's also fairly likely that, as written, those utilities expect to use
> fork(). Re-coding every one of these utilities to work around the lack
> of fork() is what turns a simple exercise into a project, and a project
> into a trial by ordeal.
>
> For example, one of those already-been-ported UNIX utilities is
> "tar". A modern GNU "tar" wants to use fork(). Go ahead, cite VMSTAR.
> I dare you.
Well, in defense of Unix, "A modern GNU" anything probably tries to
violate the underlying paradigm that is Unix by including everything
in one program rather than doing one task well and leaving other tasks
to other programs. (In case you can't see through this, I can see
absolutely no reason why tar would need to fork() anything!!)
JF Mezei
> There are so many things that are desired on VMS that would most
> likely be used on faster processors that I can see that a new VAX
> release would not be in the top 100.
How come then HP committed to do an 8.x release of VAX ?
The issue here is of trust. But not doing an 8.x version of VAX, HP is
renegging on a promise, and this underlines the fact that the roadmap is
just a work of fiction that customers cannot count on when they make
their own IT roadmaps.
It is still interesting to read. However, I think that the decision
making process on what has priority and doesn't should be more
transparent, or HP should stop claiming things such as "customers have
said they are not interested in this".
Perhaps VMS management should have a public email address where
customers can send their request for features, and customers should be
encouraged to do so.
Yeah, I am sure there is such a mailbox and that VMS management can
claim they are listening and get no feedback. But you need to read your
customer base to tell them about this secret mailbox if you want
feedback. It is called staying in touch with your customers.
JF Mezei
> Yeah, I know and that is even more confusing (and I fear does not bode
> well for the industry). Why would IBM push Linux? I admit to being
> baffled by that one.
Very smart move for IBM. IBM had an image of old, stodgy blue suits that
only dealt with large corporations and only know about MVS, SNA and
mainframes.
IBM badly needed to tell the world it could also dab into modern
technologies such as web servers, TCPIP , Unix etc.
By jumping into the Linux bandwagon early, it was able to market itself
as a company able to deal with today's new trendy technology, and
leverage its "serious" experience to make the linux trendy toy work for
business.
And if the customer outgrows its Linux boxes, IBM can then showcase its
other products.
Ron Johnson
Coerced? No. It's called rule of law.
To use any code that is not public domain, you must agree to the
license. In this case, the General Public License says that "you"
can freely use "his" code, but that if you distribute the subsequent
binaries to anyone else, you must share your changes with "them".
Think of it as payment for "his" code.
>> ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
>
> Not hardly. There is at least one distro that has two versions. One
> they give away for free and the other you have pay for. And they openly
> admit the two are different. And the one you pay for has additional
> features not in the free one.
RH and SuSE do that.
> And there are other GNU Programs that
> while living up to the letter of the agreement do not live up to the
> spirit in that they have made the source code they provide useless
> without paying them for the tools to work with it.
Tivo?
The RH "commercial" version does have some closed-source features,
but CentOS makes a (rather popular) fully functional distro using
the same sources that RH Advanced/Enterprise Server uses.
>> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
>> almost guaranteed.
>
> Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
> etc.
There *is* a high likelihood, if all the distro versions are of the
same vintage.
[snip]
>>>
>>>> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
>>> Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
>>> to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
>>> less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
>>> really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
>>> place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
>> I'd *REALLY* like to hear what the problem with Linux was.
>
> Are you really serious? Broken LPD.
lpd? Who in Linux uses lpd?
> Badly broken NFS.
Yes, I've heard it's not the most efficient.
> Extremely
> inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
None of the benchmarks I've seen show that it's "bad". Maybe the
particular driver for the NICs you were using...
[snip]
>>>
>>> But, to reiterate the original theme, if marketing can make such a
>>> success out of a piece of crap like Linux, just think what it could,
>>> no would do for a gem like VMS.
>> If techies (not sheeple) really thought that Linux was a steaming
>> pile of dung, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
>
> What techies? All those prepubescent teens without girlfriends who
> put up a website in their parents basement during the dot.com boom
> who now skew the unemployment numbers by claiming to be "un-employed
> IT professionals" today?
Great ad hominem, but, ummm, no.
> As for the success of a "steaming pile of dung", just look at Windows XP.
--
Gremlin
dav...@montagar.com
> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
> does not is marketing.
False. The GPL attracted a lot of people to the Linux platform. The
BSD license allows a company to profit off the work of someone else
without compensation or credit. The GPL doesn't allow this. You
either get credited and/or compensated.
> And look at the difference in awareness and
> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
> BSD is stabler, more secure, more efficient and has more stuff that
> was actually implemented correctly than Linux. And still businesses
> are flocking to Linux and ignoring BSD. And the answer is, marketing.
> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
That would be G. P. L., and yes the BSD license is more friendly to
the business, but to the individual programmers, the GPL can often be
more attractive, for reasons stated above. Word of mouth is what is
at work here. As developers become interested in the platform, they
play with it, books get written, the interest feeds upon itself. I
submit to you that Linux would have succeeded regardless of IBM's
marketing dollars.
During the developement of Linux, Bill Gates spent more money wiping
his butt with $20 bills than Linux had in marketing. Yet, you didn't
see developers give up, wail about lack of marketing dollars, and
bitch and moan about it in forums. If what you believe were true,
Linux NEVER would have succeeded. But it did. If all that work
hadn't have been done FIRST, there wouldn't have been anything to
market at all.
Why it succeeded was because of the community. I believe that is
going to be what makes VMS stronger, too. A good solid community of
developers and users working toward the goal regardless of what HP
does. If there aren't tools and apps ported to OpenVMS, then OpenVMS
is an O/S with no purpose - and no amount of marketnig dollars can fix
that. The product, and assoicated side products, must be there
first. But if you can't lead or follow, at least don't start by
assuming there's no point in trying.
That's why HP has been doing programs like the HP Integrity Developers
Workshops (which, I think is a marketing effort costing in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars), free downloads of software for
DSPP, free Integrity SDK kits shipped to you simply for the asking,
and more.
But I'm sorry Bill. That probably isn't enough for you.
> I am not spinning anything. Name the applications that people are most
> likely to want. Then look at what they contain. Actually, the obsolete
> version of X11 that is available for VMS is probably the bigger show
> stopper as desktop apps are what sells computers today. But there are
> still alot of cute little things with fork() in them. And that list
> was not meant to be exclusive. It just pointed out the two most common
> shortcomings frequently mentioned here everytime this subjecy comes up.
Yes you are. You are already predicting failure of porting software
even before anyone STARTS. You use two issues and predict 100%
failure right out of the gate. I guess you aren't capable of working
around fork(), but please don't convince others they can't before they
start. Most of the time fork() is called, it's to detach a process
anyway (fork followed by exec) and can be replaced with a call to LIB
$SPAWN or SYS$CREPRC. As for X11, you are seriously out of touch
since rarely do people program X11 calls. The only ones that do are
those developing window managers or maintaining the GUI toolkits like
GTK or wxWidgets. The rest are using those toolkits like GTK+ or
wxWidgets.
I have a commercial app which runs on X via GTK+. Exact same code
runs on Windows, too. The intelligent observer will notice that
Windows does not have any X11 whatsoever. And the server portion
doesn't use fork(), either. I actually have programmed X11 before,
and never again. Much better to use a higher level toolkit,
especially one that's implemented across more than one platform.
Are all cases easy? No. Should that mean that no one should even
try? I don't think so.
> Console apps don't sell computers or OSes today. I have a closet full
> of VT terminals the University abandoned to prove it. All they were
> used for was Registration, twice a year and that is no longer done
> with character cell applications. And, if it's so simple and VSM has
> all the pieces needed, let me know when you have OpenOffice running.
Nearly every day I see someone working on a "GUI" that's really just a
Windows PC using an 3270 emulator or telnet window into a console
app. You are appearently out of touch with how common console apps
still are today.
> I have never said that HP was trying to kill VMS. In fact, I doubt they
> would expend the energy. It is sufficient to just continue to ignore it
> while milking the cash cow until the last user finally leaves. The point
> I and many others have made is that it would take minimal effort to reverse
> the trend that has been seen with VMS the last daceade or so. A few thousand
> dollars for marketing. Giving a few good stories to the press. Anything
> to convince the people buying IT today that there is a future in buying
> and running VMS.
Exactly what I've been saying, no matter what HP does, you and others
trot out the same laundry list of excuses. There are thousands of
dollars in marketing and success stories. But each time one's posted
here, you always hear it's not enough, too little too late, etc.
> I can't be part of the problem because I am not even in the equation.
> But if you think the solution is in sticking my head in the sand like
> so many others, then I admit I am not going to be part of the solution.
But you are part of the problem. Believe it or not, Sue sometimes has
to do damage control from people like you shooting off your mouth.
This group is supposed to be a group for advocacy. Oft times, you
wouldn't think so to read it.
So yes, you are part of the problem.
> What stops you from using SourceForge? I haven't looked at it but I
> was not aware of anything that restricted projects to Linux.
Nothing. Well, a better cvs client would be nice. Strength is going
to come from community. Having a place where VMS can be the central
focus, rather than getting lost in the myriad of other proejcts would
be a benefit.
Bill Gunshannon
It has nothing to do with law other than relying on it to support them.
When you put strings on the use of something it isn't free. You said,
"If I do a then I must do B". That takes away my freedom to not do B.
That's coercion.
>
> To use any code that is not public domain, you must agree to the
> license. In this case, the General Public License says that "you"
> can freely use "his" code, but that if you distribute the subsequent
> binaries to anyone else, you must share your changes with "them".
>
> Think of it as payment for "his" code.
Payment? I thought this was "free" software. That is what they
like to claim. Fact is, it is encumbered just like the old AT&T
code was. The only difference is AT&T openly claimed theirs was
encumbered and GNU claims theirs is free.
>
>>> ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
>>
>> Not hardly. There is at least one distro that has two versions. One
>> they give away for free and the other you have pay for. And they openly
>> admit the two are different. And the one you pay for has additional
>> features not in the free one.
>
> RH and SuSE do that.
You seem to take that rather calmly for someone who seems to think the
BPL is a good thing, but isn't that contrary to the GPL?
>
>> And there are other GNU Programs that
>> while living up to the letter of the agreement do not live up to the
>> spirit in that they have made the source code they provide useless
>> without paying them for the tools to work with it.
>
> Tivo?
Don't know about Tivo as not being a television addict I have never
used one. I was thinking of something totally software.
>
> The RH "commercial" version does have some closed-source features,
And this doesn't violate the GPL? Strange!
> but CentOS makes a (rather popular) fully functional distro using
> the same sources that RH Advanced/Enterprise Server uses.
Oh great, yet another Linux distro. What was it you said about Unix Wars?
>
>>> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
>>> almost guaranteed.
>>
>> Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
>> etc.
>
> There *is* a high likelihood, if all the distro versions are of the
> same vintage.
A high likelihood is not much use if it turns out you have the wrong
version. I have Knoppix on a mach8ine at home for testing things and
I find very little that will actually work with it. And then, I have
my Nokia 770 which is Linux based and is very selective about what it
will run.
>
> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
>>>> Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
>>>> to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
>>>> less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
>>>> really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
>>>> place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
>>> I'd *REALLY* like to hear what the problem with Linux was.
>>
>> Are you really serious? Broken LPD.
>
> lpd? Who in Linux uses lpd?
Anybody who has to support a heterogenous network. Even MS got it right
but not Linux.
>
>> Badly broken NFS.
>
> Yes, I've heard it's not the most efficient.
Efficiency is one matter, broken is another. (Hint: set up a test
network. NFS mount a directory. Boot the NFS Server. All of the
clients will need to be re-booted before they can access the file-
system again. NFS is supposed to be stateless!!)
>
>> Extremely
>> inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
>
> None of the benchmarks I've seen show that it's "bad". Maybe the
> particular driver for the NICs you were using...
Must be using the wrong benchmarks. Every one I ever ran showed Linux
way behind.
>
> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> But, to reiterate the original theme, if marketing can make such a
>>>> success out of a piece of crap like Linux, just think what it could,
>>>> no would do for a gem like VMS.
>>> If techies (not sheeple) really thought that Linux was a steaming
>>> pile of dung, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
>>
>> What techies? All those prepubescent teens without girlfriends who
>> put up a website in their parents basement during the dot.com boom
>> who now skew the unemployment numbers by claiming to be "un-employed
>> IT professionals" today?
>
> Great ad hominem, but, ummm, no.
Is an "ad hominem" still an "ad hominem" when it's true? We have had
the chance to see lots of these geniuses show up here. Freshman who
want credit for courses without taking them becuas ethey have been
running "businesses" since they were high school sophomores. They
seldom do well and in a number of cases have either changed major to
something other than CS/CIS or just plain dropped out.
P. Sture
Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> wrote:
> VMS is secure from the get-go, but Linux not so much. Is SELinux
> enabled? If so, then what profiles are enabled/created? (SELinux
> was designed to bring mainframe/VMS-style security to Linux.)
is SELinux widely available, and if so, widely adopted?
Disclaimer:- I know next to nothing about SELinux, or what its
capabilities are.
--
Paul Sture
Ron Johnson
Like HP coerces you not to give VMS licenses away for free?
>> To use any code that is not public domain, you must agree to the
>> license. In this case, the General Public License says that "you"
>> can freely use "his" code, but that if you distribute the subsequent
>> binaries to anyone else, you must share your changes with "them".
>>
>> Think of it as payment for "his" code.
>
> Payment? I thought this was "free" software. That is what they
> like to claim.
Shows how little you know of the GPL.
The phrase usually used it "free as in speech, not (necessarily)
free as in beer". In fact, the GPL encourages you to charge money
for shipping your code to your distributees.
> Fact is, it is encumbered just like the old AT&T
> code was. The only difference is AT&T openly claimed theirs was
> encumbered and GNU claims theirs is free.
>
>>>> ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
>>> Not hardly. There is at least one distro that has two versions. One
>>> they give away for free and the other you have pay for. And they openly
>>> admit the two are different. And the one you pay for has additional
>>> features not in the free one.
>> RH and SuSE do that.
>
> You seem to take that rather calmly for someone who seems to think the
> BPL is a good thing, but isn't that contrary to the GPL?
BPL??
None of these definitions make sense in the current context.
Broadband over Power Lines
BPL group, an Indian electronics conglomerate
Boston Public Library
Brooklyn Public Library
Berkeley Public Library
Borland Package Library
BPL (complexity), the complexity class of problems solvable
with bounded-error randomized algorithms in logarithmic space
Brass Pounders League, a term for Morse code operators that
comes from the use of brass Telegraph keys
Below the poverty line, a term for levels of income below the
Poverty threshold
Burnaby Public Library, a public library located in Burnaby,
British Columbia
Basic perturbation lemma, used in computer science and algebra
Brisbane Premier League, a football (soccer) competition in
Brisbane, Australia.
>>> And there are other GNU Programs that
>>> while living up to the letter of the agreement do not live up to the
>>> spirit in that they have made the source code they provide useless
>>> without paying them for the tools to work with it.
>>
>> Tivo?
>
> Don't know about Tivo as not being a television addict I have never
> used one. I was thinking of something totally software.
It runs on Linux (and that code is available to customers) but you
can't modify the code, because Tivo will only run if the hash key of
the compiled binary matches a pre-calculated number.
>> The RH "commercial" version does have some closed-source features,
>
> And this doesn't violate the GPL? Strange!
Absolutely not.
The GPL'ed code is available, and the closed-source code isn't.
Just like running Oracle on Linux.
>> but CentOS makes a (rather popular) fully functional distro using
>> the same sources that RH Advanced/Enterprise Server uses.
>
> Oh great, yet another Linux distro. What was it you said about Unix Wars?
And it's *fully* source-and-binary compatible with Red Hat.
>>>> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
>>>> almost guaranteed.
>>> Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
>>> etc.
>> There *is* a high likelihood, if all the distro versions are of the
>> same vintage.
>
> A high likelihood is not much use if it turns out you have the wrong
> version. I have Knoppix on a mach8ine at home for testing things and
> I find very little that will actually work with it.
Running off a CD/DVD?
> And then, I have
> my Nokia 770 which is Linux based and is very selective about what it
> will run.
A 10 second search brought me here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770
Which brought me here:
http://maemo.org/community/wiki/ApplicationCatalog
And that lists a *lot* of applications.
>> [snip]
>>>>>> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
>>>>> Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
>>>>> to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
>>>>> less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
>>>>> really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
>>>>> place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
>>>> I'd *REALLY* like to hear what the problem with Linux was.
>>>
>>> Are you really serious? Broken LPD.
>> lpd? Who in Linux uses lpd?
>
> Anybody who has to support a heterogenous network. Even MS got it right
> but not Linux.
OK, point taken.
>>> Badly broken NFS.
>> Yes, I've heard it's not the most efficient.
>
> Efficiency is one matter, broken is another. (Hint: set up a test
> network. NFS mount a directory. Boot the NFS Server. All of the
> clients will need to be re-booted before they can access the file-
> system again. NFS is supposed to be stateless!!)
Well then Linux is in good company: an NFS disconnect crashed an
AlphaVMS 8.2 cluster last week.
But seriously:
Kernel-mode or user-mode NFS?
v2 or v3 or v4?
Or it might have been a NIC problem. Look at this posting, for example.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.17/+bug/71212/comments/16
>>> Extremely
>>> inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
>> None of the benchmarks I've seen show that it's "bad". Maybe the
>> particular driver for the NICs you were using...
>
> Must be using the wrong benchmarks. Every one I ever ran showed Linux
> way behind.
Got any urls? No, really. The kernel team *always* wants to fix
problems.
>> [snip]
>>>>> But, to reiterate the original theme, if marketing can make such a
>>>>> success out of a piece of crap like Linux, just think what it could,
>>>>> no would do for a gem like VMS.
>>>> If techies (not sheeple) really thought that Linux was a steaming
>>>> pile of dung, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
>>> What techies? All those prepubescent teens without girlfriends who
>>> put up a website in their parents basement during the dot.com boom
>>> who now skew the unemployment numbers by claiming to be "un-employed
>>> IT professionals" today?
>> Great ad hominem, but, ummm, no.
>
> Is an "ad hominem" still an "ad hominem" when it's true? We have had
> the chance to see lots of these geniuses show up here. Freshman who
> want credit for courses without taking them becuas ethey have been
> running "businesses" since they were high school sophomores. They
> seldom do well and in a number of cases have either changed major to
> something other than CS/CIS or just plain dropped out.
I can't comment, since I don't know any such people.
Ron Johnson
> In article <MqA9i.22846$gM1....@newsfe21.lga>,
> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> VMS is secure from the get-go, but Linux not so much. Is SELinux
>> enabled? If so, then what profiles are enabled/created? (SELinux
>> was designed to bring mainframe/VMS-style security to Linux.)
>
> is SELinux widely available, and if so, widely adopted?
Yes. It's a standard part of the main kernel tree, written by the
NSA in order to bring better-than-Unix security to Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELinux
Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is an implementation
of mandatory access control using Linux Security Modules
(LSM) in the Linux kernel, based on the /principle of least
privilege/. It is not a Linux distribution, but rather a
set of modifications that can be applied to Unix-like
operating systems, such as Linux and BSD.
[snip]
Security-enhanced Linux is a FLASK implementation integrated
in some versions of the Linux kernel with a number of utilities
designed to demonstrate the value of mandatory access controls
to the Linux community and how such controls could be added
to Linux. Such a kernel contains architectural components
prototyped in the Fluke operating system. These provide general
support for enforcing many kinds of mandatory access control
policies, including those based on the concepts of type
enforcement, role-based access control, and multi-level
security. Observers of operating system security research
may recall DTOS, a Mach-derived Distributed Trusted Operating
System, on which Flask was based, as well as Trusted Mach,
a research project from Trusted Information Systems that was
influential in the design and implementation of DTOS. Those
interested in Type Enforcement may also be interested in Domain
and Type Enforcement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExecShield also helps (and is Linux-
specific) as does mudflap, which is available to all programs built
with GCC.
> Disclaimer:- I know next to nothing about SELinux, or what its
> capabilities are.
>
--
Craig A. Berry
bi...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> Someone else hinted that porting
> Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
> done by the people here in their spare time.
To whomever isn't doing something non-trivial in his or her spare time,
I pity you. And anyone who thinks that all porting work that is of
value is non-trivial (or is done entirely by volunteers in their spare
time) is not well-informed about either porting or about open source
software.
> I merely pointed out
> that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
> the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
The difficulty of porting software is not directly related to its
value. I've seen some very slick Java apps that just took half a dozen
lines of DCL as a wrapper around the Java command to get them working
just fine on VMS. I've seen quite a number of highly useful C programs
that I just compiled and ran on VMS with no modifications, programs
that did things like converting text to PDF, or a linguistics program
that parses English text and identifies parts of speech based on
statistics and a dictionary. Then there are things like Apache and
Mozilla that took a very substantial effort from OVMS Engineering. And
everything in between. Categorizing the work involved in porting as
either trivial or non-trivial disrespects the people and companies who
actually do that work. It is work, and it does require some level of
commitment from the people and/or companies who stand to benefit from
the result. While it would be nice to see a greater commitment from
HP, the absence of it is -- for those willing to actually do something
-- merely one factor among many in deciding what can get done.
> Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
> I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I can't
> say if they have it now, too.)
They don't. Many of the same problems arise when porting Unix software
to Win32 as arise when porting it to VMS, fork being one common thorn in
the side, along with inter-process communication, file locking, the fact
that select() only works on socket file handles, etc. In some cases,
VMS has better and more complete POSIX implementations and is easier to
port to than is Win32. In some cases, the particular features and
assumptions of Win32 cause fewer headaches. In both cases, porting the
build environment is usually the most time consuming part of the port.
> > There are many ways to accomplish a given task. In some cases, there are
> > better ways of doing the same thing.
>
> OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
> OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
> way" stop keeping it under your hat.
These matters are well known and frequently discussed by people who
actually work with open source software instead of talking about how
difficult it is to port to VMS. While there is no direct equivalent to
fork(), there are various different ways to do multiple threads of
execution and inter-process communication. As you have pointed out
elsewhere in this thread, there is no particularly good reason a
utility like GNU tar would use fork(), but it (and many other packages)
do so whether they really need it or not. It happens to be a popular
idiom and works well enough on Unix; if you'd been willing to spend 10
minutes looking at the tar sources, you'd see that they use fork() for,
among other things, handling compression in a child process while
another process manages the main archiving purpose of the program. If
portability and performance were a concern, POSIX threads might be an
alternative. On VMS, ASTs and/or multiple processes could undoubtedly
accomplish the same task.
I haven't followed this whole thread (I'm too busy porting open source
software to read everything here), but it certainly appears that the
main thing thing being ported and re-ported here is ignorance.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
JF Mezei
> statistics and a dictionary. Then there are things like Apache and
> Mozilla that took a very substantial effort from OVMS Engineering.
I suspect that gathering all the pieces is the most time consuming piece
(as opposed to actually modifying code). For instance, just compiling
Mozilla requires you have a half dozen anciliary packages such as perl
etc etc (and you probably also need a fair amount of utilities to unpack
from whatever source packaging is used (unless you are lucky enough to
get it in .zip form).
And since Mozilla needs GTK, you also need to build GTK, and to do so,
they probably eithe had to hack GTK or X-windows because the X-window on
VMS isn't exactly current.
Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER
And this (MOZILLA) was all done by one man only which is unfortunately
no longer with HPQ/this duty...
--
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail pe...@langstoeger.at
A-1030 VIENNA AUSTRIA I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
A. Berry" <craig...@mac.com.spamfooler> writes:
> To whomever isn't doing something non-trivial in his or her spare time,
> I pity you. And anyone who thinks that all porting work that is of
> value is non-trivial (or is done entirely by volunteers in their spare
> time) is not well-informed about either porting or about open source
> software.
> These matters are well known and frequently discussed by people who
> actually work with open source software instead of talking about how
> difficult it is to port to VMS.
> I haven't followed this whole thread (I'm too busy porting open source
> software to read everything here), but it certainly appears that the
> main thing thing being ported and re-ported here is ignorance.
I'm reminded of a quote by Dave Jones (author of the "OSU" HTTP server):
BTW, the source code to perl gives me a headache, I haven't seen
anything so convoluted since I did the Maple ports for Waterloo. The
comments are either quotes from 'Lord of the Rings' or
self-congratulatory remarks of how efficient or clever the next block
of code is.
P. Sture
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> > Yeah, I know and that is even more confusing (and I fear does not bode
> > well for the industry). Why would IBM push Linux? I admit to being
> > baffled by that one.
>
>
> Very smart move for IBM. IBM had an image of old, stodgy blue suits that
> only dealt with large corporations and only know about MVS, SNA and
> mainframes.
>
> IBM badly needed to tell the world it could also dab into modern
> technologies such as web servers, TCPIP , Unix etc.
>
> By jumping into the Linux bandwagon early, it was able to market itself
> as a company able to deal with today's new trendy technology, and
> leverage its "serious" experience to make the linux trendy toy work for
> business.
IIRC they have "put their money where their mouth is" by doing some
serious Linux development themselves.
> And if the customer outgrows its Linux boxes, IBM can then showcase its
> other products.
Better yet, they can host a gazillion independent instances of Linux on
a z/OS system. Now that _is_ server consolidation!
And sells their big iron too, of course :-)
--
Paul Sture
Michael Kraemer
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
>> Yeah, I know and that is even more confusing (and I fear does not bode
>> well for the industry). Why would IBM push Linux? I admit to being
>> baffled by that one.
>
> Very smart move for IBM. IBM had an image of old, stodgy blue suits that
> only dealt with large corporations and only know about MVS, SNA and
> mainframes.
I think those days are long gone.
A 20- or even 30-year old hardly has first hand experience
as to why IBM is called "Big Blue".
> IBM badly needed to tell the world it could also dab into modern
> technologies such as web servers, TCPIP , Unix etc.
They don't need Linux for that.
They already proved that with the introduction of the RS/6000 line
in 1990. That was quite cool, professional marketing.
Not a single blue suit.
Later on they had their OS/2 campaign,
again very smart and - at least over here -
quite successful for some time.
> By jumping into the Linux bandwagon early, it was able to market itself
> as a company able to deal with today's new trendy technology, and
> leverage its "serious" experience to make the linux trendy toy work for
> business.
Again, they didn't need Linux for that.
But Linux helps them sell more hardware, in particular
in the x86 space, without bothering with M$.
Although I doubt "personal" animosity plays
a large role in business decisions,
they might still have an axe to grind with Gates & Co.
So Linux is their weapon against M$ dominance.
Moreover, with Linux they get a large developer community for free.
They can concentrate on the AIX kernel and "just port" whatever
apps the Linux crowd invents. Without these Toolbox apps
their AIX offering would be rather meager.
> And if the customer outgrows its Linux boxes, IBM can then showcase its
> other products.
I think the typical IBM customer doesn't need Linux to stumble across
IBMs main offerings. It might well be the other way round:
people downgrading from AIX or z/OS will find an appropriate Linux
offering also at IBM, rather than turning to HP or the likes.
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
> I'm reminded of a quote by Dave Jones (author of the "OSU" HTTP server):
>
> BTW, the source code to perl gives me a headache, I haven't seen
> anything so convoluted since I did the Maple ports for Waterloo. The
> comments are either quotes from 'Lord of the Rings' or
> self-congratulatory remarks of how efficient or clever the next block
> of code is.
Which is why they are writing Perl6 from scratch (and it's taking a
*long* time).
P. Sture
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Craig A. Berry wrote:
> > statistics and a dictionary. Then there are things like Apache and
> > Mozilla that took a very substantial effort from OVMS Engineering.
>
>
> I suspect that gathering all the pieces is the most time consuming piece
> (as opposed to actually modifying code). For instance, just compiling
> Mozilla requires you have a half dozen anciliary packages such as perl
> etc etc (and you probably also need a fair amount of utilities to unpack
> from whatever source packaging is used (unless you are lucky enough to
> get it in .zip form).
I've often found it convenient to unpack distributions on OS X, zip the
results there, then unzip on VMS. A couple of points with that though:
In OS X you can often simply double click on the compressed file, and
Finder will unpack it for you. You can simply use Finder's Archive
function to create a zip file which VMS UNZIP can (usually) read.
However, with a typical .tar.gz file., that method will leave behind the
intermediate file, where the equivalent won't. A real problem here with
certain archives is that OS X Finder can "get carried away" and go too
far with unpacking, resulting in an incomplete directory tree (imagine
BACKUP/RESTORE overwriting a complete directory if it already exists!!!).
IOW, it's best to learn the correct syntax for tar and friends and use
that at the CLI instead of relying on Finder's behaviour.
--
Paul Sture
Bill Gunshannon
I guess I'm just dense, but I don't get this at all. Who other than
HP (and its authorized agents) gives out VMS licenses at all? And
since when is VMS "free software"? The Hobbyist Program not withstanding,
VMS is pure proprietary commercial software. (Althougn lately based on
comments I have seen I wonder how many people might be running commercial
operations using Hobbyist PAKs.)
>
>>> To use any code that is not public domain, you must agree to the
>>> license. In this case, the General Public License says that "you"
>>> can freely use "his" code, but that if you distribute the subsequent
>>> binaries to anyone else, you must share your changes with "them".
>>>
>>> Think of it as payment for "his" code.
>>
>> Payment? I thought this was "free" software. That is what they
>> like to claim.
>
> Shows how little you know of the GPL.
Are you saying they don't claim GPLed software is "free"?
>
> The phrase usually used it "free as in speech, not (necessarily)
> free as in beer". In fact, the GPL encourages you to charge money
> for shipping your code to your distributees.
"free" is "free". Why hide behind fancy rhetoric unless you have
something to hide? Is it "free" software or not? Code released
under the BSD license is "free", the only strings attached relate
to the text of the copyright message and in no way restrict what
you may or may not do with the code. The only thing more free is
public domain.
>
>> Fact is, it is encumbered just like the old AT&T
>> code was. The only difference is AT&T openly claimed theirs was
>> encumbered and GNU claims theirs is free.
>>
>>>>> ensures that the Unix Wars can not happen again.
>>>> Not hardly. There is at least one distro that has two versions. One
>>>> they give away for free and the other you have pay for. And they openly
>>>> admit the two are different. And the one you pay for has additional
>>>> features not in the free one.
>>> RH and SuSE do that.
>>
>> You seem to take that rather calmly for someone who seems to think the
>> BPL is a good thing, but isn't that contrary to the GPL?
>
> BPL??
Sorry, mistype. But I would have hoped it was obvious considering
the proximity of the "G" and "B" keys and what were discussing.
So, it is like I said, the GPL didn't protect the "freedom" of this code.
Just one more to add to my long (and growing) list.
>
>>> The RH "commercial" version does have some closed-source features,
>>
>> And this doesn't violate the GPL? Strange!
>
> Absolutely not.
>
> The GPL'ed code is available, and the closed-source code isn't.
I thought modification to GPLed code had to be GPLed?
>
> Just like running Oracle on Linux.
We are not talking about none GPLed applications here. There are
difference ins the kernel between the two versions. The kernel is
GPLed and any modification are supposed to be GPLed as well.
>
>>> but CentOS makes a (rather popular) fully functional distro using
>>> the same sources that RH Advanced/Enterprise Server uses.
>>
>> Oh great, yet another Linux distro. What was it you said about Unix Wars?
>
> And it's *fully* source-and-binary compatible with Red Hat.
It's still yet another fork in the trail. Something that many call
a bad thing for BSD. So, how long before it stops being compatible
because they decide they do not agree with the direction RH is going?
Or will the GPL prevent that? :-)
>
>>>>> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
>>>>> almost guaranteed.
>>>> Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
>>>> etc.
>>> There *is* a high likelihood, if all the distro versions are of the
>>> same vintage.
>>
>> A high likelihood is not much use if it turns out you have the wrong
>> version. I have Knoppix on a mach8ine at home for testing things and
>> I find very little that will actually work with it.
>
> Running off a CD/DVD?
No, installed on a hard disk from a CD. (One thing that Linux distros
seem to do well is install. Although the latest CD from Sun was also
impressive!)
>
>> And then, I have
>> my Nokia 770 which is Linux based and is very selective about what it
>> will run.
>
> A 10 second search brought me here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770
>
> Which brought me here:
> http://maemo.org/community/wiki/ApplicationCatalog
>
> And that lists a *lot* of applications.
Many of which won't work depending on which version of the kernel you
are running. Many more that have dependancies that are not avaialable
or only available for money. Or, in many cases just flat out don't work.
Most break with every update to the machine. Nice toy, but still not
practical for reliable use. Don't get me wrong, I like mine and now
that there is a version of Maemo Mapper that works with mine again I
use it frequently instead of actually buying a Garmin. :-)
>
>>> [snip]
>>>>>>> Overall, though, you won't hear me complaining because you run FreeBSD.
>>>>>> Well, you certainly won't hear me complain. We once tried to use Linux
>>>>>> to do the job because people wanted the more popular option. It took
>>>>>> less than one semester to have all of them learn what a mistake Linux
>>>>>> really was. We have never looked back and Linux will never have a
>>>>>> place in our server farm as long as I am the Admin here.
>>>>> I'd *REALLY* like to hear what the problem with Linux was.
> >>>
>>>> Are you really serious? Broken LPD.
>>> lpd? Who in Linux uses lpd?
>>
>> Anybody who has to support a heterogenous network. Even MS got it right
>> but not Linux.
>
> OK, point taken.
>
>>>> Badly broken NFS.
>>> Yes, I've heard it's not the most efficient.
>>
>> Efficiency is one matter, broken is another. (Hint: set up a test
>> network. NFS mount a directory. Boot the NFS Server. All of the
>> clients will need to be re-booted before they can access the file-
>> system again. NFS is supposed to be stateless!!)
>
> Well then Linux is in good company: an NFS disconnect crashed an
> AlphaVMS 8.2 cluster last week.
Well, I would need more info to know who was actually at fault on this
one, but just to keep the record straight, as much as I like VMS I have
never bought into this "uncrashable/unhackable/guaranteed 24-7" nonsense.
It's an OS, not god. I have seen VMS crash. I have seen "trojans" run
on VMS (when I first got here it was one of the most common things run
by students in the terminal rooms!) I have watched the annoucements on
login that the local system would be down on such-and-such a day for
maintenance.
>
> But seriously:
> Kernel-mode or user-mode NFS?
> v2 or v3 or v4?
Sorry, I don't research it. I just watched it not work and found a
replacement. Not that it makes a difference. NFS is stateless.
The behavior on Linux was something I have never seen on any other
version of NFS and I have used NFS on: SunOS, Solaris, lots of BSD's,
Irix, HPUX, Ultrix-32, MSDOS, Xenix, QNX and I am sure others that I
have long ago forgotten. So, when the NFS server crashes how do you
tell all your users that you have to reboot the clients and they
are going to loose all their work up to that point because they can't
save their file?
>
> Or it might have been a NIC problem. Look at this posting, for example.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.17/+bug/71212/comments/16
No, not a NIC problem. It is a state problem in something designed to be
stateless. I can duplicate it at will and it behaves the same no matter
what particular Linux Distro is used. Plain and simple, they got it wrong
and probably have no intention of fixing it because they think it is
everyone else that is wrong.
>
>>>> Extremely
>>>> inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
>>> None of the benchmarks I've seen show that it's "bad". Maybe the
>>> particular driver for the NICs you were using...
>>
>> Must be using the wrong benchmarks. Every one I ever ran showed Linux
>> way behind.
>
> Got any urls? No, really. The kernel team *always* wants to fix
> problems.
Then let them do their own work. I have no interest in fixing Linux.
I prefer to use other options that just work.
>
>>> [snip]
>>>>>> But, to reiterate the original theme, if marketing can make such a
>>>>>> success out of a piece of crap like Linux, just think what it could,
>>>>>> no would do for a gem like VMS.
>>>>> If techies (not sheeple) really thought that Linux was a steaming
>>>>> pile of dung, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
>>>> What techies? All those prepubescent teens without girlfriends who
>>>> put up a website in their parents basement during the dot.com boom
>>>> who now skew the unemployment numbers by claiming to be "un-employed
>>>> IT professionals" today?
>>> Great ad hominem, but, ummm, no.
>>
>> Is an "ad hominem" still an "ad hominem" when it's true? We have had
>> the chance to see lots of these geniuses show up here. Freshman who
>> want credit for courses without taking them becuas ethey have been
>> running "businesses" since they were high school sophomores. They
>> seldom do well and in a number of cases have either changed major to
>> something other than CS/CIS or just plain dropped out.
>
> I can't comment, since I don't know any such people.
Try going out on the Web and reading some resumes of "un-employed IT
professionals". Some of them are funnier than rec.humor
Bill Gunshannon
dav...@montagar.com writes:
> On Jun 5, 1:52 pm, b...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> All of which applies to BSD equally except that BSD had several years
>> headstart (including the development that continued despite the AT&T
>> lawsuit which everyone involved in the technical side of the game knew
>> was never going to go anywhere). The only thing Linux has that BSD
>> does not is marketing.
>
> False. The GPL attracted a lot of people to the Linux platform. The
> BSD license allows a company to profit off the work of someone else
> without compensation or credit. The GPL doesn't allow this. You
> either get credited and/or compensated.
No one is arguing this. the argument is which one is "free" software
and which one is "encumbered" software. People are free to use any
license they wish, but lying about it in orer to mislead the gullible
is just plain wrong. Heck, if you want you can use a license that
says people can only use your code naked if you want, just don't say
it is "free". And using this "free speech"/"free beer" game is just
trying to put up a smoke screen. Makes you think they are lawyers
rather than computer geeks.
>
>> And look at the difference in awareness and
>> interest. BSD's license is much more business friendly than the GPV.
>> BSD is stabler, more secure, more efficient and has more stuff that
>> was actually implemented correctly than Linux. And still businesses
>> are flocking to Linux and ignoring BSD. And the answer is, marketing.
>> Ask any CIO you know who is involved in one of these Linux migrations
>> why Linux and not BSD. The most likely answer will be, "What's BSD?"
>> Sure sounds like the same boat VMS is in to me. :-)
>
> That would be G. P. L., and yes the BSD license is more friendly to
> the business, but to the individual programmers, the GPL can often be
> more attractive, for reasons stated above. Word of mouth is what is
> at work here. As developers become interested in the platform, they
> play with it, books get written, the interest feeds upon itself. I
> submit to you that Linux would have succeeded regardless of IBM's
> marketing dollars.
I wasn't talking about IBM. They came into the game late, long after
Linux was popular. SWhen I said marketing I meant thngs like "The
Linux Journal" and all the effort that was made by smalltime players
getting articles about Linux into trade journals. And that had a
snowball effect. Every article made the trade rags want to find more
articles. If BSD had made the same effort at marketing I seriously
expect that Linux would have died very early in it's life.
>
> During the developement of Linux, Bill Gates spent more money wiping
> his butt with $20 bills than Linux had in marketing.
But that's the cool thing about marketing (and the thing that HP just
can't seem to grasp concering VMS). It doesn't have to cost money. It
can be free (articles in trade rags) or even a money maker (The Linux
Journal). It just takes a little interest in sowing the seeds and
soon it can take on a life of its own. Linux today is cool and big
business. An article written for Computer World about Linux by anyone
with even a minor reputation as an IT Journalist is going to get published.
> Yet, you didn't
> see developers give up, wail about lack of marketing dollars, and
> bitch and moan about it in forums. If what you believe were true,
> Linux NEVER would have succeeded. But it did. If all that work
> hadn't have been done FIRST, there wouldn't have been anything to
> market at all.
Linux was already being hyped as the best thing since sliced bread
long before it was viable as a commercial OS and BSD was already
way ahead of it in stability, features and available applicatations.
Technical merit has never been the deciding factor the success of
this kind of product. BSD already had a network of developers world-
wide before Linus wrote his first line of code.
>
> Why it succeeded was because of the community.
see the above comment. I'll say it again. BSD already had a network
of developers worldwide before Linus wrote his first line of code.
> I believe that is
> going to be what makes VMS stronger, too. A good solid community of
> developers and users working toward the goal regardless of what HP
> does. If there aren't tools and apps ported to OpenVMS, then OpenVMS
> is an O/S with no purpose - and no amount of marketnig dollars can fix
> that. The product, and assoicated side products, must be there
> first. But if you can't lead or follow, at least don't start by
> assuming there's no point in trying.
Nice thought, but not reality. The fate of VMS is toatlly in the
hands of HP. The community can do anything it wants to put apps
on VMS but unless HP is willing to sell it to potential customers
(and such customers exist) VMS will wither on the vine, except maybe
in the basements of hobbyists.
>
> That's why HP has been doing programs like the HP Integrity Developers
> Workshops (which, I think is a marketing effort costing in the
> hundreds of thousands of dollars),
That's not marketing, that's preaching to the choir.
> free downloads of software for
> DSPP, free Integrity SDK kits shipped to you simply for the asking,
> and more.
But only the VMS faithful know about any of this.
>
> But I'm sorry Bill. That probably isn't enough for you.
Ummm.... I am not the only one (here or elsewhere) that thinks more
is needed. I have watched VMS die here. What VMS is still here is
hidden behind a smoke screen of Java and Windows. Where everyone used
to know what was driving the University's IT today it's all Windows.
Something about a light under a basket comes to mind. How can oyu sell
something if you don't tell potential customers it's avaialble? You
can bet that Sun and IBM are telling people. We dumped Sun over 15
years ago and yet I still get periodic calls from their sales people
trying to see if there is any interest. All I have gotten from HP
in the past 4-5 years a solid demonstration that they don't understand
my business which is hardly likely to get them any. And I am one of
the people who fought to keep them here as long as possible!!
>
>> I am not spinning anything. Name the applications that people are most
>> likely to want. Then look at what they contain. Actually, the obsolete
>> version of X11 that is available for VMS is probably the bigger show
>> stopper as desktop apps are what sells computers today. But there are
>> still alot of cute little things with fork() in them. And that list
>> was not meant to be exclusive. It just pointed out the two most common
>> shortcomings frequently mentioned here everytime this subjecy comes up.
>
> Yes you are. You are already predicting failure of porting software
> even before anyone STARTS. You use two issues and predict 100%
> failure right out of the gate. I guess you aren't capable of working
> around fork(), but please don't convince others they can't before they
> start. Most of the time fork() is called, it's to detach a process
> anyway (fork followed by exec) and can be replaced with a call to LIB
> $SPAWN or SYS$CREPRC. As for X11, you are seriously out of touch
> since rarely do people program X11 calls. The only ones that do are
> those developing window managers or maintaining the GUI toolkits like
> GTK or wxWidgets. The rest are using those toolkits like GTK+ or
> wxWidgets.
OK, you win. I have better things to do with my time. Let me know
when you have OpenOffice running on VMS. (that's the kind of apps
that real users want, not PHP.)
Andrew
> In article <MqA9i.22846$gM1.8...@newsfe21.lga>,
> Ron Johnson <ron.l.john...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > VMS is secure from the get-go, but Linux not so much. Is SELinux
> > enabled? If so, then what profiles are enabled/created? (SELinux
> > was designed to bring mainframe/VMS-style security to Linux.)
>
> is SELinux widely available, and if so, widely adopted?
>
It is widely available but it tends to get turned off because many
admins struggle to get it to work.
RedHat have started a campaign to get admins to use it rather than
turn it off which is getting a mixed reception.
There is currently a discussion about it on Slashdot.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/06/007218
Regards
Andrew Harrison
dav...@montagar.com
> Nice thought, but not reality. The fate of VMS is toatlly in the
> hands of HP. The community can do anything it wants to put apps
> on VMS but unless HP is willing to sell it to potential customers
> (and such customers exist) VMS will wither on the vine, except maybe
> in the basements of hobbyists.
Read that carefully - VMS, by itself, is simply a platform. If HP
sells you the platform, what are you going to do with it? You need
support from a developer community so you can sell a solution that
does something. There's an active developer community, and tons of
code, out there able to be capitalized on. I think we, as a
community, can help take advantage of that.
Although you dismiss them, the ports of Apache, MySQL, PHP are an
example of some of the enabling technologies where OpenVMS is actively
competing in the data center against Sun, MS, IBM, and others.
There's an incredible amount of PHP code available for doing cool
things, and having it backed by the extra security of OpenVMS is a
value added. And commercially, are probably where most of the Linux
installations are situated, not the desktop.
> > That's why HP has been doing programs like the HP Integrity Developers
> > Workshops (which, I think is a marketing effort costing in the
> > hundreds of thousands of dollars),
>
> That's not marketing, that's preaching to the choir.
Okay, so you think they shouldn't do this program? I think it's a
benefit since it promotes continued development, and the free hardware
doesn't hurt.
>
> > free downloads of software for
> > DSPP, free Integrity SDK kits shipped to you simply for the asking,
> > and more.
>
> But only the VMS faithful know about any of this.
Actually, I've told many people about it. In fact, that's actually
one of the "intentions" of the Hobbyist Program, is to encourage use
of OpenVMS, and even software development on OpenVMS. Of course, if
you develop a commercial product for OpenVMS, you'll need to sign up
for DSPP or something to get non-Hobbyist licenses before you sell the
first copy, but DSPP is pretty cheap, too.
> > But I'm sorry Bill. That probably isn't enough for you.
>
> Ummm.... I am not the only one (here or elsewhere) that thinks more
> is needed.
Not saying it isn't. It's just I think we can be part of the solution
rather than part of the problem. Actually do something rather than
complain about it.
> OK, you win. I have better things to do with my time. Let me know
> when you have OpenOffice running on VMS. (that's the kind of apps
> that real users want, not PHP.)
No, Bill. You win. Even when OpenOffice is running on OpenVMS (and
as mentioned, that effort is in progress), you'll still find something
else you complain about.
Part of the issue is that even the Linux camp is wondering if Linux is
ready for the Desktop against Windows. So even in the Linux world,
OpenOffice isn't the yardstick of success, whereas for some reason
you've chosen it as yours. In fact, I'd almost guess that you've
selected it explicitly as the having the greatest chance of failure,
thus affirming your claim of hopelessness.
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
>>>> To use any code that is not public domain, you must agree to the
>>>> license. In this case, the General Public License says that "you"
>>>> can freely use "his" code, but that if you distribute the subsequent
>>>> binaries to anyone else, you must share your changes with "them".
>>>>
>>>> Think of it as payment for "his" code.
>>> Payment? I thought this was "free" software. That is what they
>>> like to claim.
>> Shows how little you know of the GPL.
>
> Are you saying they don't claim GPLed software is "free"?
>
>> The phrase usually used it "free as in speech, not (necessarily)
>> free as in beer". In fact, the GPL encourages you to charge money
>> for shipping your code to your distributees.
>
> "free" is "free". Why hide behind fancy rhetoric unless you have
> something to hide? Is it "free" software or not? Code released
> under the BSD license is "free", the only strings attached relate
> to the text of the copyright message and in no way restrict what
> you may or may not do with the code. The only thing more free is
> public domain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre
The English word "free" is used for both the Latin words /libre/
(freedom) and /gratis/ (no cost, "for nothing").
GPL software *can be* /gratis/ but it *is* /libre/.
The GPL grants liberty (the power of choice) to programmers, not
cheapness (not costing or charging anything).
If you still don't understand, then either:
a) I'm not good at explaining, or
b) you have closed your mind.
[snip]
>>
>>>>> And there are other GNU Programs that
>>>>> while living up to the letter of the agreement do not live up to the
>>>>> spirit in that they have made the source code they provide useless
>>>>> without paying them for the tools to work with it.
>>>> Tivo?
>>> Don't know about Tivo as not being a television addict I have never
>>> used one. I was thinking of something totally software.
>> It runs on Linux (and that code is available to customers) but you
>> can't modify the code, because Tivo will only run if the hash key of
>> the compiled binary matches a pre-calculated number.
>
> So, it is like I said, the GPL didn't protect the "freedom" of this code.
> Just one more to add to my long (and growing) list.
So, because the GPL is imperfect in corner cases, you don't like it
anywhere????
>>>> The RH "commercial" version does have some closed-source features,
>>> And this doesn't violate the GPL? Strange!
>> Absolutely not.
>>
>> The GPL'ed code is available, and the closed-source code isn't.
>
> I thought modification to GPLed code had to be GPLed?
Who says that RH's closed-source apps are derived from open-source apps?
>> Just like running Oracle on Linux.
>
> We are not talking about none GPLed applications here. There are
> difference ins the kernel between the two versions. The kernel is
> GPLed and any modification are supposed to be GPLed as well.
Umm, yeah. Are we talking about the same thing? I'm referring to
apps and you mention the kernel.
>>>> but CentOS makes a (rather popular) fully functional distro using
>>>> the same sources that RH Advanced/Enterprise Server uses.
>>> Oh great, yet another Linux distro. What was it you said about Unix Wars?
>> And it's *fully* source-and-binary compatible with Red Hat.
>
> It's still yet another fork in the trail. Something that many call
> a bad thing for BSD. So, how long before it stops being compatible
> because they decide they do not agree with the direction RH is going?
Only the big distro makers (RH, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu) write their
own apps. And those are usually installers and management tools.
The others are (usually) specialized derivatives or "we can do
better" forks.
However, all current Linux distros use roughly the same versions of
the kernel and libraries and apps.
> Or will the GPL prevent that? :-)
The GPL encourages forking. But nobody wants to deviate from the
core kernel/libs/apps because then it's not useful.
Still, though, there are a few notable code forks that I can think
of off the top of my head:
The leader of XFree wasn't keeping up with patches and wasn't
allowing new, modern, features in. *Then* he arbitrarily changed
the license, making part of it non-GPL-compatible. So, some of the
developers forked the last GPL-compatible version into x.org, added
the new features and all the distros quickly switched. I *think*
the BSDs also eventually switched.
The accounting app SQL-Ledger was dominated by one man, who
was applying very few user-submitted security patches and feature
enhancements. So, some in the user base forked it into LedgerSMB,
applied the security patches and are cleaning up the code while
adding enhancements.
Some of the developers of the X compositing window manager
/Compiz/ had a disagreement as to the direction of the project. So,
some forked it into /Beryl/. Both followed the relevant standards,
so GNOME would work with either, but they each had a different
emphasis. There has been a rapprochement, and they are now working
to merge their features.
>>>>>> Thus, it's sort of a neutral platform where binary compatibility is
>>>>>> almost guaranteed.
>>>>> Your joking, right? Debian won't run RedHat. RedHat won't run Slackware,
>>>>> etc.
>>>> There *is* a high likelihood, if all the distro versions are of the
>>>> same vintage.
>>> A high likelihood is not much use if it turns out you have the wrong
>>> version. I have Knoppix on a mach8ine at home for testing things and
>>> I find very little that will actually work with it.
>> Running off a CD/DVD?
>
> No, installed on a hard disk from a CD. (One thing that Linux distros
> seem to do well is install. Although the latest CD from Sun was also
> impressive!)
Hmmm. What kind of "things" are you trying to run on it? RPM
files? Built-from-source?
[snip]
> what particular Linux Distro is used. Plain and simple, they got it wrong
> and probably have no intention of fixing it because they think it is
> everyone else that is wrong.
On what basis do you make that bold assertion?
>>>>> Extremely
>>>>> inefficient IP stack because of NIH Syndrom.
>>>> None of the benchmarks I've seen show that it's "bad". Maybe the
>>>> particular driver for the NICs you were using...
>>> Must be using the wrong benchmarks. Every one I ever ran showed Linux
>>> way behind.
>> Got any urls? No, really. The kernel team *always* wants to fix
>> problems.
>
> Then let them do their own work. I have no interest in fixing Linux.
> I prefer to use other options that just work.
Did I ask for code? NO.
A url with a graph showing that a recent FreeBSD is substantially
faster than a recent Linux, along with the methodology, is all that
"they" need.
[snip comments about pimply-faced teenagers]
dav...@montagar.com
wrote:
> In article <5cl99aF307t9...@mid.individual.net>,
> b...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>
> > Someone else hinted that porting
> > Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
> > done by the people here in their spare time.
>
> To whomever isn't doing something non-trivial in his or her spare time,
> I pity you. And anyone who thinks that all porting work that is of
> value is non-trivial (or is done entirely by volunteers in their spare
> time) is not well-informed about either porting or about open source
> software.
Never said it was trivial. But I do believe that in many/most cases
it is possible and worthwhile. I agree that sometimes very
complicated things work trivially, while some simple things end up
being a pain. In some cases, it might be worthwhile to just rewrite
it for VMS.
As noted by others, sometimes it isn't the app that's the problem, but
the dependencies on a bunch of other smaller packages. You can't port
the app without also porting the dependencies. This is where I think
we can provide benefit, by helping with some of these dependencies and
creating a growing library of these that continue to provide base
support, and feeding back updates to the maintainers to provide for
future VMS support. Things like this have been done for Samba and
other projects, where you can download from the main site, and theres
a BUILD.COM or DESCRIP.MMS right there in the distribution. I'm sure
there would be little argument from many of these projects if you
asked them to include a functional DESCRIP.MMS and VMS config.h file
as part of the codebase.
Since many of these libraries are commonly used in a wide variety of
apps/libraries, a lot of good is possible from it. Any not just for
the sake of porting OSS apps. Many of these libraries are fairly
native on other platforms, and making them "native" on VMS further
eases software portability to VMS, too.
-
Pig ignorant rant. Since you've not taken the trouble to understand the
linkage among various Linux distros, you're just contributing FUD.
>
>> And now both IBM & HPaq are selling boat-loads of Linux-installed
>> servers & blades, making both very happy. IBM is probably also
>> selling lots of Linux-running POWER systems in compute farms where
>> AIX isn't needed.
>
> Yeah, I know and that is even more confusing (and I fear does not bode
> well for the industry). Why would IBM push Linux? I admit to being
> baffled by that one.
Because you haven't bothered to approach the issue with an open mind.
"Give away the razor and sell the blades"
>>> Considering how unlikely it is that any CIO today has ever heard
>>> of BSD it is even more unlikely that they know what the "Unix Wars" were.
>>>
>>>
>>>> And while the Unix vendors were fighting, VMS slid and MSFT became
>>>> unstoppably dominant.
>>> And yet, Linux is rapidly moving into the datacenter. And the whole
>>> point of what I said was, "Why Linux? Why not BSD?"
>> See the previous paragraphs regarding the BSD & GPL licenses.
>
> I doubt the license has anything to do with it. The BSD is much more
> business friendly and the GPL is extremely dangerous (in the business
> sense). The only real difference I can see is they all know what Linux
> is, afterall it's in all the trade journals everyday. When have you
> ever seen more than a casual mention of a current BSD in one? Sound
> like VMS again?
Wrong. Wrong and wrong. You've clearly bought the MS argument. You don't
understand the GPL. Clearly, IBM, HP, Oracle, Sun, Novell, MS don't
think that the GPL is "... extremely dangerous..."
>>> And the answer
>>> remains the same as the answer to. "Why not VMS?"
>> Up-front costs and COTS hardware.
>
> While that may contribute, I think the lack of knowledge caused by
> the current stealth marketing is much more to blame. Even back in
> my days selling systems it was always pointed out to me that the
> cost of the hardware was in most cases a rather insignificant portion
> of the overall cost of establishing and operating a system. And, it's
> write-off money anyway.
Business looks for solutions. Linux is one solution. BSD is another
solution, VMS is another solution. VMS will never be marketed like BSD
or Linux (nor should it). Deal.
Whose LPD? NFS is a steaming pile and always has been. What's an
"extremely inefficient IP stack" and how could you tell?
>>>>> Now,
>>>>> if your running 15 year old Sparc boxes......
>>>> NetBSD, anyone? :)
>>>>
>>>> Linux (Debian, specifically) will also run on most of those boxes.
>>> Of course it will, But if you are trying to set up an efficient operation
>>> running on commodity COTS x86 boxes why would you want to use something
>>> that has code in it targeted at other architectures. Give me the one
>>> optimized for my platform every time.
>> And if you chose the losing platform...
>
> The industry has chosen x86. Why would I want to run a version of an
> OS that had to do or not do something in order to maintain support for
> Sparc or PARisc? That was my point. Of course, I assume Linux falls
> into the same catagory as Open|Net BSD as it also claims support for
> all these other oddball systems. Hmmmm... Maybe that explains some
> of the inefficiency.
Wrong again. All it explains is your desire to bloviate.
>
>> (Not that x86 will lose any time soon, but you get my point.)
>>
>> [snip]
>>>>>> You'd be stunned by the disagreements between major kernel
>>>>>> developers on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml).
>>>>> Actually, no I wouldn't. Children squabble all the time.
>>>> Oh, you mean Theo de Raadt?? :0
>>> Yeah, but then he doesn't control FreeBSD, does he?
>> He leads a BSD.
>
> And not the one I would recommend to anyone planning on using x86 COTS
> boxes. So, irrelevant to the discussion at hand. When someone says,
> "It's my ball and we play by my rules." I usually just go find another
> game.
Please, please, please find another game!
-
> On 06/06/07 09:33, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> [snip]
> >
>> It's not clear to me why a VMS programmer should want/need a Unix
>> style fork. If you really need a Unix environment, use Unix. FWIW, I
>> believe that many or most of the useful Unix utilities can be, or
>> as well as GVG Make. Make is already on my web page and I'll be glad
>> to make grep and gawk available if anyone needs such things. There
>> was a "tail" utility in the days before TYPE /TAIL was implemented.
>
> I don't necessarily *want* Unix. But I *really* like the programming
> control structures in bash. On one line, you can whip out for-looping
> "if-then-else"ing ad-hoc utility that would require a 20 line script in
> DCL.
Agreed. But then you would have the bloated turd that is Bash.
I choose Perl for those brilliant one-liners. Awk is also a great tool
for those parsing situations where DCL is just hopeless. But, you
already knew that...
BTW, check out urxvt. It links to the Perl engine.
-
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
>> Sent: June 5, 2007 10:12 AM
>> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
>> Subject: Re: Story Time
>>
>> In article
>> <FA60F2C4B72A584DBFC6...@tayexc19.americas.cpqcorp.ne
>> t>,
>> "Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@hp.com> writes:
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu]
>> On
>>>> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
>>>> Sent: June 5, 2007 8:50 AM
>>>> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
>>>> Subject: Re: Story Time
>>>> =20
>>>> In article <1181020029.5...@n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
>>>> dav...@montagar.com writes:
>>>>>> Dear Newsgroup,
>>>>>> So why am I telling you this, because I get mail and I see posts
>>>>>> everyday saying the same thing.
>>>>> True. I get tired of reading posts by the same folks telling me
>>>> (and
>>>>> others that stumble into this group) how OpenVMS is dying, what
>> next
>>>>> faux pas HP has committed to accelerate the death of OpenVMS,
>> yada
>>>>> yada yada. No good deed seems to go unpunished, every win is
>> back-
>>>>> spinned into a loss.
>>>>>
>>>>> By these standards, Linux should not exist, there was no money,
>> no
>>>>> support, no marketshare. Worse than what OpenVMS has. But it
>>>> exists.
>>>> =20
>>>> But Linux has the one thing that the people in this group you
>>>> denigrate
>>>> have repeatedly said was needed, marketing. I personally have
>> stated
>>>> numerous times that if marketing can do what it has for a puile of
>>>> crap
>>>> like Linux just imagine what it could do for a gem like VMS!!
>>>> =20
>>>>> Because for the most part, people don't complain, they
>> contribute.
>>>>> There's fewer applications available you say? Then port
>> something.
>>>>> There are tons of quality applications that are GPL'd than would
>> be
>>>>> great to port to OpenVMS. Not anything useful? I call BS.
>> After
>>>>> all, what exactly do you think make a Linux distribution today,
>>>>> anyway.
>>>> =20
>>>> Except that the largest majority of those truly useful applications
>>>> can not be ported to VMS. Why? Because half of them require
>> fork()
>>>> and the other half require a current version of X11. Neither of
>> which
>>>> VMS has or is likely to have in the near (or even distant) future.
>>>> =20
>>> Please, lets forget the hype here ok?
>>>
>>> Are you saying that because OpenVMS does not support fork (a UNIX
>> way of
>>> doing IO), that its future is doomed?
>> That's not what I said at all. Someone else hinted that porting
>> Unix/Linux Open Source Software was somehow trivial and could be
>> that porting from Unix/Linux to VMS is anything but trivial unless
>> the program itself is trivial (and therefore of little if any value.)
>>
>
> other platforms for that matter and while there are always some OS
> specific things that might need to be done another way, it certainly is
> not something that is a showstopper.
>
> Hey, what do you think Oracle does for OpenVMS? For Windows?
>
>> Oh, and fork() is not "a UNIX way of doing IO".
>>
>>> Geez, I guess Microsoft will be heart broken to hear their platform
>> is
>>> doomed because it does not support fork either.
>> Microsoft's OSes already support all the useful applications they
>> need.
>> They are not in need of someone porting OSS in their spare time. And,
>>
>> Funny, I have fork() on the XP box on my desk (at least under Cygwin,
>> I haven't done any native Windows development in a long time so I
>> can't
>> say if they have it now, too.)
>>
>> are
>>> better ways of doing the same thing.
>> OK, so how would you accomplish the equivalent of fork() in all this
>> OSS people think we should be porting to VMS? If you know a "better
>> way" stop keeping it under your hat.
>>
>
> google or you read the VMS FAQ's.
>
> As examples:
> http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2002-March/001754.html
>
>>> As far as the University scene goes, they are under huge, huge
>> pressure
>>> to reduce costs, so the various Colleges and Departments within the
>>> University are jumping on the open source, Linux stuff not because
>> it is
>>> technically better, but rather because it is low cost (at least when
>> you
>>> look at the initial cost only).=20
>> Nice excuse, but I just told you they have a VMS machine here for
>> academic
>> use. It is running all the time. No one uses it. Now, why would
>> that be?
>>
>
> Probably because they do not even know it is there or what ever IT
> service is offered on the OpenVMS system is not of interest to them.
>
>>> However, like the old saying goes, "the grass is not always greener
>> on
>>> the other side" and these same Universities are now struggling with
>>> monthly security patching, version control, license monitoring,
>> change
>>> management and yet still keep in line with regulatory requirements
>> like
>>> FERPA, SOX, HIPPA etc.=20
>> Yeah, keep telling yourself that. They are "struggling" so hard I'll
>> bet you get a thousand calls a day asking for you to deliver new
>> Itanium
>> VMS systems to Universities all over the world. :-)
>>
>
> They are struggling big time "no staff, to many patches, to many
> regulatory concerns, to many things to do etc etc .." were common
> complaints from the IT survey we did (and this environment was all
> Windows and Solaris.
>
> Their big mandate was to migrate from Solaris to Linux - ASAP was the
> speed I was told. Which was technically better made no difference as up
> front costs were all they were worried about. Unfortunately, when I
> pointed out all of the monthly security patches for Linux, they were
> amazed (shocked?) because they were not aware that there are so many
> released every month.
Quantity and quality. New hacks/attacks appear every day; the zero-day
hack. Always take VMS security over *nix security. But, VMS security
over SELinux? That's an open question.
BTW, which distro? Let the distribution handle and merge kernel updates;
the end user shouldn't be doing this. Layered application updates...
could be an issue. Linux isn't kernel+layered applications, unlike BSD,
Solaris or VMS
John Smith
David,
It's great that you've told some/many people about the programs -- but so
have we all here. HP dodn't try to punch its way out of a paper bag to get
to the rest of the world with that message. They are only interested (or so
it appears by their actions) to reach a tiny subset of the, ie. those who
still develop for VMS.
Rather than seeding the market by spending several hundred thousand buck
advertising the existence of the programs in any of the Linux magazines or
banner advertising, or even in Oracle Magazine to reach those that use
Oracle on Windows or Linux, or making a deal with 100 CS or Engineering
departments @ universities to *give* VMS distro DVD's to all 1st year
students along with low-end refurb'd Alpha's or old-model Itanics, HP does
nothing. And as a consequence, businesses, new grads, and even the
old-timers all have neither heard of VMS or firmly believe that it's dead
already.
I know from my days as a student government leader in my days at
university, that we would have foud a way to arrange that for each freshman,
even if the faculty/department didn't want to formally participate in such a
giveaway.
--
OpenVMS - The never-advertised operating system with the dwindling ISV
base.
John Smith
What HP ought to do is take some of their $8 billion profits and fund some
greybeards to port the still-as-yet un-ported necessary bits. Grease the
wheel a bit.
dav...@montagar.com
> What HP ought to do is take some of their $8 billion profits and fund some
> greybeards to port the still-as-yet un-ported necessary bits. Grease the
> wheel a bit.
Well, something along those lines is worth asking about. Maybe some
kind of contest?
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>>
>> Since many of these libraries are commonly used in a wide variety of
>> apps/libraries, a lot of good is possible from it. Any not just for
>> the sake of porting OSS apps. Many of these libraries are fairly
>> native on other platforms, and making them "native" on VMS further
>> eases software portability to VMS, too.
>
>
> What HP ought to do is take some of their $8 billion profits and fund some
> greybeards to port the still-as-yet un-ported necessary bits. Grease the
> wheel a bit.
That's what HP does with Linux, by writing HP-specific drivers
(which usually get merged into the main kernel tree).
P. Sture
> Because you haven't bothered to approach the issue with an open mind.
> "Give away the razor and sell the blades"
LOL! I don't know if that was intentional, but "sell the blades" is very
apt.
--
Paul Sture
P. Sture
Andrew <andrew_...@symantec.com> wrote:
Thanks for the link.
--
Paul Sture
Craig A. Berry
> And since Mozilla needs GTK, you also need to build GTK, and to do so,
> they probably eithe had to hack GTK or X-windows because the X-window on
> VMS isn't exactly current.
I find it odd that you think this is such a big deal that you have to
bring it up over and over and yet the guy porting GTK+ 2.x to VMS never
complains about the age of the X implementation (though he is
struggling along with truly ancient hardware):
http://fafner.dyndns.org/~alexey/gtk-openvms/index.html
and the people porting OpenOffice have a long list of challenges they
are facing:
http://www.oooovms.dyndns.org/
but they too, never mention any trouble with the current X
implementation.
And I (among others) don't have any particular trouble getting
Java-based GUI applications to work on VMS.
So other than version number envy, what exactly are you trying to do
that you can't do with the version of X on VMS?
Craig A. Berry
hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to
reply) wrote:
> In article <craigberry-71227...@free.teranews.com>, "Craig
> A. Berry" <craig...@mac.com.spamfooler> writes:
[my comments snipped]
> I'm reminded of a quote by Dave Jones (author of the "OSU" HTTP server):
[David Jones's remarks snipped]
Was there something in particular about my comments that reminded you
of Jones's statement, or are you just free associating?
Bill Todd
...
>> "free" is "free". Why hide behind fancy rhetoric unless you have
>> something to hide? Is it "free" software or not? Code released
>> under the BSD license is "free", the only strings attached relate
>> to the text of the copyright message and in no way restrict what
>> you may or may not do with the code. The only thing more free is
>> public domain.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre
>
> The English word "free" is used for both the Latin words /libre/
> (freedom) and /gratis/ (no cost, "for nothing").
>
> GPL software *can be* /gratis/ but it *is* /libre/.
>
> The GPL grants liberty (the power of choice) to programmers
You appear to be as near-sighted in this area as you suggest that Bill
may be in others.
GPL code is not as 'free' (in the 'libre' sense) as BSD code, period -
because the GPL curtails the programmer choice to modify it and then
distribute the result *without* making those modifications available in
similarly-modifiable form to the rest of the world.
This is a conscious, ideological decision that the programmer should
*not* be free to use the GPL code of others without making the results
GPL as well: one can debate the merits of this decision, but the fact
that it curtails a specific area of freedom is not in question.
- bill
Main, Kerry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu [mailto:bi...@triangle.cs.uofs.edu] On
> Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
> Sent: June 6, 2007 9:07 AM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Story Time
>
> In article <6b73a$4665e85d$cef882ba$14...@teksavvy.com-free>,
> "John Smith" <a...@nonymous.com> writes:
> > Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:
> >> In article <5cl50bF...@mid.individual.net>, bi...@cs.uofs.edu
> >> (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> >>
> >>> This is more meaningful than you might think. We still have a VMS
> >>> machine here for academic use. And every faculty, staff and
> student
> >>> has an account on it. How does this show up in the VMS constant?
> I
> >>> am sure that the existence of this machine is counted in HP's
> numbers
> >>> somewhere. Only problem is, no one uses it. Students haven't
> used
> >>> it for years. The last users were dinosaur faculty who still read
> >>> their email there. But the University Datacenter fixed that.
> They
> >>> stopped letting it receive or send email. Now, it sits int he
> >>> computer room consuming electricity and generating heat. I ran
> the
> >>> last VMS machines for academic use and as everyone here already
> >>> knows, they were shutdown last year. So, I guess at least here, I
> >>> was that ONE GUY.
> >>
> >> OK, you're one guy, and I know another one guy. That's two guys.
> It
> >> used to be, not 2 users, but several thousand users.
> >
> >
> > At this rate of growth of 'continuing' academic use, pretty soon VMS
> will
> > again be running at all universities world-wide :-(
>
> What growth? This university was a net loss. I shut ours down for
> the
> last time last year. As a matter of fact, I will be rolling the
> hardware
> out the door this week. Attempts to save them have failed and the
> floor
> space they occupy is worth way more than any percieved value in the
> actual
> machines. Sad really....
>
> bill
>
Bill,
Just to clarify something ... are you talking business admin or academic
computing ?
Did I note in one of your other replies that you stated your University
was running Banner on OpenVMS?
Thx
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)
OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works.
Ron Johnson
> In article <a51b0$4667a99d$cef8887a$84...@TEKSAVVY.COM>,
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
>> And since Mozilla needs GTK, you also need to build GTK, and to do so,
>> they probably eithe had to hack GTK or X-windows because the X-window on
>> VMS isn't exactly current.
>
> I find it odd that you think this is such a big deal that you have to
> bring it up over and over and yet the guy porting GTK+ 2.x to VMS never
> complains about the age of the X implementation (though he is
> struggling along with truly ancient hardware):
Because the X protocol hasn't changed in a decade.
> http://fafner.dyndns.org/~alexey/gtk-openvms/index.html
>
> and the people porting OpenOffice have a long list of challenges they
> are facing:
>
> http://www.oooovms.dyndns.org/
>
> but they too, never mention any trouble with the current X
> implementation.
>
> And I (among others) don't have any particular trouble getting
> Java-based GUI applications to work on VMS.
>
> So other than version number envy, what exactly are you trying to do
> that you can't do with the version of X on VMS?
Run a 3D compositing window manager which needs OpenGL, AIGLX and
transparencies. GPU-assisted MPEG4 decoding also won't work on old
versions of X (and old, 3D unaccelerated video cards, for that matter.)
John Santos
> In article <esI9i.27750$3L1....@newsfe14.lga>,
> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>
>>On 06/06/07 17:50, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>
>>>In article <6qF9i.92829$vE1....@newsfe24.lga>,
>>> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
>>>
>>>>On 06/06/07 13:09, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>In article <cEB9i.116367$NK5....@newsfe23.lga>,
>>>>> Ron Johnson <ron.l....@cox.net> writes:
[snip, but I think there is something wrong with the quoting,
as I'm pretty sure Bill said the next line]
One of my customers has a long-standing NFS problem similar to this, but
with a weird twist... VMS V7.3-2, TCPware V5.7-2 client, Solaris server
(not sure what version), but this has persisted across several VMS, TCPware
and Solaris versions. If they reboot the Sun server, sometimes the VMS
client can't reconnect to it. Dismount and remounting the NFS devices
doesn't help. However, dismounting the NFS device and remounting it using
the IP address of the server instead of its host name DOES WORK! The error
you get is "network object is unknown at remote node".
We've reported this to Process, given them various dumps and logs and traces,
tried various workarounds, etc. but still no resolution. (Somewhere in the
course of this, someone found the "connect by address" workaround.) If other
clients and servers show the same problem, maybe there is something more
generic going on here, maybe a race in some common, ported, open source or
public domain code that everyone uses as a base?
[snip]
--
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
781-861-0670 ext 539