VMS First-Boot on x86 Contest

[lorin...@gmail.com]

Sue Skonetsky released the following announcement this morning, with permission to repost to the general VMS Community. The SurveyMonkey includes questions about respondent's "future plans" with VMS, so be appraised -- Here's Sue's announcement:

-------------

Dear VMS SIG,

ITS THAT TIME AGAIN!!! In case you can not guess I am very excited about this contest. The last one the VMS team did was for the port to Integrity.

I am pleased to announce the opening of the VSI OpenVMS on x86 Boot Contest

Ok for public distribution.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OpenVMSx86BootContest

Warm Regards,
Sue

Sue Skonetski

VP of Customer Advocacy
Sue.Sk...@vmssoftware.com
Office: +1 (978) 451-0116
Mobile: +1 (603) 494-9886

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Maybe one should attend the HP-Connect Sweden VMS-SIG meeting next
week before guessing the first boot date... :-)


09:00 - 09:30 Registration and coffee
09:30 - 09:40 Welcome. Anders Johansson
09:40 - 10:30 HPE HW. x86- och Itanium. HPE.
10:30 - 11:15 OpenVMS roadmaps.
11:15 - 12:00 Micro Focus. Offerings and support questions. Micro Focus
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch.
13:30 - 14:30 State of the port to x86. Clair Grant, VMS Software Inc
14:30 - 15:15 Early stages of the boot. Booting/Crashing. Maybe with demo.
15:15 - 15:45 Coffee
15:45 - 16:30 New FS and VMS Calling standard på x86.
16:30 - 16:50 New training offereings from VSI. HPE
16:50 - 17:00 Roundup

[Bill Gunshannon]

Just curious. What does MicroFocus have to do with VMS?
It would seem to me that they are pushing products that
require leaving VMS.

bill

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

I guess there was something in the HPE portfolio included in the
"HPE software" merger with MicreoFocus that was for OpenVMS, not?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/15/2017 11:06 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Den 2017-11-15 kl. 16:22, skrev Bill Gunshannon:
>> On 11/15/2017 10:07 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> 11:15 - 12:00 Micro Focus. Offerings and support questions. Micro Focus

>> Just curious.  What does MicroFocus have to do with VMS?
>> It would seem to me that they are pushing products that
>> require leaving VMS.

> I guess there was something in the HPE portfolio included in the
> "HPE software" merger with MicreoFocus that was for OpenVMS, not?

I am by no means an expert in Micro Focus products.

But my guess would be that they will mostly talk about products that
work with VMS not run on VMS.

Several possibilities.

Users connecting to VMS via Reflection terminal emulator.

Cobol programs on middleware platforms working with
Oracle DB or RDB running on VMS.

Application life cycle tools used for applications
running on VMS.

And if that sounds thin then remember that HPE
owns 50.1% of Micro Focus, so they have a strong
interest in Micro Focus making money.

:-)

Arne

[David Wade]

Thats not how I read things. HPE shareholders received shares in the new
Microfocus worth 50.1% of the business...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-01/micro-focus-has-no-size-limit-for-software-m-a-after-hpe-deal

"Loosemore reiterated that following the merger, a spinoff company would
hold HPE’s software assets and HPE shareholders would own 50.1 percent
of the new company."

and

http://www.zdnet.com/article/hpe-software-and-micro-focus-complete-8-8b-spin-merger/


"HPE, as an organisation, does not have ownership over the newly
combined business, though its shareholders now own 50.1 percent of Micro
Focus on a fully diluted basis. This equity stake is valued at
approximately $6.3 billion, based on the closing price of Micro Focus
ordinary shares on the London Stock Exchange on August 31, 2017"

> :-)
>
> Arne
>
>

Dave

[Arne Vajhøj]

Ah. So it was HPE's individual shareholders not HPE that
got the 50.1%.

HPE's management may still think it is good to help
Micro Focus a bit.

Arne

[David Wade]

Possibly, but history does not always support this view..

.. its seems common to flog off something which has become inefficient
because its big and bloated and prevented from changing direction and
restructuring by the inertia of its customer base, and then to start a
new slimmed down, agile, "equivalent"..

IBM did this with Printers and Copiers, spinning it off as Lexmark only
to restart making printers a few years later.

In the UK BT flogged off Yellow Pages only to add an equivalent business
section to its own directories...

..

Also consider that the guy running MicroFocus is ex HP. What sort of
terms did he leave on? Personal relationships are important. Is he still
friends with the HPE guys, or was he pushed...


> Arne
>

Dave

[Arne Vajhøj]

Yes. But in the case the HPE shareholders has kept an interest in the
spinoff.

> Also consider that the guy running MicroFocus is ex HP. What sort of
> terms did he leave on? Personal relationships are important. Is he still
> friends with the HPE guys, or was he pushed...

I always thought that he was put by HP. Moved from running HP enterprise
software to running Micro Focus consisting og what he ran before plus
all the rest.

Did he leave HPE before taking over Micro Focus?

Arne

[Neil Rieck]

I believe you are correct if you are referring to Linux

Back in 2014, Micro Focus acquired Attachmate. At the time I knew that Attachmate had previously acquired WRQ with whom we had a support agreement for the Reflection Terminal Emulator. I did not know that Attachmate had acquired Linux vendor SuSE.

Checkout this site:
https://www.microfocus.com/global/free-trials/

Then notice the following blurb:

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software" Click here to access available trial downloads for Heritage Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software products.

Now unless I am missing something, I did not see any mention of HP-UX or NonStop.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe VSI as exclusive access to OpenVMS so we would never expect to see VMS/OpenVMS related stuff here. But what about HP-UX? From what I am hearing from the peanut gallery, HP-UX is on life support.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

> If I'm not mistaken, I believe VSI as exclusive access to OpenVMS...

Yes, to the base OpenVMS OS, right?

> so we
> would never expect to see VMS/OpenVMS related stuff here...

Why would someone, in paticular VSI, try to stop any third party
software for OpenVMS from anyone else? That must be very counter
productive for the future of OpenVMS. Why would VSI try to stop
Reflection (just to mention one thing) to be sold?

[Paul Sture]

When I was looking for the HPE ILO patches the other day, Suse
Enterprise was featured prominently on one of the pages, with a 60 day
free trial on offer. Curious, I signed up for that, and the download
offered was from a MicroFocus host.

I chickened out at the prospect of a 3.5 GB download for "DVD 1",
followed by another for "DVD 2" at 6.5GB. -)

--
Everybody has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough to
have a totally separate environment to run production in.

[Bill Gunshannon]

Why? 10GB is nothing in todays world. Not much dial-up
left. They merely put enough on the disks to preclude
needing an active Internet connection when installing.

bill

[Paul Sture]

Because experience says it's largely a waste of time and bandwidth (I
have no proof, but I suspect that large downloads get me throttled).

Why? For the last few years, every time I have downloaded a couple of
DVD's worth of Linux distribution, the installer has simply ignored what
is available locally, grabs everything it can online, and then sets the
running system up for online access only. You have to research how to
set up your locally mounted DVD images (who still uses real DVDs in
2017?) as repositories to actually make use of those gigabytes you have
downloaded.

Suse Enterprise might well take a different approach here, but I simply
didn't want to do it right there and then.

Executive summary: With the Linux distros I have come across in the past
few years, it's a lot faste to go for the minimum installation CD or
netinstall downloads instead. You've also got the latest patches that
way.

[Bill Gunshannon]

No objection there. I just wondered why you though 10GB was
a lot. Personally, I have settled on Ubuntu. I use both Server
and Desktop. I needed to replace my Vista when they stopped
supporting it (especially when they said I could no longer update
my virus protection). So, little by little, Windows is going away
at my home and probably won't be missed. Now, if I can just
convince my wife.....

bill

[IanD]

Revving this rather than starting another one

I believe the competition is now closed

What's the latest on tears to the port?

Can VSI give us some type of indication when they think they might achieve first boot now?

Even the granularity of what possible money might be interesting

I can't remember exactly what date I picked as a first boot guess. I think maybe 3/4 though April ?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-02-14, IanD <iloveo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Revving this rather than starting another one
>
> I believe the competition is now closed
>
> What's the latest on tears to the port?
>

"tears" ?

> Can VSI give us some type of indication when they think they might achieve
> first boot now?
>

I suppose that depends on diversions caused by Meltdown/Spectre/DCL security
issues/etc. :-)

It would be interesting to hear how VSI are progressing however.

> Even the granularity of what possible money might be interesting
>

I thought it was some small prize. I didn't think money was involved.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 02/14/2018 01:27 PM, IanD wrote:
> Revving this rather than starting another one
>
> I believe the competition is now closed
>

Why would it close before the actual first boot happened?
That would be like closing the betting on the final four
in December.

bill

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-02-14, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/14/2018 01:27 PM, IanD wrote:
>> Revving this rather than starting another one
>>
>> I believe the competition is now closed
>>
>
> Why would it close before the actual first boot happened?

Because we appear to be close enough to first boot that the
race has effectively started and you are not allowed to make
binding guesses _during_ this specific race.

[Neil Rieck]

Yeah, I think HP now owns 51% of SuSE through their spin/merger with Micro Focus.

During the summer of 2016 I downloaded and played with various versions of Linux (Gentoo, SuSE, Debian, and CentOS) for Itanium. Gentoo was the most fun but everything is compiled from sources so the install is painfully long.

A short time later I acquired a used DL-380. That month I was evaluating CentOS but the RAID was so old that I could only install CentOS-6. Then a month after that I acquired two DL-385 and was able to install CentOS-7.2 which appeared to be an order of magnitude better than CentOS-6.

I should point out that it was only my intention to play with Linux so I could test out a few things with MariaDB-10 which it not yet available on OpenVMS. We were running "MariaDB-5.5 on OpenVMS" at the time so for these tests we just directed the connect string to the remote (CentOS-7) platform. The performance was so damned good that we set up a second box for PROD then moved our data out to it. Our primary business system is still hosted on OpenVMS running on an Itanium.

Linux is more feature-rich than OpenVMS but is much more difficult to use. And without a support contract, you are subject to the bad advice and misinformation found on the self-help blogs. You will be supporting yourself.

p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_linux.html

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8...@googlegroups.com>, Neil

Rieck <n.r...@sympatico.ca> writes:

> p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.

VMS with all layered products as well? CD? No. DVD? Blu-Ray?

Whatever. Some of the complexity of a VMS installation involves
choosing what to install, whether to de-compress stuff, and so on.
About 20 years ago, I bought a 4-GB disk for f. 500 or whatever. These
days, a disk 100 times as large can be had for about a tenth of the
price---a factor of 1000. (And 50 GB costs 99 cents a month in the
iCloud.) Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS
installation installs EVERYTHING. Disks are cheap. Really cheap. If
necessary, some functionality could be restricted via licensing.

[Paul Sture]

On 2018-02-15, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <hel...@asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
> In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8...@googlegroups.com>, Neil
> Rieck <n.r...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
>> p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.
>
> VMS with all layered products as well? CD? No. DVD? Blu-Ray?

Downloadable image, over a secure channel, with GPG or other suitable
checksumming method(s).

> Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS installation
> installs EVERYTHING. Disks are cheap. Really cheap. If necessary,
> some functionality could be restricted via licensing.

No, we don't want EVERYTHING, we only want the components needed for
this instance's requirements. The attack surface area should be
kept to the minimum.

Microsoft had a better idea more than a decade ago[1]. In Windows
Server 2008, the installation from DVD (or in the context of a virtual
client, the DVD image copied to disk) put the whole shooting match to
container files on disk, where all the components (e.g. Active
Directory, Web Server) were available right there for installation
proper[2]. No more chasing physical installation DVDs when you have a
fleet of servers to manage.

[1] Windows Server 2008 was released 10 years ago this month:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008#History>

[2] Where this method fell down was that when installing components at a
later point in time, those components were usually well out of date, and
needed updating to the latest version before proceeding to the
configuration stage. Welcome to Reboot Hell.

--
If the brain was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to
understand it.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <34bgle-...@news2.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture

<nos...@sture.ch> writes:

> > Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS installation
> > installs EVERYTHING. Disks are cheap. Really cheap. If necessary,
> > some functionality could be restricted via licensing.
>
> No, we don't want EVERYTHING, we only want the components needed for
> this instance's requirements. The attack surface area should be
> kept to the minimum.

We are talking 20 cents per GB or whatever. Is the effort to reduce the
footprint really worth it?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-02-15, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <hel...@asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:

Phillip, we are talking about standard security procedures here.

You do _NOT_ install something if it is not required in production.

What you _do_ however is to provide everything on the installation
media and then provide logical groups of packages so you can easily
install those groups, and only those groups, you require.

How would you feel if one of those unused packages was used to compromise
your system ? (And please don't dismiss that question out of hand because
you never know where the next security issue is coming from.)

To take a couple of VMS examples:

A couple of years ago, the idea that you could inject code into DCL
itself and then use it to totally compromise your VMS systems would
have been met with utter derision. No-one is saying that any more.

Likewise, how do you know that there isn't some huge hole within the
DECnet Phase IV code (for example) which is just waiting to be discovered
and which could be used to crash or compromise your VMS systems ?

How do you explain to your boss that DECnet Phase IV was used to
compromise your system and then it was discovered that you don't
even use DECnet Phase IV but you installed it anyway ?

BTW, I'm not talking about packet sniffing here. I'm talking about
some buffer overflow (for example) in the VMS DECnet Phase IV code
which could allow a system crash or an actual exploit.

[Paul Sture]

On 2018-02-15, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <hel...@asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:

We seem to be talking about two flavours of "Software Installation" here.

a) transfer the installation packages to disk e.g. copy the PCSI kits
to disk
b) actually install a given package in the VMSINSTAL or PRODUCT install
sense

What I am saying is that a) is OK, but automatically installing everything
in case b) is most definitely not a good idea.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <qhjgle-...@news2.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture

<nos...@sture.ch> writes:

> We seem to be talking about two flavours of "Software Installation" here.
>
> a) transfer the installation packages to disk e.g. copy the PCSI kits
> to disk
> b) actually install a given package in the VMSINSTAL or PRODUCT install
> sense
>
> What I am saying is that a) is OK, but automatically installing everything
> in case b) is most definitely not a good idea.

OK, but let's get rid of the question whether HELP libraries should be
decompressed. :-|

[Hans Vlems]

Ah, I second that proposal!

[Bob Gezelter]

Phillip,

With all due respect, I disagree.

It would be nice to have a complete DVD distribution of all the kits that could be loaded onto available mass storage.

However, it should not load to the system disk. That just increases the volume of &*^%%% which must be backed up and restored (setting that directory tree NOBACKUP is not an option, it leads to too many operational errors).

Installation by default is also a definite non-starter. I do not want any products installed on a system that I do not intend to be installed on that system. Configuration control is a major audit issue.

Having kits online so that intervention is not needed for an install is a different matter.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Stephen Hoffman]

The whole OpenVMS installation and configuration scheme is baroque, so
I guess it makes sense to somebody. it's a complete pile of dreck, so
I guess it's "great!" or "secure!" or "atomic awesome sauce!" or some
such. It's a particularly hideous approach to test all the
permutations, so it must be "wonderful!" There's certainly no reason
to just install a server platform that has server features, even if all
of those are shut down by default, because that would make things far
more straightforward. And as for auditing, that's something which
OpenVMS had as an add-on decades ago but that ended up vaporized in the
mists of time and so there's no way to tell what's actually part of the
installation and what's been added, because OpenVMS needs to be
"hairier" because it's the platform for "real developers" or some such.

But seriously, dragging the whole platform back to something as utterly
antique as optical disks? Or continuing with and adding to what is
already massive complexity and to the zillions of is-this-installed and
we-need-that-go-set-some-parameter and
edit-those-configuration-files-to-start-these-dozen-products-and-which-are-part-of-other-server-platform-base-distros-and-remember-to-start-them-in-that-specific-order
is even a remotely sane thing to do? Load it all, configure it all,
set up a sane way that the services are started, and provide a way to
verify what's installed is as expected, except for {list of files}.
And we have this little thing called "the internet", and for all dozen
of you that cannot "internet" there's this odd little thingie called a
USB flash drive. Don't expect and don't require optical media.
Anybody that's auditing is going to run a port scan on the box, and
they're also going to want to audit what's installed, so... make that
all easier.

In the best-possible world, the whole need for SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM and
SYLOGICALS.COM can go away for most folks, too. Automatic direct kit
access at VSI servers, too, and not involving manual notifications and
manually downloading kits unless that's specifically locally requested
and expected. Reinstallations get a whole lot easier, as we have
server settings files we can re-load and can transfer as needed.
Basically, we get out of writing our system configuration as code, and
start writing our system configuration as, for instance, YAML.
Detection of changes due to mistakes and corruptions and malicious
activity gets easier, too. We get... well... server profile files.

Why? I've spent way too much time trying to make add-on installation
procedures and product documentation and product startups semi-sane,
with testing all of the cases when
this-and-that-but-not-that-other-dependency is present, and this
current situation is utterly screaming bonkers, and it's only getting
worse. KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Encourage the behaviors that are best for the longer-term future of the
platform and best for most of the users (even if some of those same
users will grumble for now), and discourage the more problematic
behaviors and requirements. USB and network installs are the path
forward, not optical media. Reduce the complexity. Reduce the
configuration requirements. Simplify. Make the installations easier.
Make the kitting easier. Make the dependency checks easier. Make
integrity verification part of the environment, and maybe make large
hunks of OpenVMS immutable by most users. Make updates easier.
Don't add to the complexity. Don't add to the testing. Don't assume
servers have optical or Blu-ray. Don't add to the organizational and
the purchasing and pricing efforts, for that matter.



--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@rbnsn.com] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax
> Sent: February 15, 2018 5:02 PM
> To: info...@rbnsn.com
> Cc: Stephen Hoffman <seao...@hoffmanlabs.invalid>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] VMS First-Boot on x86 Contest
>
> On 2018-02-15 21:26:39 +0000, Bob Gezelter said:
>
> > On Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 6:33:03 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig
> > (undress to reply) wrote:

> >> In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8-805d-
> 238b89...@googlegroups.com>, Neil

[snip..]

I agree. (shock 😊)

In todays wold with multi-TB disks, the age old concern about saving disk space on the system disk is rapidly going away.

In a few years, the smallest disks will be 500GB+ to TB scale capacities.

Seagate announces 60TB SSD disk: November, 2016
< https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/seagate-unveils-60tb-ssd-the-worlds-largest-hard-drive/>

Why not configure LD type containers with preloaded profiles with all available options loaded for that profile?
- Production profile
- Development profile (all LP's, primary open source prod's)
- other?

The key would be to ensure:
- only those components required would be actually enabled in the start-up file.
- for those that do not want certain things even on their drives, create an "un-install" process to remove those things not wanted. "Opt-out" vs. "Opt-In"
- LD profile drives should be available via secure means (e.g. VPN) and accounts over the internet (size concerns? Heck, every home downloads entire movies today at the blink of an eye)

The different LD environment profiles could be different p/n's subject to regular version controlled patches and updates

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com

[Bob Gezelter]

Kerry,

LD type containers, fine (when I mentioned DVD, I was actually referring to ISO images, I too rarely pull out the DVD anymore, preferring to load it somewhere on a drive with free space).

However, this collection of infrequently used (*&^* should NOT be on the system drive.

Drives may have gotten larger, but filling the system drive with a pile of read-only, infrequently used bulk material is a poor idea for several reasons including:

- replication is not needed, access over the network is fine; and
- in a fast provisioning VM world, such common supporting material is dead weight when provisioning VMs and operating.
- Updating the kit images over time is a constant time chore (even with provisioning tools, it does not scale well and is a resource waste).
- This material becomes a significant part of backup (and restore volume).

Yes, storage is cheap. But to paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, "A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there ...". Consider what happens when one is using tools to create a large number of virtual OpenVMS instances on a service such as AWS. Does one really want a multi-gigabyte collection of stuff for each instance? It adds up and increases ones monthly invoice (OPEX). Backing up the system disks becomes commensurately larger. A poor bargain. Much better to have a separate read-only disk that is shareable among all of the instances.

Small system disks scale far better than large ones. We should be looking at minimizing what is on a system disk to improve the economies of scaling on services such as AWS.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <p6500p$ilq$1...@dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman

<seao...@hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:

> >> Whatever. Some of the complexity of a VMS installation involves
> >> choosing what to install, whether to de-compress stuff, and so on.
> >> About 20 years ago, I bought a 4-GB disk for f. 500 or whatever. These
> >> days, a disk 100 times as large can be had for about a tenth of the
> >> price---a factor of 1000. (And 50 GB costs 99 cents a month in the
> >> iCloud.) Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS
> >> installation installs EVERYTHING. Disks are cheap. Really cheap. If
> >> necessary, some functionality could be restricted via licensing.
> >
> > Phillip,
> >
> > With all due respect, I disagree.
> >
> > It would be nice to have a complete DVD distribution of all the kits
> > that could be loaded onto available mass storage.
> >
> > However, it should not load to the system disk. That just increases the
> > volume of &*^%%% which must be backed up and restored (setting that
> > directory tree NOBACKUP is not an option, it leads to too many
> > operational errors).
> >
> > Installation by default is also a definite non-starter. I do not want
> > any products installed on a system that I do not intend to be installed
> > on that system. Configuration control is a major audit issue.
> >
> > Having kits online so that intervention is not needed for an install is
> > a different matter.
>

> The whole OpenVMS installation and configuration scheme is baroque, so
> I guess it makes sense to somebody.

> But seriously, dragging the whole platform back to something as utterly
> antique as optical disks? Or continuing with and adding to what is
> already massive complexity and to the zillions of is-this-installed and
> we-need-that-go-set-some-parameter and
> edit-those-configuration-files-to-start-these-dozen-products-and-which-are-part-of-other-server-platform-base-distros-and-remember-to-start-them-in-that-specific-order
> is even a remotely sane thing to do? Load it all, configure it all,
> set up a sane way that the services are started, and provide a way to
> verify what's installed is as expected, except for {list of files}.

Hey, Hoff and I agree here, so we must have found the Real Truth at
last!

[DaveFroble]

I'm sort of with Bob on this. Not that I have a problem with everything in a
VMS distribution being available. I believe that there should be a place for
everything, and not have things all mixed together.

I'd prefer to have the base OS in one location, and have separate locations for
the other things. For example, a web server could be a separate container.

Grouping things in such a manner would allow both concepts to co-exist. For
those wanting everything, fine, and for those wanting just what they use, such
would already be there, whether the actual containers were left on the system
disk, or other disks, or not.

A simple configuration tool could make customization easy.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: da...@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

[Stephen Hoffman]

For discussion purposes, here is some pricing... 1 GB memory, 1
virtual CPU, 25 GB, 1 TB transfer, US$5. Or 4 GB memory 2 vCPUs, 80
GB SSD, 4 TB transfer, US$20 per month.

For discussion purposes, the absolute you-really-don't-want-to-do-this
minimum boot disk installation capacity for Windows Server 2016
installations is 32 GB.

And what is an effectively-useless base installation of OpenVMS V8.4 is
under 4 GB. Figure we get to what, 16 GB if absolutely everything on
two complete DVDs is decompressed and unpacked and installed? And that
install-everything approach not what I'm suggesting, BTW. Not
everything. Though having the actual telemetry here would be very
useful for these and other decisions at VSI, it's very likely that the
product usage curve of who-uses-what drops off pretty quickly toward
the margins of the layered product offerings.

>> Small system disks scale far better than large ones. We should be
>> looking at minimizing what is on a system disk to improve the economies
>> of scaling on services such as AWS.

...

>
> I'm sort of with Bob on this. Not that I have a problem with
> everything in a VMS distribution being available. I believe that there
> should be a place for everything, and not have things all mixed
> together.
>
> I'd prefer to have the base OS in one location, and have separate
> locations for the other things. For example, a web server could be a
> separate container.
>
> Grouping things in such a manner would allow both concepts to co-exist.
> For those wanting everything, fine, and for those wanting just what
> they use, such would already be there, whether the actual containers
> were left on the system disk, or other disks, or not.
>
> A simple configuration tool could make customization easy.

Pragmatically, y'all will spend more time futzing around with figuring
out what's installed and what's not installed and what should be
installed or not and what should be tailored off, what needs to be
upgraded or patched and what doesn't, than you'll probably spend on
running an entire and complete omnibus guest for a year or two.

This is all before we discuss the effort involved in doing more complex
installations, in dealing with the dependencies, and the folks testing
and troubleshooting all the permutations. That's before we discuss
the folks that will inevitably find it simpler to install a parallel
copy as that avoids any discussions of dependencies, and now y'all have
two or three or more copies of SSL — which already happens with
products shipped from HPE and VSI BTW, and is only going to get worse.

I mean, seriously folks, how many folks around here bother with
VMSTAILOR? How many folks even know that exists? And that's before
even looking at how much added work — to do this stuff "right" — is
involved with detecting and properly dealing with all the complexities
of what's installed and what's not, or — as happens far too often —
just tip over with an arcane error, as the usual response for a missed
setting or missed dependency.

Or, you know, we spend less on our hosted OpenVMS installation per
month than many IT folks spend in a week on coffee and snacks.

As for trimming stuff down for massive replication if y'all are doing
embedded work, sure. But how many of you really are? And how many of
you are doing embedded with OpenVMS and not with VxWorks or ilk? And
how are you managing all of those OpenVMS instances you're creating for
your mass deployments here, particularly with what's out there now?
And if you're really doing that, wouldn't you prefer a simpler
packaging?

Oh, and who really backs up a system disk regularly? Back up the
several-dozen files that are active, and the rest is immutable and
restorable from less-frequent backups, or from distro since removing
installation complexity means that OpenVMS gets much easier to
reinstall, and profiles and provisioning and easier migrations of user
files means that the installations are far more repeatable and
restorable.

[IanD]

Why would it close before first boot happened?

Because the competition web page states when the competition closed. i.e. December 29, 2017, or 53 days ago and counting

Hence my post as to VSI perhaps now giving some insight to when they think first boot might occur

I've re-posted the link to the competition entry form as well as the web page contents

https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.surveymonkey.com%2Fr%2FOpenVMSx86BootContest&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEVfKoJ2AnsPfG2ZluqPbUPGqNAPA


Contest - First Boot of VSI VMS on x86 machines:

VSI Technical Sponsor is: Clair Grant, VSI Director of Research and Development – x86 port project lead

Introducing the VMS on x86 First Boot contest! Can you guess when VMS will boot on x86? Please fill out the attached survey to submit your entry.

All entries must be submitted by December 29, 2017.

VSI considers "First Boot" as - bringing up the system, logging in, and executing a successful DIRECTORY command. This could be on bare metal or as a virtual machine guest.

PRIZE: The five people with the closest date and time will each receive a personalized VMS gift from VSI

HINTs Q1 2018 is likely, but not guaranteed.

[IanD]

According to the competition rules, it closed December 29, 2017 (see previous post where I reposted the details of the competition blurb)

So are where there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet...? ;-)

I can't remember my guess in the competition (I'd have to look at my email) but I think I put something towards the end of this month for first boot

Since the competition has closed, can VSI give us a ballpark date is when they think first boot might happen?

[IanD]

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 2:09:46 AM UTC+11, lo...@parsec.com wrote:
> Sue Skonetsky released the following announcement this morning, with permission to repost to the general VMS Community. The SurveyMonkey includes questions about respondent's "future plans" with VMS, so be appraised -- Here's Sue's announcement:
>
> -------------
>
> Dear VMS SIG,
>
> ITS THAT TIME AGAIN!!! In case you can not guess I am very excited about this contest. The last one the VMS team did was for the port to Integrity.
>
> I am pleased to announce the opening of the VSI OpenVMS on x86 Boot Contest
>
> Ok for public distribution.
>
> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OpenVMSx86BootContest
>
> Warm Regards,
> Sue
>
> Sue Skonetski
>
> VP of Customer Advocacy
> Sue.Sk...@vmssoftware.com
> Office: +1 (978) 451-0116
> Mobile: +1 (603) 494-9886

How close are we now?

Weeks away?
Months away?
Greater than 3 months?

Surely we can be given a bit of a tip as to how far away first boot is at this point in the game and the fact that the competition was closed long ago?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-04-19 11:47:06 +0000, IanD said:

> On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 2:09:46 AM UTC+11, lo...@parsec.com wrote:
>> Sue Skonetski
>>
>> VP of Customer Advocacy

>> ...

>
> How close are we now?

> ...

FWIW and unrelated to the first boot discussion but related to the
announcement text, Sue's no longer at VSI, she's now a VP over at
Stromasys.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180403005146/en/

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-04-19, Stephen Hoffman <seao...@hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>
> FWIW and unrelated to the first boot discussion but related to the
> announcement text, Sue's no longer at VSI, she's now a VP over at
> Stromasys.
> https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180403005146/en/
>

I wonder what that means for the future of VSI's marketing approach.

BTW, it's nice to see that VSI doesn't engage in slavery or trafficking
of people:

https://vmssoftware.com/about.html

:-)

[IanD]

On Friday, April 20, 2018 at 1:52:01 AM UTC+10, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

<snip>

Sue's no longer at VSI, she's now a VP over at
> Stromasys.
> https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180403005146/en/
>
>
> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

hmmmm

That's a real surprise that Sue jumped ship

Wasn't there someone else just recently who flew the VSI coupe also?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/22/2018 6:47 AM, IanD wrote:
> On Friday, April 20, 2018 at 1:52:01 AM UTC+10, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Sue's no longer at VSI, she's now a VP over at
>> Stromasys.
>> https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180403005146/en/

> hmmmm
>
> That's a real surprise that Sue jumped ship
>
> Wasn't there someone else just recently who flew the VSI coupe also?

Are you thinking about the security guy?

Arne

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-04-22, IanD <iloveo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> hmmmm
>
> That's a real surprise that Sue jumped ship
>
> Wasn't there someone else just recently who flew the VSI coupe also?

Derrell, VSI's Directory of Security for two whole months and I still
don't get that one.

He was exactly what VSI needed so I don't know if his leaving was
due to some personal reason or VSI being unwilling to do what he
believed they needed to do or if it was something else.

I do know that VSI management had to be dragged along at every
step of the way for the public notification process for the DCL
vulnerability.

I also know that Mitre considered it to be valid but unusual that
VSI only wrote to their customers instead of also posting a public
notice on their website. The latter bit VSI have only just recently
done.

BTW, does anyone know where on the VSI website the DCL vulnerability
notice is linked from because I couldn't find a link on the website
to the PDF itself ?

Also, Mitre told VSI that giving credit to the researchers is
important and that Mitre hoped VSI would amend their original
notification to include that, which they have still not done.

As mentioned previously, in my case I'm not really annoyed VSI didn't
do that because that isn't why I did this work. However, if VSI
try the same stunt with the third party researchers and refuse to
give the researchers credit, those researchers are likely to get
rather annoyed with VSI.

BTW, in case anyone wonders, the reason why I know what Mitre said
is because I had a brief email discussion with them when I was trying
to find out why the CVE hadn't been made public yet at that point
in time, which was way past when it should have been.

[IanD]

On Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 11:27:57 PM UTC+10, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> Are you thinking about the security guy?
>
> Arne

Yes, but I didn't recall what he was employed for

However, it's been well covered in Simon's post

Someone with a long history of VMS customers and someone with extremely pertinent security skills walking on the eave of a huge announcement for VMS certainly raises my suspicions unfortunately

Derrell one could fathom a number of plausible reasons for not sticking around.

The pace of industry change with OS's and automation and the increasing push towards container delivery, microservices etc will see the focus shift further away from the OS so running a paid OS model is a future uphill battle.
Even MS are releasing a Linux based OS for it's IoT offering and it's cloud based

I cannot think of a reason why someone like Sue would depart at the 11th hour though. Personality clash? Sort if hard to believe since I expect she would have encountered every sort of manager type at digital etc

The plot thickens and so also the speculative reasons why people are jumping ship before it's relaunch after a dramatic refurbishment

[johnso...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 7:46:30 PM UTC-4, IanD wrote:

> I cannot think of a reason why someone like Sue would depart at the 11th hour though.
> Personality clash? Sort if hard to believe since I expect she would have encountered
> every sort of manager type at digital etc
>
> The plot thickens and so also the speculative reasons why people are jumping
> ship before it's relaunch after a dramatic refurbishment

You'll never really know the details and even if you did, I bet they are mundane and
boring. Sometimes things don't work out. Life goes on for everyone.

There's every reason to still expect a completed port to x86 and that's really what
matters the most right now.

EJ

[DaveFroble]

No, we don't know, and speculation is worse than useless.

Could be poaching, people getting another offer they just cannot refuse. Could
be one or more of many reasons.

VMS on x86 is the big issue.

Decent marketing will be a big issue.

[IanD]

On Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 12:12:26 PM UTC+10, DaveFroble wrote:
> johnso...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 7:46:30 PM UTC-4, IanD wrote:
> >

<snip>

The port is important, I agree

> No, we don't know, and speculation is worse than useless.
>

Lots of things are worked out through 'speculation'. That's the whole principal behind extrapolation. You keep collecting data and if there is a correlative aspect to the data, it points to an outcome. So far we have what I would consider 2 fairly important data elements in our data bag. Let's hope more are not added

Certain countries have been known to bomb others on speculation!

<snip>

> VMS on x86 is the big issue.
>
> Decent marketing will be a big issue.
>
> --
> David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
> Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: da...@tsoft-inc.com
> DFE Ultralights, Inc.
> 170 Grimplin Road
> Vanderbilt, PA 15486

Marketing is a huge issue, HUGE

Sue has been an ambassador for VMS for a very long time. To move to an organisation that I consider to be a stop-gap measure for VMS is a rather interesting move

Has there been any announcement of a security person replacing Darrell ?

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <60aefd67-21bd-4c42...@googlegroups.com>, IanD

<iloveo...@gmail.com> writes:

> > Are you thinking about the security guy?
> >
> > Arne
>
> Yes, but I didn't recall what he was employed for

Well, if he was employed for security, then it makes sense that we don't
know what he did. :-) Security through obscurity. :-)

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2018-04-25 kl. 01:46, skrev IanD:
> On Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 11:27:57 PM UTC+10, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
>> Are you thinking about the security guy?
>>
>> Arne
>
> Yes, but I didn't recall what he was employed for
>
> However, it's been well covered in Simon's post
>
> Someone with a long history of VMS customers and someone with extremely
> pertinent security skills walking on the eave of a huge announcement for
> VMS certainly raises my suspicions unfortunately
>
> Derrell one could fathom a number of plausible reasons for not sticking
> around.
>
> The pace of industry change with OS's and automation and the increasing
> push towards container delivery, microservices etc will see the focus
> shift further away from the OS so running a paid OS model is a future
> uphill battle. Even MS are releasing a Linux based OS for it's IoT
> offering and it's cloud based
>
> I cannot think of a reason why someone like Sue would depart at the 11th

> hour though...

I got the impression that this was unexpected at the same time as
it wasn't surprising in some ways. The VSI people I meet yesterday
would not go into details, of course.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-04-24, IanD <iloveo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Has there been any announcement of a security person replacing Darrell ?

No. If VSI do replace him, I hope they choose someone who is willing
to tell VSI management what they need to hear instead of what they
want to hear.

[Neil Rieck]

On today's VSI webinar (2018.04.25) Clair Grant was quoted as saying "first boot on x86 will most likely happen in this quarter"

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net

[clairg...@gmail.com]

That sounds like something I might have said. I wouldn't bet the mortgage on it but it is a very reasonable goal, given where we are today. Everyone should also keep in mind that there is a large delta between First Boot and the Controlled EAK (V9.0) which is on the Roadmap for the end of 2018. I'm quite comfortable with that timeframe right now. Some layered products, more compilers, and a raft of other stuff has to fall into place. As John said to me the other day, "the more we get working, the more work there is to do". I think we have proven that to be true twice in the past.

I like where we are at this point. We haven't had any "holy crap!" moments in quite some time. Memory management on x86 is very different than current VMS platforms and we underestimated just how pervasive its impact would be but we have the device driver aspects in heavy testing now and the system service underpinnings are in progress. And, there is a lot of work that goes into verifying that we don't break Alpha or IA64. It most cases a one-line code change has to be compiled and linked on three platforms and then you have to evaluate how much runtime testing is needed on each.

Clair

[IanD]

Thank you Clair, appreciate the feedback/update and the honesty around the underestimated bit too :-)

[IanD]

On Monday, April 23, 2018 at 8:02:08 AM UTC+10, Simon Clubley wrote:

<snip>

>
> Also, Mitre told VSI that giving credit to the researchers is
> important and that Mitre hoped VSI would amend their original
> notification to include that, which they have still not done.
>
> As mentioned previously, in my case I'm not really annoyed VSI didn't
> do that because that isn't why I did this work. However, if VSI
> try the same stunt with the third party researchers and refuse to
> give the researchers credit, those researchers are likely to get
> rather annoyed with VSI.
>

Absolutely

Showing publicly you have good working relationships with security institutions goes a long way to bolstering your public image that your on top of security issues

To not do so IMO goes back to DEC days where vulnerabilities were a closed mouth situation, speak no evil and your customer will think they are ok

Public ramifications these days trump the desire to look squeaky clean by never airing dirty laundry. It's a mugs game. Information always gets out and then your left defending your position as to why you didn't disclose earlier and why you left your customers vulnerable