monitor utility funkiness in 8.4-L2

[David Jones]

When a run monitor on my Alpha emulator, numeric fields often fail to format,
showing as *******.** or 0.**. It happens with monitor sys/all or monitor disk.
The max column will show 0.** when clearly there are cycles that have a high
count.

[Ian Miller]

have you reported this to VSI, either formally or informally?

[MG]

What are the process' "units" set to, blocks or bytes? I seem to
recall that the asterisks appear when the number is too great and
flows over the extents of the field/box.

See what happens after setting the attached interactive process to
bytes (i.e. "$ set proc /units=bytes").

- MG

[David Jones]

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 12:57:24 PM UTC-5, MG wrote:
> On 27-Feb-2021 21:17, David Jones wrote:
> What are the process' "units" set to, blocks or bytes? I seem to
> recall that the asterisks appear when the number is too great and
> flows over the extents of the field/box.
>

I'm using the default units and the emulated machine is too small and slow
to be overflowing anything. Also, showing 0.** is not an overflow.

The problem seems to be that FreeAXP is emulating an Alphaserver 400 4/166.
If I use the disk to boot the Stromasys DS20 emulator, monitor works without
the bogus formatting. I also works on a real ES47 running 8.4-L2. I thought I
read that Migration Specialties had tweaked FreeAXP so it could run the 8.4-L2
build.

[MG]

On 03-Mar-2021 21:46, David Jones wrote:
> I'm using the default units and the emulated machine is too small and slow
> to be overflowing anything. Also, showing 0.** is not an overflow.

Well, to be fair, normally for a single character substitution wildcard
one uses "%", not the asterisk ("*"), like in DCL commands. You also
said nothing about the emulator you ran.

- MG

[Volker Halle]

David,

could you please try MONITOR/RECORD SYSTEM/ALL on the FreeAXP ? Then MONITOR/INPUT=MONITOR.DAT SYSTEM/ALL - does the problem still show up ?
What happens, if you copy MONITOR.DAT to the CHARON-AXP emulator or the ES47 and play back the data ?
And what happens, if you record the data on the ES47 and play it back on FreeAXP ?

The intent of this test would be to determine, if the problem may be in the data collection or the display part of MONITOR.

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

> I thought I
> read that Migration Specialties had tweaked FreeAXP so it could run the 8.4-L2
> build.

David,

from the VSI Student License site:

'It provides a virtual Alpha Server 400 equipped with 1 CPU (with EV56, EV6, and EV68 instruction set support)'

This should NOT affect MONITOR output in any way. MONITOR had 2 bug fixes according to the V8.4-2L2 release notes, but as it's working o.k. on your ES47, the display part of MONITOR should be fine.

I will try to test/verify this problem, as soon as the new VSI student kit will be relased - the current one terminates at 15-MAR-2021...

Volker.

[David Jones]

The problem is displaying the data on the FreeAXP emulator.

[Volker Halle]

David,

I could easily redproduce this problem by installing the VSI Student kit 2020.2, booting FreeAXP and OpenVMS Alpha V8.4-2L2 and running MONITOR SYSTEM/ALL

Avanti Virtual Alpha version 4.0.0.646 (Apr 14 2020 14:36:57)

$ sho sys/noproc
OpenVMS V8.4-2L2 on node STUDNT 6-MAR-2021 09:51:41.17 Uptime 0 00:07:03
$

Directory SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE]

MONITOR.EXE;1 22-MAY-2017 22:50:19.68

Image Identification Information

image name: "MONITOR"
image file identification: "X-27"
image file build identification: "XE6K-0100140000"
link date/time: 22-MAY-2017 22:50:19.45
linker identification: "A13-04"




OpenVMS Monitor Utility
SYSTEM STATISTICS
on node STUDNT
6-MAR-2021 09:47:25.05

CUR AVE MIN MAX

Interrupt State 0.49 0.39 0.16 0.66
MP Synchronization 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Kernel Mode 0.16 0.06 0.00 0.16
Executive Mode 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Supervisor Mode 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
User Mode 0.33 0.19 0.00 0.33
Compatibility Mode 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Idle Time *******.** 99.34 *******.** *******.**
Process Count 10.00 10.00 10.00 10.00
Page Fault Rate 0.00 0.29 0.00 0.83
Page Read I/O Rate 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.16
Free List Size 9555.00 9555.60 9555.00 9558.00
Modified List Size 447.00 447.19 447.00 448.00
Direct I/O Rate 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.16
Buffered I/O Rate 0.49 0.53 0.33 0.83

OpenVMS Monitor Utility
DISK I/O STATISTICS
on node STUDNT
6-MAR-2021 09:49:53.72

I/O Operation Rate CUR AVE MIN MAX

STUDNT$DKA0: STUDSYS *****.** 100.65 *******.** *******.**

For showing the problem with MONITOR DISK, I started a little batch job doing DIR SYS$SYSDEVICE:[*...]

If this works o.k. on CHARON-AXP and a real ES47, it's time to involve the FreeAXP folks.

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

Now also posted on FreeAXP forum:

http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=163&thread_id=3597

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

The problem has been reproduced by Migration Specialties (FreeAXP) with the most recent release V4.0.0.653. It does not happen with OpenVMS Alpha V8.3 or V8.4. They're having a look...

Volker.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-03-06, Volker Halle <volker...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The problem has been reproduced by Migration Specialties (FreeAXP) with the most recent release V4.0.0.653. It does not happen with OpenVMS Alpha V8.3 or V8.4. They're having a look...
>

IIRC, isn't that the version with enhanced optimisations turned on
during the build of VMS ?

It might be a good idea for you to suggest they report what they find
to VSI. If John finds the failing sequence is used in a range of more
criticial pieces of code, it might increase the urgency for people to
upgrade their FreeAXP versions once the problem is fixed.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

[Volker Halle]

The underlying problem in the FreeAXP emulation of the new EV6 instructions has been found and fixed.

The fix will become available in a future release of FreeAXP.

Volker.