net.digest – June 2002

 

The merger is now a done deal and my prediction stands: “the only sure thing is that regardless of the outcome, everyone involved will come out of this diminished.” This will doubtless be the most watched post-merger integration in history with both pro- and anti-merger groups anxiously waiting to say, "I told you so".

 

One of the first casualties of the merger was CSY itself. It seems Winston Prather has officially left for greener pastures leaving Dave Wilde and others to turn off the lights. What is left of CSY now reports to the HP-UX marketing group. I'm reminded (sarcastically) of all the CSYer's saying there is no need to rush into decisions; after all, "it is business as usual until November 1, 2003". I was worried CSY would implode, but I never figured it would happen so soon. One has to wonder how the remnants of CSY will fair in the HP-UX marketing group. Will solutions other than migrating to HP-UX get a fair shake? Will HP-UX marketing be thoroughly distracted, circling the wagons after the new President of the “New HP”, on his first day on the job said "You are going to see Windows and Linux absolutely eviscerate the midrange proprietary Unix" (the head of marketing for HP-UX, Mark Hudson, was prompted to blanket the Internet with a “HP-UX is strategically important to HP …” missive – sound familiar?). Can anyone tell what HP’s strategy is? Stay tuned.

 

With the merger settled, HP3000-L got back to the usual array of off-topic and wildly off-topic threads. One thing you can count on is that any comment dealing with religion or politics will generate a seemingly endless thread where people expound their positions over and over and no minds are changed. This month, we actually had a thread that combined both. It started out with a comment about global warming, briefly stayed on the topic of scientific proof or disproof and then veered wildly off into discussions about politics and religion. Other notable threads discussed the 75th anniversary of Lindberg's arrival in Paris, the fair market value for a 9x7 and various tax implications and “How IBM got it right with the iSeries”.

 

Even with all of this “noise” there were still many hundreds of postings where people graciously shared technical information. We report on some of them here.

 

As always, I would like to hear from readers of net.digest and Hidden Value. Even negative comments are welcome. If you think I’m full of it or goofed, or a horse's behind, let me know. If something from these columns helped you, let me know. If you’ve got an idea for something you think I missed, let me know. If you spot something on HP3000-L and would like someone to elaborate on what was discussed, let me know. Are you seeing a pattern here? You can reach me at john@burke-consulting.com.

 

Danger, Danger Will Robinson

 

I've been a big supporter of "NSCONTROL KILLSESS=#S..." for aborting VT sessions since it was first introduced. I had evidence that under certain circumstances a simple ABORTJOB could leave a hung session laying around the JMAT entry was gone, but the vtserver process still existed and at that point you were stuck with a reboot to clear it), whereas "KILLSESS" seemed to always work. For years now, I've been using without problem a command file to abort all or selected users that relies on "KILLSESS" for VT sessions. Others and I in fact influenced Jeff Vance to include KILLSESS in his ABORTJOB command file (available on Jazz).

 

Apparently, some users of the ABORTJOB command file on MPE/iX 6.5 and MPE/iX 7.0 are encountering hung systems or an SA614. As is often the case with things networking, James Hofmeister provided the answers:

 

A SA614 can be caused by "NSCONTROL KILLSESS=#S...". This is fixed on 6.5, 7.0 and in base 7.5.

 

SR 8606185990 - SA614 SS 143 6.5, $b_loop, sk_log_error+$210 from

                killsess of VTSERVER.

 

The fix is available in General Release patches: NSTGDB1 for C.65.00 and NSTGDB2 for C.70.00. These patches should be available to download from the HP-ITRC.

 

So, my advice to you (advice I intend to follow myself) is that if you are on MPE/iX 6.5 or MPE/iX 7.0 and have not applied the appropriate patch from above, do NOT use "NSCONTROL KILLSESS=#S...".

 

A New Old FTP Trick

 

With the introduction of MPE/iX 6.0, FTP was changed significantly. Among the changes, when FTP became part of inetd, was that when you connected to a HP 3000 using FTP, you no longer launched a session. The impact of this is that if you depended upon logon UDCs for security, etc., you no longer had this capability.

 

A user asked HP3000-L if there was a way to prevent people from FTPing into a "user.account" that did not have passwords. James Hofmeister posted an answer about a feature that has been part of FTP for some time (from before FTP was rolled into inetd), but I expect many of us missed it because it was not relevant at the time. Here is James' response:

 

One way to accomplish this was an enhancement put into FTP/iX many moons ago. A customer who did not use MPE passwords, but had VESOFT or application passwords and did not want FTP users being able to PUT, GET, DEL files on a 'user.account' with no MPE passwords was able to use this enhancement to secure these non-password logons from FTP/iX.

 

From FTPDOC.ARPA.SYS, "The 'PASSWORD = ON' SETPARMS.ARPA.SYS configuration option is a security enhancement added to the FTP Server 'FTPSRVR' to support the ability to restrict the establishment of FTP connections to MPE USER.ACCOUNT's where at least 'one' password (a 'USER' password or an 'ACCOUNT' password) must exist."

 

James notes to keep in mind, this feature is enabled "SYSTEM WIDE". For more details, see FTPDOC.ARPA.SYS which is included with the current GR FTP patches for 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0.

 

HP Software Distribution Media is Updated

 

A month or two ago, I wrote about the tale of woe one user faced when his new N-class HP 3000 came with only one tape drive, a DDS-4. The problem was that all HP software was distributed on the 60-meter DDS-1 tapes and the DDS-4 drives cannot read these tapes. He went back and forth with the Response Center and, eventually, HP actually loaned him a DDS-3 tape drive so he could install the software. He finished up his posting with a plea for HP to fix this situation.

 

It appears HP was listening. Many of us got the following this month:

 

"Software products for the HP e3000 are distributed using DDS1 formatted media. Due to new format DDS media devices and the obsolescence of the DDS1 devices, HP is discontinuing software distribution on DDS1 media format, effective August 1, 2002. The replacement will be DDS2, which is readable on all DDS2, DDS3, and DDS4 devices.  Additionally, MPE/iX Release 7.5, which is due to be released in the second calendar half of 2002, will be released on DDS2 formatted media."

 

Cool. Jeff Woods provided the following further clarification of DDS reading and recording issues that you might want to pin on your bulletin board.

 

Here's a table showing DDS media compatibility:

 

       Recording mode:

              DDS-1      DDS-2 DDS-3 DDS-4

Drive: ----------------- ----- ----- -----

DDS-0   <60m   60m

DDS-1   <60m   60m   90m

DDS-DC  <60m   60m   90m

DDS-2   <60m   60m   90m  120m

DDS-3   <60m   60m   90m  120m  125m

DDS-4                     120m  125m  150m

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

Capacity:    1.3GB   2GB   4GB  12GB  20GB  (Native; ignores compression)

 

The recording mode used depends on the media inserted rather than on the drive type. This allows, for example, a DDS-3 drive to write on DDS-2 media in a manner readable by DDS-2 drives. Note that the data density is a constant within each recording format. Higher recording formats achieve progressively greater density. DDS-4 had to sacrifice DDS-1 compatibility due to the disparity of recording densities and techniques.

 

Note also that mixing significantly different media lengths on a single drive is discouraged because the longer tapes are much thinner which causes the tape to take on a different shape as it's held taut over the tape head which in turn can cause the tape head to wear differently. Ideally, you should pick one tape length (really tape media thickness and pliability) and use it exclusively in that drive. Trying to use both 60m or shorter and 120m or higher tapes on a frequent basis in a single drive is a really good way to make the drive develop reliability problems.

 

HP Eloquence - The Real Deal?

 

At the Solutions Symposium in April, CSY, (oops, there is no entity called CSY anymore - but there was still then) announced support for HP Eloquence (which runs on HP-UX, Linux and Windows) as suitable for those migrating to another platform but still needing an IMAGE look-alike (see www.hp-eloquence.com). The product has been in existence for over ten years and is actually owned by HP Germany, though it is still maintained and continually enhanced by the original developers, Marxmeier Software AG. HP Eloquence was originally designed to give users and developers for the HP 250 and HP 260 someplace to land softly when HP discontinued these machines. The original developer and still head of Marxmeier Software AG, Michael Marxmeier, spoke at the Solutions Symposium and presented a good case for HP-Eloquence. One quote stood out as relevant to TurboIMAGE users: "Anything that TurboImage does Eloquence should be able to do, or it is a bug."

 

SigIMAGE's Image/SQL Advisory Committee (ISAC) has also made a qualified endorsement of HP-Eloquence: "The ISAC supports HP Eloquence as the best solution for small to medium MPE customers that are planning to migrate as recommended by HP; with the understanding and caveat that HP will work with appropriate third-parties to make the HP Eloquence 'infrastructure' more robust; and that HP will lay out for the MPE user community how long and in what fashion HP as a company will 'stand behind" the product.'"

 

The only question appears to be how high it will scale in practice and still maintain adequate performance. Michael Marxmeier, when asked about scalability, reported that there were no theoretical limits beyond those posed by the operating system, but admitted that the largest user of the software probably had fewer than 500 concurrent users. The IMAGE lab reviewed HP-Eloquence prior to CSY's endorsement, but, perhaps as a last act, they could due some stress testing?

 

A number of tools vendors have announced some subset of their products already work or will shortly work with HP-Eloquence. They include (listed in no particular order and probably incomplete) Advanced Network Systems, Minisoft, MBFoster, DISC, SPEEDWARE, COGNOS, Robelle and AICS.

 

To date, there has been little user (HP 3000 user that is) experience with HP-Eloquence made public. However, Duane Percox of QSS did make the following comment from an application developer's point of view: "I have met with the principles for HP-Eloquence and believe they are committed to this database. I would have no problem committing to it and in fact we are going to use it with a product we have that is Speedware based which we are porting to hp-ux."

 

It's Already Beginning

 

The following query was posted to HP3000-L: "HP is discontinuing sales of processor upgrades (#A3616A) for the HP e3000 997 servers effective June 1, 2002. Can someone tell me if I will be able to purchase these upgrades from a reseller in the future?"

 

Wayne Boyer had what I thought was a good response, so I'm going to quote it here. HP, are you listening?

 

"Processors like any other piece of hardware are available and will continue to be available on the used market. A processor upgrade implies a license change though. The problem will be how to properly tell the system that additional hardware is installed without using HP's SSCONFIG software. I've posted a few comments before related to SSCONFIG - this is now a real life example of licensing problems that will begin to occur. Simply buying and installing additional processors will not change the firmware settings in the 997.

 

"A question for those who know more than me: Will the system even sense and use additional processors if the firmware settings are NOT changed?  If so, then this is only a licensing issue (HP: what is your position on this?). If the hardware will not sense and use the additional processor(s) without a firmware change, then this is a real performance/upgrade limitation. OpenMPE Folks: Any news from HP on the SSCONFIG issue yet? Interex folks: Wouldn't this be an important 'advocacy' issue for Interex to take up with HP?"

 

Let me first second Wayne's remarks and then add my two cents. With the recent implosion of CSY, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that November 1, 2003 will come and go and that there will still be significant questions left unanswered on the table. What we need now is for someone at HP to come forward and make a statement of direction. HPWorld is too late.