rshuford@well.UUCP (09/19/87)
Well, my second posting about the VMS Users Network brought a new set of responses, so here's some more fuel for the fire. In the few months that I have been reading the newsgroup "comp.os.vms", I've noticed that about every two weeks at least one person posts or relays a message containing the question, "How does one connect a VAX computer running VMS to the Usenet for mail and news?" For a long time I was puzzled that nobody posted an answer. My unspoken assumption went like this: "VAXes are famous for networking. It seems like half of the machines on the networks are VAXes. Surely it must be a simple matter to connect a VAX running its native operating system to the fundamentally simple Usenet." That is, until I started seriously asking the same question myself. I slowly came to realize that there was a hitherto unsuspected gap in the connectivity of the VAX. Although DECnet running on a VAX is an indisputably efficient style of networking for providing information transfer within a single organization, there also exists in many cases a need for informal, inter-organzational communication that is not easily met by the formal mechanisms of DECnet. For a long time, there has been no good answer to the often-asked question of Usenet connectivity. Obviously, some people have found means to work around the problem. Most such people seem fortunate--they work in technically sophisticated sites with extensive local networks, have access to computers running both Unix and VMS, have access to Unix source code for fitting crucial pieces together, and know enough to do it. Or they have enough money to buy one of the commercial Unix-flavor VMS enhancement packages that can provide the necessary software base. There are, however, a lot of VMS sites that are not so blessed. There has been no way for an isolated, unsophisticated, or poor VMS site to connect via UUCP for mail or Usenet news. Fortunately, other people had noticed the connectivity gap a lot earlier. Jamie Hanrahan was one of them, and he was sufficiently industrious that he organized an effort within the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society to try to plug the gap. At the Spring 1987 DECUS Symposium in Nashville, some of the results of his and others' effort began to fall into place. My previous postings (3856@well.uucp and 3887@well.uucp) described as best I could the status of what we are tentatively calling "VUnet". (If somebody suggests a better name, it would receive consideration.) VUnet will allow VAX/VMS sites to create informal, inter-organizational networking links similar to those that are typical of the UUCP/Usenet system. Designing and building any substantial network is an engineering problem. There are probably 100 ways you could put a VMS network together. Some compromises must be made, so perhaps the framework I've sketched doesn't contain 100% of everybody's favorite network traits. But I hope that readers of these postings will understand the limitations of a volunteer effort and cooperate with the members of the DECUS working group who are giving up their spare time to work on putting the VUnet tools in place. HOW TO CONNECT TO THE WORLD --- -- ------- -- --- ----- The DECUS working group emphatically does want VUnet to be connected to the larger networking world, either by transparent interconnection or by gateways. Connecting to Unix machines via the UUCP method was considered obviously desirable, but only in the past few months has non-AT&T code to do this been available. Using PMDF/mmdf links alone would have meant that only certain 4.3BSD Unix sites could serve as gateways between Usenet and VUnet, but it seemed the best that could be done in the short term. The mmdf program is quite widely used in the PhoneNet portion of CS-Net, so possibly had I posted to a CS-Net audience the catcalls would have been fewer. At the time of my earlier posting, I had no certain information about DCP, one of the public-domain programs for UUCP. I have now been informed by Jamie that he has been partially successful in using DCP under VMS. After some debugging it should be possible to use the DCP code to operate a "uucico" channel within PMDF, for VUnet sites to talk to Usenet sites running UUCP. PMDF will still be the fundamental software used in VUnet. Its virtues: - low cost ($50 U.S.) - clean interface to VMS mail - smart address rewriter - RFC-822 compatibility (for Internet-type addressing) - programmable mail handler - access to DECnet channels where they exist - integral PhoneNet-style dialup connection to like-minded systems - source code available in Pascal - support for Excelan and Wollangong TCP/IP channels - support for Jnet RSCS channels NEWS-HANDLING SOFTWARE ---- -------- -------- Jamie now reports that he has heard from Geoff Huston of the Australian National University; Mr. Huston says that a fully "netnews"-compatible, VMS-based version of the DECUS Library program VAX-214 News will be released in October 1987, with distribution possible through DECUS at low cost to the user. (I hope that it could be distributed by Local User Groups--LUGs--in their economical fashion.) Another possibility is a program developed at Brigham Young University: BYU News. The following information was sent to me by Jim Logan, LOGANJ@BYUVAX.BITNET. > We have developed ... a message posting and display system for VAX/VMS > systems. We call it BYU News, and we use this system to display and > reply to the Usenet BBS as well as local BBS items.... > We will be happy to provide a copy of the software [on tape or over > BITNET] for your use, but we must ask a service fee of $200 per site to > cover our costs. The $200 is refundable if you are not satisfied. > Our limited measures indicate that this software is perhaps as much > as 4 times more efficient than the Unix ReadNews software. We process > an entire day's worth of Usenet text in an average of less than 10 > minutes of CPU time on a VAX 8600. > ...our software will work with any program(s) that can capture the > Usenet files in a VMS "variable length carriage return" format.... > Another site is using our software with Carnegie-Mellon University's > TCP/IP to capture the Usenet batch files directly from a Unix system. > After receiving the Usenet batch files, the BYU News program uses a DCL > procedure to route the batch files to other systems on campus (both VMS > and Unix) via DECnet or Jnet or TCP/IP. > The human interface to our software uses the VAX TPU (text processing > utility) and provides a friendly "point and do" capability for reading, > posting, and managing the news.... The working group is also monitoring the status of the Unix-based news programs of Usenet. It may be possible that in the next few months the rewritten News version C will come out, which may be easier to port to VMS than the existing B release. If you would like to help, please contact Jamie Hanrahan c/o Simpact Associates 9210 Sky Park Court San Diego, CA 92123 USA (phone: 619/565-1865) (UUCP: {akgua | hplabs!hp-sdd | sdcsvax | nosc}!crash!pnet01!jeh) (ARPA: crash!pnet01!jeh@nosc.mil) (Internet: jeh@pnet01.cts.com) PMDF on a 9-track BACKUP magtape may be ordered by sending a check for $50 to: Ned Freed The PMDF Project Computing Services Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA 91711 or inquire to uunet!ymir.bitnet!ned or psuvax1!ymir.bitnet!ned Those of you who dislike VMS VAXmail might want to investigate the "tools mail" facility available from DECUS as part of the Software Tools package, which Glenn Everhart says is available on the recent Languages & Tools SIG tape or an old (Spring 1984?) RSX SIG tape. If you missed the previous newsgroup postings, you can look in the hardcopy August 1987 issue of the DECUS Joint SIGs Newsletters (Vol. 2, Num. 12) in the VAX Pageswapper section (Vol. 9, Num. 1, pp. VAX-19 through VAX-31), for Jamie's own description of the effort. Otherwise, although my formal role in this is just "regional agitator", I'll respond to inquiries by physical mail until 6 December A.D. 1987, the time of the Anaheim DECUS Symposium. Mail a stamped, self-addressed envelope to me at the address below, and I'll send you a summary document. I misspelled "uucico" in my earlier postings. Oops. .....Richard S. Shuford UUCP: {hplabs | ptsfa} !well!rshuford 42 Mountain View Dr. East BIX: richard Hickory, NC 28602-5431 19 September A.D. 1987