TODD@DSS.MED.NYU.EDU (08/04/88)
>>>-Line-eater-killer->
I just learned of yet another undocumented feature in VMS, so I
thought I'd pass it along to all my friends who may be in need of a
little sanity...
The LAT print symbiont became multi-threaded (serving more than one
device) as of version 4.6. The maximum number of devices is 32, I
belive. How nice, right? Well apparently not well-enough planned,
since the VAX/VMS Librarian has a limit of 16 libraries open
per-process and the SYMBIONT OPENS ITS DEVICE CONTROL LIBRARY ONCE PER
DEVICE, even if it is the same library :-(. When it goes to print to
device number 17 and needs to open the library, you get a nasty
message about your print job:
%PSM-F-OPENIN, ...
-LBR-E-TOOMNYLIB, ...
From observation, it seems that you won't be prevented from printing
additional jobs to the devices (why? I don't know). Maybe it just
doesn't do device control, or maybe it tries to reuse channels. In any
case, the end result of a talk to CSC was the disclosure of the
uncodumented logical name "LAT$SYMPARAMETER" which tells the symbiont
the number of devices it may serve. I don't know which version of the
symbiont began checking for the name, but it is worth a try. An
example clarifies things:
$ DEFINE/SYS/EXEC LAT$SYMPARAMETER 16
This will match the LATSYM device limit with the Librarian's limits.
The versions of LATSYM and LTDRIVER in question may help:
Image Ident Link Date
LTDRIVER "LAT X7N-18" 20-APR-1988
LATSYM "V2.7-002" 29-APR-1988
LTDRIVER X7N-18 and LATSYM V2.7-002 are recent patches from CSC for
another problem. The 4.7 distribution provides LTDRIVER X6N-8 and
LATSYM V2.1.
Regards,
Todd Aven
Datability Software Systems, Inc. [(212)807-7800]
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