[comp.os.vms] Info-Vax Digest V0 #16

Info-Vax-REQUEST@KL.SRI.COM.UUCP (05/11/87)

Info-Vax Digest          Monday, 11 May 1987       Volume 0 : Issue 16

Today's Topics:
  ARC or Altering File Date Fields
  MICROVAX II/RC
  JCLOCK
  TI OMNILASER TI2115  update....
  RE: Terminal Session Capture
  PHOTO
  PHOTO
  $PCBDEF, etc.
  Re: PHOTO and Pseudo-terminal drivers
  Re: Where are PCB$ and SCH$ defines?? (Info-Vax Digest   V0 #15)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 8 May 87 16:21:00 EST
From: "Richard L. Mattis" <mattis@ceee-sed.arpa>
Reply-to: "Richard L. Mattis" <mattis@ceee-sed.arpa>
Subject: ARC or Altering File Date Fields

I am trying to port a Unix utility called ARC to VMS.  ARC is a file
archiver which creates compressed versions of the original files.  The
thing I am having trouble with is getting the date fields on the
compressed files to match the date fields on the original files.
Can anyone give me some guidance on how to do this.  OR, if anyone
has already done the ARC port and would be willing to let me have
the code, that would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

Dick Mattis
National Bureau of Standards
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
(301) 975-2235
Mattis@ceee-sed.arpa

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

Date: 8  May 87  4:01 -0800
From: christos Zervos <christosz%ppc.ubc.cdn%ubc.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: MICROVAX II/RC

Someone had posted on the net few weeks ago a question regarding what
to do with a MVAX II/RC when bus-slots expansion is needed for additional
peripherals. Here is an answer:
TRANSDUCTION (416-625-1907) sells an expansion system for that purpose.
It consists of a bus repeater and an enclosure. Contact TRANSDUCTION for
more details.

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

Date: Fri, 8 May 87 14:18:45 PDT
From: xrjjm%scint.span@Jpl-VLSI.ARPA
Subject: JCLOCK

Comment:   Begin User Supplied Mail Headers.
*Site:     NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
*Position: 76 Deg. 52' 28.5" West, 38 Deg. 59' 59.8" North.
*From:     John J. McMahon, Systems Programmer, STX - ST Systems Corporation.
*Project:  COBE Science Data Room (CSDR), Code 401.1
*Reply-To: (Arpa-Internet)       XRJJM%CSDR.SPAN@JPL-VLSI.ARPA [Old Format]
*Reply-To: (Arpa-Internet)       XRJJM%CSDR.SPAN@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV [New Format]
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>  JCLOCK:
>  $!                    MARK KRIEGSMAN, AUTHOR 87-05-05

Jclock is a nice program, thanks Mark!
Just one question, what is this program "SCAN" that JCLOCK.INIT references ?

*Flame On*
Here are a few handy hints for people who want to use INFO-VAX for a code
distribution service.

1) Don't send files that contain TAB's, some mailers (Including one of the
   several that my mail passes through) will purge them out.  In Fortran this
   can cause a whole bunch of spurious errors.

2) Don't exceed 80 characters, Mailers may truncate at 80. (Mine did).

3) For big pieces of software, provide CHECKSUM numbers for the various
   elements.

4) One warning: Given the size of the INFO-VAX list, expect a lot of querys,
   requests for special transmissions... etc.  I found that out the hard way
   when I promised my SWING fixes to folks.  (I don't think I ever got to
   everyone.  If I missed someone, I apologize).
*Flame Off*
Regards,
^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
John J. McMahon (Fast-Eddie)
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this letter are my own,
            and are not meant to represent the views of my employers.

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

Date: 8  May 87  5:46 -0800
From: christos Zervos <christosz%ppc.ubc.cdn%ubc.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: TI OMNILASER TI2115  update....

  We just got here in our department a new TI2115 laser printer.
We had ordered the printer last December and arrived with over 4 months
delay. The reason was that Texas Instruments, because of initial bad
print quality, had placed an engineering hold on all TI2115's
since mid February.  Finally they started shipping out the printers
April 20th after they found out what was wrong with the printer. And did
they !
  The printer now performs very well! We are very pleased with the print
quality. The modifications they did were : some gears and lens were changed
in the laser engine, and they thickened the dot of the laser beam.
  We have tested most of the emulation modes and they work very
well. New manuals (good ones) also accompany the printer. Graphics are
excellent, and blacks are very blacks. Character quality is good.
Speed is very good (15ppm) but no way to get the top rated
speed if you print graphics or you use the printer as a plotter (HPGL).
  We haven't tested extensively Postscript yet but we will do it soon.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christos C. Zervos       !            ChristosZ@ppc.ubc.CDN
Pulp and Paper Centre    !    ChristosZ%ppc.ubc.cdn@csnet-relay.ARPA
U. of British Columbia   !     ...!ubc-vision!ppc.ubc.cdn!christosz
Vancouver,BC,V6T-1W5,CDN ! Christos_Zervos%UBC.Mailnet@MIT-Multics.ARPA
NTRINnet: (604)-224-8575 !          FAXnet  : (604)-224-8563 !

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

Date: 8 May 87 14:26:00 PDT
From: "Oberman, Kevin" <oberman@lll-icdc.arpa>
Reply-to: "Oberman, Kevin" <oberman@lll-icdc.arpa>
Subject: RE: Terminal Session Capture

>A few days ago I posted a request for some program (I know one example is
>called PHOTO) that capture parts of terminal sessions to a file. So far I have
>had three replies, all suggesting use of SET HOST/LOG.
>
>Unfortunately, DECNET isn't a viable option, and in any case I need to capture
>just parts of sessions without lots of logons/logoffs. Thanks to those who
>replied; I don't seem to be able to reply to all of you by mail.

While SET HOST/LOG may not be suitable to R.D.s problem, he seems to imply
that it can't be used because he doesn't have DECnet.

NOT SO!

DECnet is a standard part of VMS. The license is needed to establish a circuit
to another system, but not to use DECnet locally. Task to task communication
vis DECnet is often very handy. One example where DEC uses it is VTX. And,
of course, there is alway SET HOST/LOG.

To implement these functions you need to configure DECnet with
@SYS$MANAGER:NETCONFIG. Then just start the net (@SYS$MANAGER:STARTNET). If you
try to set circuits you will receive an error if you lack the key. In fact,
I suspect the configuration could even be skipped for a single node net.
In all cases where a node database is not defined, the local node is addressed
as 0. No name is required.

The above applies to VMS, not uVMS. uVMS is distributed without the NET
option. That comes with the DECnet key and is one reason (the other is
documentation) that uVMS doesn't have DOD security blessings. DOD requires
that the operating system be able to capture a session's keystrokes. This
requirement is met in VMS by SET HOST/LOG. That's one reason you won't see
this go away in the future unless DEC provides some new method of session
capture.

                                        R. Kevin Oberman
                                        Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
                                        arpa: oberman@lll-icdc.arpa
                                        (415) 422-6955

Disclaimer: We're headed for another 100+ degree day and the air conditioning
in my office has been out. Maybe this is all a delusion causes by heat stroke.

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

Date: Fri, 8 May 87 21:06 EDT
From: Jim Murawski <R021JM9W@CMCCVB>
Subject: PHOTO


        I have replied to a number of inquiries privately about PHOTO
        (recall that I posted the Photo'd output to Info-Vax about a
        month or so ago that started the inquiries).  Since there seems
        to be general interest about Photo-style products, I will say
        that our PHOTO is from a company called "Precision Business
        Systems, Ltd., New York, New York  10006" (I believe that Ed
        McGuire posted the same information a few days ago).  I have
        also seen the DECUS PHOTO program that someone else mentioned.
        We have found PHOTO very useful (considering that we had always
        used it in the Tops-20 world and were very used to having it
        around), and I recommend a PHOTO product to all of you.
                                        -Jim Murawski
                                        -Carnegie Mellon Computing Services
                                        -Pittsburgh, PA
        Disclaimer:  Any opinions above do not necessarily reflect the
                     opinions of my employer, Carnegie Mellon.  I also
                     have no affiliation with Precision Business Systems.

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

Date: Fri, 8 May 87 21:06 EDT
From: Jim Murawski <R021JM9W@CMCCVB>
Subject: PHOTO


        I have replied to a number of inquiries privately about PHOTO
        (recall that I posted the Photo'd output to Info-Vax about a
        month or so ago that started the inquiries).  Since there seems
        to be general interest about Photo-style products, I will say
        that our PHOTO is from a company called "Precision Business
        Systems, Ltd., New York, New York  10006" (I believe that Ed
        McGuire posted the same information a few days ago).  I have
        also seen the DECUS PHOTO program that someone else mentioned.
        We have found PHOTO very useful (considering that we had always
        used it in the Tops-20 world and were very used to having it
        around), and I recommend a PHOTO product to all of you.
                                        -Jim Murawski
                                        -Carnegie Mellon Computing Services
                                        -Pittsburgh, PA
        Disclaimer:  Any opinions above do not necessarily reflect the
                     opinions of my employer, Carnegie Mellon.  I also
                     have no affiliation with Precision Business Systems.

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

Date: Sat, 9 May 87 00:09:45 PDT
From: carl@CitHex.Caltech.Edu
Subject: $PCBDEF, etc.

You can find the module $PCBDEF (and many other useful macro modules) in the
library SYS$LIBRARY:LIB.MLB.

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

Date: Fri, 8 May 87 18:33 PDT
From: Kevin Carosso <KVC@ENGVAX.SCG.HAC.COM>
Subject: Re: PHOTO and Pseudo-terminal drivers

> Date: 8-MAY-1987 13:24:53
> From: SYSMGR%UK.AC.KCL.PH.IPG@AC.UK
> Subject: PHOTO
>
> PHOTO is a utility which I last saw on the VAX85C DECUS symposium tape,
> in [.BATTELLE.PTY]. It provides a disc log of a terminal session, and the
>
> Of much greater interest is the way it works. It uses a pseudo-terminal
> device driver called PTYDRIVER. This device is similar to a unix pipe,
> except that it is bi-directional and fully terminal-qio compatible.
> (eg its a software emulation of two TT ports connected with a null modem).
> So, you can connect your process to one end and create a new log-in on
> the other (or alternatively, attach any process which expects to ALLOCATE
> a terminal... )

I have put another pseudo-terminal driver on the Spring '87 (Nashville)
DECUS VAX SIG tape.  This one was originally written at CMU by Dale Moore
et al. and was modified somewhat by me.  It's different from the one Gary
Grebus (formerly of Battelle) put on the DECUS tape and which I also modified
and put on a later DECUS tape.  The problem with Gary's is that both sides
look like terminals.  For most applications this is bad, since the controlling
side has to do single-character reads similar to the problem you have going
outbound on a TT port with something like KERMIT or SET HOST/DTE.  What
you really want is for one side to look just like a terminal and the
controlling side to look like a full-duplex mailbox.  You can read with
a large buffer and the PTY will give you everything it's currently got but
not wait for more...  This is what the CMU driver does.

I did not put a PHOTO on the tape, but it should be easy enough for someone
to sling one together.  There is a little test program that creates a PTY
and sends everything you type into it.  Hit <CR> and it comes up with a
Username: prompt to log you in since the system thinks it just a terminal.

> Be warned, it uses the undocumented terminal port interface to TTDRIVER,
> and any bugs in it are likely to crash your system. I know that on VMS 4.2
> it DID crash systems, due to a bug in TTDRIVER (the DEC bit) rather than
> PTYDRIVER. I don't know its current status.

Since DEC port drivers don't crash the system with this and the interface
in undocumented/unsupported, it's arguably not a bug in TTDRIVER!  Anyway,
I found and fixed such a problem with the CMU driver.  It has been
cleaned up quite a bit and I have not found any bugs since December '86.

This driver has been around within DEC as well (some people inside recognize
that "Gee -- pseudo-terminals sure are useful...").  Makes one wonder what
the symbol NMA$M_PTY_CMU defined in SYS$SHARE:LIB.MLB is used for...
Dale Moore pointed that one out to me.

        /Kevin Carosso                 kvc@engvax.scg.hac.com
         Hughes Aircraft Co.            kvc%engvax@oberon.usc.edu

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

Date: 9 MAY 1987 08:48:58 EST
From: <LEICHTER-JERRY@YALE.ARPA>
Reply-to: <LEICHTER-JERRY@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Where are PCB$ and SCH$ defines?? (Info-Vax Digest   V0
         #15)

    ...I am using [SYS$GETJPI in my] C ... programs and have searched through
    SYS$LIBRARY:*.H and can not [the SCH$ or PCB$ symbols].  The System
    Services documentation says that they are in $STATEDEF and $PCBDEF macros.
    So, I looked for them in STARLET.MLB hoping to extract the macros and then
    write my own '.h' include file with the proper information. No luck there
    either.  I saw no module in STARLET.MLB with the required names. Checks of
    things which looked close got nowhere.

    Where is this information???

"Uncommon" system macros are in SYS$LIBRARY:LIB.MLB.  Both the macros you want
are there.

                                  If someone has previously needed this data
    for a C program and has already created '.h' files I would greatly
    appreciate a copy of them.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a command file called C_DEFS - minor modifica-
tions of work by W.J.Moeller, who posted the original a couple of weeks before
that - which builds a .H file from macro definitions.  (It even knows to look
in LIB.MLB! :-))  It's a bit long to post yet again....

                                                        -- Jerry

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End of Info-Vax Digest
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