HP uncaps storage, Web advances for MPE

Upcoming 7.5 release removes 4Gb disk limit, frees Secure server

While HP marketing forces continue to hawk migration from the 3000, the company’s engineers are releasing features that improve the value of operating the venerable server.

HP’s Jeff Vance and Mark Bixby of the 3000 division report that the next version of MPE/iX will include several improvements long-requested by 3000 customers. Engineering is complete on an enhancement that permits customers to use all of their boot-up drive space for the system. The Apache WebWise Secure Web Server will also be included in the 7.5 release.

Other improvements include expanded functionality in the Command Interpreter (CI) portion of the operating system, extending productivity for the system. The 7.5 version of MPE/iX includes a new CI-level command SHUTDOWN with a RESTART option. (See a full list of CI enhancements over recent MPE/iX releases in this month’s net.digest column.)

All of the enhancements are without extra cost. HP expects a September, 2002 date for shipping the 7.5 release.

Developers in the 3000 community have also reported they expect Fiber Channel to be natively supported in 7.5, opening a wider range of peripherals for use on the 3000.

The WebWise server, which will be free to anyone who can run their HP 3000 on 7.5 or with a patch that’s forthcoming for 7.0, brings encryption capability to the 3000. The OpenSSL command line utility is part of WebWise.

WebWise will be available later this spring as a free patch for 7.0. HP has no plans at the moment to make WebWise available for the 6.5 release of MPE/iX. That version of the operating system goes off HP support at the end of 2003.

By using the OpenSSL crypto library from the shell, HP 3000 administrators can use their server to

• create RSA, DH and DSA key parameters.

• create X.509 certificates, CSRs and CRLs.

• create Message Digests.

• do encryption and decryption with ciphers.

• perform SSL/TLS Client and Server Tests.

• handle S/MIME signed or encrypted mail.

Using all available disk

After years of requests, HP has finally lifted the 4Gb limit on the LDEV1 peripherals which boot HP 3000s. The limitation harked back to a day when no drive held more than half a gigabyte. Modern disks are as large as 160Gb, and the more recent boot drives shipped with HP 3000s wasted scores of gigabytes on every system, simply because MPE/iX couldn’t see the storage space.

The nature of HP’s fix for this problem restricts the repair to the newest 7.5 release. Jeff Vance announced that “as of now, a patch to earlier [MPE] releases is not planned due to the nature of the fix.”

Vance said that by default, all user space allocated on MPEXL_SYSTEM_

VOLUME_SET will try to avoid LDEV1 altogether. If LDEV1 is requested, or if it’s not possible to avoid LDEV1, then disk space will be allocated on LDEV1 beyond the first 4Gb if the drive is at least a 5Gb drive or larger.

The 7.5 version of MPE/iX uses a new $SYSTEM_MASTER value for the volname parameters to FOPEN and HPFOPEN. Specifying this new value causes the disk space to be allocated in the first 4Gb of LDEV1. The :FILE command also supports the new $SYSTEM_MASTER name, as in DEV=**$system_master.

MPE veterans praised the enhancement as vital to the 3000’s continued success. “In my mind, this enhancement was critical to the viability of homesteading and the success of OpenMPE,” said Denys Beauchemin of backup utility provider Hi-Comp. “A few years from now, when your LDEV1 disk drive breaks, you will no longer be faced with the problem of buying a 160Gb disk drive (the smallest available) and only being able to use 4Gb.”