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Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE that can improve your productivity with HP e3000 systems. Send your tips to john@burke-consulting.com, or fax them to 512.331.3807.

Edited by John Burke

We’ve had a drive go bad on our System Volume set. I have the full backup tapes, last night’s incremental (from the full backup), and the CSLT. We use the directory option on the STORE command. It’s been years since I’ve had to do this. Is there a checklist I can use to help?

Rich Trapp replies:
The Software Maintenance Manual checklist J is your friend! Find it at docs.hp.com.

We’re running into a problem with remsh and quotes. Here’s an example:
run remsh.net.sys;info="uxb -l ctmsrv ctmjobs -cf jbtest/pabcx60u -n 'uxb axa'"
Error: This command takes no arguments except switch arguments.
Argument: axa not allowed.
ctmjobs [-aAbcDtx] [-d {date}] [-f|-l|-o|-v {fileset}] [-n {node}] [-V {numversions}]

Jon Diercks replies:
Try using the command as follows:

run remsh.net.sys;info='uxb -l ctmsrv ctmjobs -cf jbtest/pabcx60u -n """uxb axa"""'

Basically, you have to figure out where the quotes are getting sucked away and then triple-escape them to ensure they are passed as literals to the next level.

Our backup routine runs automatically in the evening using the STORE command. However, if there is no tape in the drive, it will wait until there is a tape. The backup process is within a day-end routine and unless the backup completes, the application cannot be started the next morning. Ideally, I would like to check if there is a tape in the DAT drive before the rest of the day-end process runs. How can you check if there is a tape in the drive?

Numerous people suggested they deal with this very problem by using a script that does a SHOWDEV to a file and then checks the result to see if a tape is loaded.

However, it was pointed out that if a tape is loaded and then the eject button pressed, MPE still thinks there is a tape loaded and the SHOWDEV script will give erroneous results. Jon Diercks noted that from the backup job, you can stream a second job that attempts to put the drive online using Orbit’s tool, Stan Sieler’s ONLINE, or devctrl.mpexl.telesup. The first job then uses :pause;job= to wait an appropriate amount of time for the job to complete. If it does not complete, then have the original job do an :ABORTJOB on it and also cancel the backup, notifying the operator. If the second job completes, the “online” was successful and the backup can continue.

Does a DDS-4 drive work with any version of MPE/iX ?

John MacLerran replies:
Yes, it’s supported on Express 1 of 7.0. We have two DDS-4 drives in our new N4000. Be aware, though, that the hardware doesn’t support older DDS-1-type tapes (the drive doesn’t even mount the tape). I’ve had to request that our vendors only send 90-meter and longer tapes.

Is there a way to enlarge HPUID? I can’t add any more users.

Jon Backus replies:
There isn’t a feature in the PXUTIL to expand the system file HPUID.PUB.SYS. It’s being accessed all the time anyway, so I don’t see a way to expand it. I ran into this problem working for a catalog fulfillment house where every employee using the 3000 was replicated into 10-20 accounts per 3000. I had to maintain a very close eye on the number of users and be very proactive about purging employees that left.

David Darnell noted that if you have a security product that allows you to create unique sign-ons based on a combination of user, account and session name, then instead of john.gl, mary.gl, susan.gl, etc., you would need only one HP user, user.gl and distinguish among real users by “john,user.gl”, “mary,user.gl”, etc.

I am looking at allowing a MS Windows user FTP access to our HP 3000. In testing, I can connect to any user.account for which I know the passwords. That’s okay. What scares me, though, is that once logged on, I can ‘cd ..’ up above the account level and then ‘cd’ back down into any other account. This is possible even when connecting to an account with minimal capabilities. Is there a way to prevent users from getting where they are not wanted, while connected via FTP?

Andreas Schmidt replies:
Don’t worry too much, FTP respects the normal MPE security. So, if you can access a file with a session you can access it via FTP, and vice versa. This demonstrates, though, the need to restrict the access rights always to the minimum really needed.

We are having a problem in FTP doing a cd to a directory (NT or UNIX box) with space in the name. We have tried enclosing the name in double quotes, single quotes, back ticks, but no luck. Anyone know how to do this?

Doug Werth replies:
Try using the cd command with no parameters. When FTP prompts you for the directory it won’t use the space as a delimiter like it does when it parses the command.

John Glogg replies with a different trick:
Try cd xxxxx_20_xxxxxx. 20 is the hexadecimal value of the ASCII space character.

I want to check if a file exists, then execute a set of FCOPY commands and, if it does not exist, execute another set of FCOPY commands. I want to achieve this in a single job. Can I do this?

Barry Lake replies:
At the MPE prompt do :help finfo
What you probably need to do in your job is something like

!if finfo(‘YYY’, ‘exists’)
! # do one set of commands
!else
! # do something else
!endif

DISCFREE C gives me the number of sectors. How do I convert that to bytes?

Jeff Woods replies:
A sector on MPE is 256 bytes so multiply sectors by 256 to get bytes, or divide sectors by 4,096 to get Mb.

I’m trying to copy a KSAM file with the “copy” command, but it will not let me. What am I doing wrong?

Lars Appel and John Pollard reply:
You are probably trying to copy a CM KSAM file. Because a CM KSAM file is really a pair of linked files, you can only copy a CM KSAM file using a special syntax with FCOPY, as in

:fcopy from=cmksam; to=(newfile,newkeyf); new.

A NM KSAM file can be copied successfully with the “copy” command.

How do I view the system log files?

John Clogg and Denis St-Amand reply:
Use LOGTOOL. If you are on 6.5 or later, it is a stand-alone program. On earlier releases, it runs under SYSDIAG.

We have this third-party VB application that accesses some datasets through the ODBCSE driver (the free one) and we are having some problems that we cannot get to the bottom of. When we run it, it does a read, performs a task but then gives us the following error in the ODBCLOG file on our attempt to write back:
[Allbase] IMAGE/SQL error164; TurboIMAGE error -242; TurboIMAGE intrinsic
420, & Auxiliary error 6554488. (DBERR 13552)
What does this mean?

Doug Werth replies:
This error typically means you have a corrupted TURBOGTX.PUB.SYS. Purge the file and the next DBOPEN will be rebuild it. You may need to get exclusive access to the file by logging users.

How do you ping by name on the HP 3000?

John Clogg replies:
Although PING.NET.SYS won’t ping by name, the ping function in NETTOOL.NET.SYS will.

John Burke adds:
For some reason name resolution with nettool is dog-slow. A better solution is to use nslookup from the bind port for name resolution and ping.net.sys, both bundled up in a CI command file wrapper. If you get the version of ping off Jazz that does not require extra capabilities then you can have a very nice ping command file usable by just about anyone; in particular, by operations and help desk personnel.

Lars Appel and James Hofmeister noted that the reason name resolution is slower in nettool is that it tries to resolve first with NS/3000 rules and then ARPA/DNS rules, whereas nslookup only deals with ARPA/DNS rules.