Ping of Death gets yet another 5.5 patch
HP sent patch NSTEDR8A into general release while the August
NewsWire was at the
printer --- perhaps putting out the last patch required to prevent Ping of
Death system
aborts on any HP 3000 connected to a network with Windows 95 or Windows NT
clients.
We reported in that August issue that patch NSTEDQ1A was in beta test to
make the
3000s running 5.5 safe from Ping of Death, a potential problem where
Windows users
on the network can use PING.EXE on your HP 3000 and cause a system abort. Well,
NSTEDQ1 got superseded by NSTEDR8A, so ask for it by name. We assume the
patch will
be part of the Express 3 release of 5.5, which we've heard will be shipping
before the HP
World conference kicks off in the last week of August.
Open Market alternatives on tap at HP World
After HP contacted its 3000 customers to tell them forget about
the Open Market
Secure Web Server, the company pulled the Secure product and its non-secure
version
off its price list as of August 1. That's one reason HP will be listening
to ideas for
alternatives to the Open Market solution at the HP World show. On
Wednesday, Aug. 27
at 6PM in Navy Pier Room 314, members of SIGWEB and HP World attendees will
construct an outline for a SIG Position Paper "to be shared with HP and
Interex on this
topic. This should contain the impact statistics, current as well as
short/long-term use of
Web technology on an HP 3000 and alternatives for HP might consider when
selecting
replacement technology." The impact statistics will come from a survey
that's been posted
on the Web about how you're implementing Web service with your HP 3000. See the
survey at http://web1.csillc.com/sigweb, and
we'll see you at the Wednesday meeting.
Time well spent at HP world: MPE supersessions
With so many sessions to watch over at this month's HP World
conference, you may
despair of getting your money's worth in HP 3000 training. Let us suggest a
track
designed to get you fundamental MPE training as well as the latest news on
what HP and
its partners are doing for the 3000: build your visit around the MPE
Supersessions.
Organized by 3000 guru and NewsWire subscriber Stan Sieler, the sessions are Wednesday and Thursday afternoons between 1 and 6 PM. They include tutorials on system configuration, using DEBUG and the HP 3000 symbolic debugger, a tour of high availability strategies for the 3000, a performance panel discussion, installation and management of a Web server for the HP 3000, a briefing on the latest 3000 Posix freeware, and MPE network installation and configuration how-to's.
You might spend your Tuesday afternoon after lunch listening to a one-hour HP 3000 updates from general manager Harry Sterling, sample Alfredo Rego's IMAGE/SQL and Year 2000 talk and Kriss Rant's MPE/iX 6.0 update on Thursday morning, and catch the SIG meetings for IMAGE (Tuesday evening at 6) and Web servers (Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 6) and the roundtables for MPE (Tuesday at 4) and HP databases (Wednesday, 8AM). You'll miss the HP Management Roundtable, but you can always rely on the NewsWire to give you the latest scoop from those political trenches. We can brief you in advance on one answer we expect to hear -- "Let me have your card, and I'll get with you offline about that."
And the rest of the time? Spend it on the show floor, finding the solutions you need to keep your 3000 a vital part of your company. Don't forget to wear your NewsWire hat -- we're giving out Bolt Bucks (and so are our sponsors) that are good for free prizes, including a Limited Edition Leather and Wool NewsWire jacket. But we won't know you're a subscriber unless you wear your cap.
Get yourself heard at HP World, from your home
You don't have to shout loud enough to be heard in Chicago. If
you're not on your
way to HP World, Interex still wants you to be heard. They've opened a Web
site to let
you post questions for the Management Roundtable. Browse to
http://www.hpworld.org/bbs/index.ht
ml to post your questions. Interex says this
Roundtable Issues Submission Form is the "main method used for collecting pre
submitted roundtable questions for all HP World '97 roundtables." It's the
next best
thing to being there.
A graphical disk free space tool, free
Up on the Internet, people are giving programs away. NewsWire
contributor and
reader Jon Diercks posted code for a program using HP 3000 command files
and awk, a
Unix tool ported to the HP 3000 and part of the OS as of MPE/iX 5.5, which
reports how
much free disk space you've got in a graphical format. Jon said:
http://www.cco. caltech.edu/cco/texinfo/gawk/gawk_toc.html has a good reference for awk. The only thing unique about awk in MPE is that if you run it from the CI instead of the shell, you have to enclose the command-line parameters in quotes, for example:
/bin/awk "-f /hfs/style/filename"How would you like a :discfree format 'Z' like this? :
:df z<BR>
dev size utilization 1 0.6G ********************************................... 64% 2 0.6G ****************************************........... 76% 21 1.9G ***************************************............ 75% 22 1.9G ***************************************............ 76% 23 1.9G ***************************************............ 75% 24 2.0G ***************************************............ 75% 25 2.0G ***************************************............ 76% 26 2.0G ***************************************............ 76% all 12.8G ***************************************............ 75%
:print dfa.cmds.sys
# ldev 12 is a cd-rom on our system, not relevant for discfree
/^ Device/ && d!=12 && !t {
/^TOTALS/ {
:print df.cmds.sys Additionally, NewsWire subscriber Lars Appel noted that "the
MPE/iX Shell and
Utilities User Guide has a chapter on AWK as well as many other tools and
topics around
the Posix Shell. At least the first one or two chapters might be useful to
get a
fundamental intro."
parm format=e
if ups('!format')='Z'
discfree c >df1
/bin/awk "-f /SYS/CMDS/DFA"
else
discfree !format
endif
BEGIN {print "dev size utilization"}
/^LDEV/ {d=$3; if(d!=12)printf("%3s ",$3)}
printf("%5.1fG ",$3/4/1024/1024);
for(i=0;i<$5/$3*60;i++) printf("*");
for(i=0;i<($3-$5)/$3*60;i++) printf(".");
printf(" %3d%%\n",$5/$3*100);
tc+=$3;
tu+=$5;
}
t=1;
printf("\nall %5.1fG ",tc/4/1024/1024);
for(i=0;i<tu/tc*60;i++) printf("*");
for(i=0;i<(tc-tu)/tc*60;i++) printf(".");
printf(" %3d%%\n\n",tu/tc*100);
}
If you're hungry for more, you can always use the alternative version offered by Mike Gabriel that tells which Volume set is being reported. He says, "Then, since a detail listing is more than a page long for me, I wanted an option to produce only a total line for each set."
Here's Mike's code:
:print dfa.cmd.systems
# ldev 12 is a cd-rom on our system, not relevant for discfree
/^ Device/ && d!=12 && !t {
/^TOTALS/ {:print df.cmd.systems
parm format=e
setvar fmt "![UPS("!format")]"
comment Z gives detail; Y produces summary
if fmt = "Y" or fmt = "Z"
comment Add Discfree and awk lines for each Volumeset to report
RUN DISCFREE.PUB.SYS;INFO="C,,MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET" > DF1
/bin/awk "-f /SYSTEMS/PUB/DFA -v f=!fmt"
/bin/awk "-f /SYSTEMS/PUB/DFA -v f=!fmt"
/bin/awk "-f /SYSTEMS/PUB/DFA -v f=!fmt"
/bin/awk "-f /SYSTEMS/PUB/DFA -v f=!fmt"
else
discfree !format
endif
BEGIN {hd=0; }
/^LDEV/ {
d=$3;
if(hd==0) {
r= " Set: " substr($5,2,index($5,":") - 2); # Volume Name
printf("%22s,%-40s\n", "dev size utilization", r); hd++;};
if(d!=12 && f=="Z") printf("%3s ",$3); # For detail, Drive num
}
if(f=="Z") { # Only print detail if f = "Z"
printf("%5.1fG ",$3/4/1024/1024);
for(i=0;i<$5/$3*60;i++) printf("*");
for(i=0;i<($3-$5)/$3*60;i++) printf(".");
printf(" %3d%%\n",$5/$3*100); }
tc+=$3; # accumulate disc size
tu+=$5; # accumulate disc usage
}
t=1;
printf("all %5.1fG ",tc/4/1024/1024);
for(i=0;i<tu/tc*60;i++) printf("*");
for(i=0;i<(tc-tu)/tc*60;i++) printf(".");
printf(" %3d%%\n\n",tu/tc*100);
tc=0; # Reset totals/counters for next Volume set
tu=0;
hd=0;
}
Not all HP diagnostics are passworded
Scott Hirsch, who chaired a late June meeting of the SIGSYSMAN Special
Interest
Group, reports that HP's representative at the meeting said many diagnostic
programs
which required a password as of MPE/iX 5.0 apparently don't need a password any
longer. User complaints about the need for passwords prompted the
un-passwording (if
that's even a verb). Hirsch says, "Supposedly -- and I can't verify this --
only some of the
diagnostics (in SYSDIAG) are still passworded. I suggested several
improvements, if we're
stuck with protection:
* Offer the password on a secure web site
* E-mail the password to support customers
* Automatically include a password with support contracts."
If you've been locked out on HP's diagnostics in the past, you might want to check out how things have changed in 5.5. And then there's the MPE/iX 4.0 versions, which don't need passwords for any diagnostics.
Patchwatch: Posix shell and telnet fixes for MPE/iX
General-released from HP since we last sent out an Online Extra
were patches for
avoiding system aborts while running Posix programs and a fix that lets
Telnet sessions
behave more predictably with VPlus screens. Patch MPEJXN0A for MPE/iX 5.0
helps you
avoid SA614 and possibly SA1458, which could happen to any program that
opens/closes a large number of files while making use of dup() or fork().
It's even more
likely if your programs run complex Posix shell scripts.
Meanwhile, patch PTDEDP1A, known as the "F" Patch, fixes problems with
handling
VPlus mode correctly in a Telnet/iX session, and keeps clients that send a
bare carriage
return (not followed by NUL or LF) from hanging the system. This patch is
for MPE/iX
5.5, the first release to offer inbound Telnet.
PatchWatch: A real Turbostore fix
Just a few weeks after shipping a patch to put TurboStore back
into order as a
product that's not free to all 5.5 users, HP released a patch that fixes
real problems with
the backup tool. MPEJXM6A resolves a problem that makes a TurboIMAGE database
inaccessable following an online backup because Rollback recovery becomes
enabled.
HP said the problem will only occur if the database is backed up using any
of the
ONLINE options of TurboStore, the database is modified during the online
backup and
there is a problem with the backup -- like if one of the datasets is
inaccessible or fails to
store, which keeps the whole database from getting backed up.
HP warns that if you install this patch before you put 5.5 Express 2 on your system, you'll have to re-install TurboStore II or TurboStore 7x24 from your the Express 2 subsys tape. How do you know if you got it right? Well, one clue is that the patch changes STORE to version C.55.19.
Locate the biggest files on your system
If you're doing housecleaning and want to determine the largest
files on your system
- because you're sure you should have more disk space -- there's a free
tool from a
reliable supplier that can help. Stan Sieler of Allegro notes that you can
get FINDBIG off
his Web site, http://www.allegro.com/software/ "and try:
run findbig.pub;info="/ -filesize 9"
{Files: > 9 MB in / }
{File File Size}
{------------------------------ ---------}
DUMPAREA.MPEXL.SYS 16 MB
ODEDATA.MPEXL.SYS 10 MB
JUMBOA05.PUB.SYS 18 MB
NL.PUB.SYS 26 MB
SL.PUB.SYS 22 MB
XL.PUB.SYS 17 MB
XL0.PUB.SYS 17 MB
XLSAVE.PUB.SYS 14 MB
{Found 8 files in 1451 files}
Adager posts the bit-packed date format bible
After HP's Year 2000 for the HP 3000 broadcast in late June,
Adager posted the
results of its research into internal formats of bit-packed representations
of dates that it
supports. Adager's Alfredo Rego reports:
"There are formats that are not ASCII or "straight" integer; by their nature, these bit packed formats have their own internal "structure" which they achieve by defining specific meanings to specific bunches of bits.
Fred White began assembling this information in the early 1990s. A couple of years ago, we based Adager's "Examine Date" and "Change Date" functions on Fred's R&D efforts. Even though there may be some odd-ball formats out there, we have found that our selected collection covers 99.9% of real-world cases.
The list contains ONLY non-obvious and bit-packed data types (i.e., Adager also supports many other "standard" ASCII and integer data types whose representations are obvious, such as six-character YYMMDD, or eight-character MM/DD/YY, or 32-bit YYMMDD, or 32 bit MMDDYY, etc.).
16-bit:Type 100 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type I1. MANMAN: Its value is the number of days (DDDDD) starting with January 1, 1973. If negative, its value is the number of days preceding January 1, 1973. Zero is the NULL value. Values between 1 and 428, inclusive, are invalid so that, for positive values, DDDDD-428 represents the number of days starting with January 1, 1973. -32768 is April 15, 1883. 429 is January 1, 1973. 32767 is July 16, 2061.
Type 101 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K1. AQ/3000: Its value is the number of days (DDDDD) starting with January 1, 1930. Zero is the NULL value. 65535 is June 5, 2109.
Type 102 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K1. DataExpress DC date: Its value is the number of days (DDDDD) starting with January 1, 1900. Zero is the NULL value. 65535 is June 5, 2079.
Type 103 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K1. POWERHOUSE: Bits 0-6 = Year-of-century (YY). Bits 7-10 = month-of-Year (MM). Bits 11-15 = day-of-month (DD).
Type 104 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K1. HP CALENDAR: Bits 0-6 = Year-of-century (YY). Bits 7-15 = day-of-Year (DOY).
32-bit:
Type 209 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type I2 with values DDDDDDD representing a count of days starting with the year 0000. Negatives are ILLEGITIMATE. Zero is NULL. 1 is January 1, 0000. 3652437 is December 31, 9999. Values greater than 3652437 are ILLEGITIMATE.
Type 210 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type I2. DataExpress DC date: The value represents the number of days (DDDDDDD) starting at 1900. Negatives are ILLEGITIMATE. Zero is NULL. 1 is January 1, 1900. 2958464 is December 31, 9999. Values greater than 2958464 are ILLEGITIMATE.
Type 213 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K2 with BINARY values YYYYMMDD packed as (23/4/5). PowerHouse's 32-bit date type.
Type 214 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K2 with BINARY values YYYYDDD bit-packed as (23/9). HP Calendar.
48-bit:
Type 304 Corresponds to "true" IMAGE type K3 with BINARY values YYYYMMDD packed as (12/4/5 & 27-zeroes). Software Research Northwest (SRN) CHRONOS.
128-bit:
Type 800 Refers to the IMAGE/SQL (and ALLBASE/SQL) 128-bit data type. The first 14 bits contain YYYY, the next 4 bits contain MM and the next 6 bits contain DD. The next 40 bits are all zeroes and the last 64 bits contain an IEEE real whose value is the number of microseconds between midnight on 0000/01/01 and midnight on YYYY/MM/DD.
A tool for doing Web transactions via the 3000
If you'd like to do transactions via the Web using your HP 3000 as
a data server -- a
much more popular use of the 3000 than as a Web server, so far -- a third
party tool
makes it easier. NewsWire subscriber Michael Gueterman reports that Cold
Fusion from
Allaire Corp. (617.761.2100)
integrates browser, server and HP 3000
database technologies to make Web applications and interactive sites.
Gueterman says:
"The method which I prefer that covers the majority of cases is to set up your Image/SQL or Allbase/SQL database on the HP 3000 as an ODBC datasource, and then access that data from a Windows 95 or NT-based WWW server using Cold Fusion. Cold Fusion provides standard programming language type constructs that you embed within your HTML page. This information is then "pre-processed" on the server so that standard HTML (including your data) is then delivered to the client's browser. This means that you do not have to have any fancy browser (character based Lynx works nicely), but can use the most recent advances if you choose to.
Gueterman said he's working on a small demonstration system that will be available over the Internet soon using Windows NT 4.0 as the Web server and Allbase/SQL on the HP 3000 as the datasource. "It won't be fancy," he says, " but it will show the power of using the 3000 as a data-server for the Web -- something that it does a nice job at, thank you very much!"
You can get a demo copy of Cold Fusion from the Allaire Web site.
More news on the spam e-mail front
Since you're getting this by e-mail, we feel we can go a little off
topic on this one. We
recently got a report from e-mail expert Chris Bartram of 3k Associates about some
advances in the spam wars, and at least one ruse. 3k's NetMail/3000
includes a spam
blocking file that uses NetMail's filters to cancel unwanted e-mails at the
root, before
they ever reach your HP 3000, so Bartram knows his subject. He reports that
some
Usenet groups have started automatically cancelling all posts from systems
run by UUnet,
a nationwide ISP with little ability to police known spammers. The posts
are at the heart
of a growing spam problem (and that's why your mailbox keeps filling with more
unwanted mail each day). Adult site postings seem to slip in everywhere;
one count had
more than 20,000 postings of a sexual nature in under 36 hours.
Bartram adds that "spamming affects us HP 3000 users, too," and notes that a form at one address which promises to remove you from all junk mail lists instead appends you to lists. Don't bother to browse to www.iemmc.org/remove.htm, since Bartram said tests show it just gets you more junk mail. People are beginning to get legal with the problem; the group that helped close of the UUnet postings invites you to submit your junk-e-mail problems to the FTC at http://www.junkemail.org/scamspam. Bartram advises you to "filter what you can, and hope that legislators finally get a clue and do something about it."