The DAP 5.6 specification (28-Mar-1980) does not appear to have much
information concerning device mounting.
It's not clear how much DAP was designed to be concerned with such
activities, but it would appear that it implicitly expects that any
device that is available is usable. There are some bits in the File
Access Options (FOP) and Generic Device Characteristics (DEV) attributes
that have some information concerning mounting, viz:
*Attribute*
*Bit*
*Name*
*Meaning*
FOP
13
FB$DMO
Rewind and dismount magnetic tape on close.
DEV
10
FB$MNT
Device is currently mounted.
DEV
11
FB$DMT
Deviceis marked for dismount.
So assuming you are accessing a magnetic tape, you can request that it
be rewound and dismounted when closed and you can get some information
concerning mount status.
At this time of DAP design, large systems basically lived on tape and
disk mounts, given the expense of the devices to actually read and write
their respective media. There was a cost for a mount, but if you were
using a lot of space, it could pay to have your own media where you
wouldn't get hit with the storage costs.
Mounting structures is also a well understood mechanism to provide
additional access control granularity.
A "regulated" structure on Tops-20 can not be used unless it is first
mounted by the user. It may be spun up and online, but if it is
regulated, you must mount it first. This gives you the opportunity to
put policy on the mount with an access control request. At Columbia,
nobody was allowed to mount the (regulated) staff structure (CU:, an
RP07) unless they were staff. Students were not allowed to mount
anything. Paying customers could mount non-domestic regulated
structures. I wrote the code for the 'Judge', our access control job
(or ACJ) which did this as it required some hooks in Galaxy (Quasar and
MOUNTR).
FAL is not subject to such ACJ policy because it specifically informs
Tops-20 to by-pass mount counts. So that's kind of a back door because
you could use FAL to snoop around regulated structures, which is exactly
what we didn't want to be happening. It bothered me, but not enough for
me to tell management that it should be addressed.
I was fixing a bug in FAL ANONYMOUS processing when I recalled this and
it began to bother me more. I don't want regulated structures being
implicitly used. My extended mode FTP server does not bypass mount
counts and this is what keeps web crawlers from snooping through every
file I have. You have to explicitly know the structure name and request
it with an SMNT verb which you can then put policy on. So I scratched
the itch and implemented a MOUNTING command with the following options:
* BYPASSED, the current FAL behavior: use whatever is online.
* PREVENTED, respect regulated structure mount counts and fail if the
structure isn't mounted.
* AUTOMATIC, attempt to mount the structure on the behalf of the user
where necessary.
PREVENTED is the most restricted, as a FAL job only has access to
unregulated structures (which require no mounting). So that's good.
AUTOMATIC maybe gets you the best of both worlds. You can access online
structures provided policy allows you to, elsewhere which means that
users that expect to be able to mount structures will have this done for
them. I have yet to put in another command to restrict ANONYMOUS usage,
in other words, forbid automatic mounting for ANONYMOUS.
Is my reading of DAP is close enough? How do other DEC operating
systems handle this? I know VMS can handle disk and tape mounts, I
forget about RSTS, RSX and RT.
Correct disk images of layered products (y2k patched) are uploaded to https://pdp-11.online/~form/files/pdp-11/rt-11/layered/
- MU MASIC-11/RT-11 V2.00R
- BASIC-11/RT-11 V02-03S
- FORTRAN IV/RT-11 V2.8
- FORTRAN-77 V5.0A
On 19/04/2023 18:33, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
> Oh, weird, ok. Please let me know what you find. Thanks!
>
> -Dave
>
> On 4/18/23 13:40, Oleg Safiullin wrote:
>> Hmm.
>> It looks like this directory contains wrong/broken images and patches, so I'll look at my archive and put correct images there.
>>
>> On 18/04/2023 17:46, Dave McGuire wrote:
>>>
>>> Ahh, excellent, thank you Oleg!
>>>
>>> -Dave
>>>
>>> On 4/18/23 02:04, Oleg Safiullin wrote:
>>>> You can get some layered products for RT-11 here: https://pdp-11.online/~form/files/pdp-11/rt-11/layered/
>>>> There're BASIC-11, BASIC-PLUS, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 77, MU/BASIC-11 and pre-built PASCAL there.
>>>> All of these are Y2K-patched. MU/BASIC-11 also patched to make it work under RT-11 V5.7
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 18/04/2023 05:02, Dave McGuire wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone found a release of FORTRAN-IV for RT-11 that's later than v2.5?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> -Dave
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
>>>
>
I have been planning for a long time to post a small reflection when I
reached 1000 nodes registered in the hecnet nodename database.
This happened tonight. I think it is a pretty cool thing. There are now
1000 nodenames registered in this small hobby DECnet. I guess you could
say it's actually not that small.
However, I know that rather few machines are actually online, and it
might even be that the majority of nodes registered have never been
online. My guess is that maybe 5% of the registered machines are usually
online. But I do not have any hard data to back this up.
HECnet started out about 20 years ago from a desire I had to hook up a
PDP-11 I had at home, to some machines at my university, using DECnet.
At the time, I didn't have any TCP/IP for RSX, and the only way to get
any kind of networking was to try and come up with some way of getting
DECnet up.
My first implementation basically just forwarded a serial port
communication between two Unix machines. And on each end I then hooked
that serial port into a PDP-11 running RSX, and used DDCMP for the
actual DECnet link.
This worked, but was obviously not that fast, as the serial ports were
limited to 9600 bps.
After a year or so, I figured I could instead write a small program that
would forward ethernet packets. Using UDP I basically had the same
property as a local ethernet, but it could be located somewhere pretty
far away. From a DECnet point of view, it would appear as if they were
on the same ethernet segment, while in reality they were nowhere near.
As DECnet have pretty long timeouts on things, it turned out this worked
without a hitch, and I could achieve much better throughput.
Not long after that, the first other users were hooked up to HECnet as
well. This was maybe around 2003 or so.
Another data point is that there are 113 different persons that have one
or more nodenames registered.
Happy milestone, everyone, and thanks for being around.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Now that I'm done with Kermit-20, I wanted to get back to finishing up
some other work that I had been doing. FAL, DAP and NFT are in good
enough shape for me to leave them alone for the moment, so that's
another rabbit hole I've gotten myself out of.
I'm now looking fix an error that I somehow introduced into MMAILR (SMTP
over DECnet). Fixing this required modifying DDT, which I had to do to
fix another issue I had introduced into Kermit. I wanted to have a
quick look at what Tops-20 hosts might be up on HECnet and wrote up a
little batch job to use NETPTH to test connectivity.
NETPTH is a nifty utility to find paths between DECnet nodes. It builds
a connection the NCU's of various nodes to determine the path that a
message might take to get there. Think of it like traceroute or ping -R
(RECORD_ROUTE option).
It almost never works...
Before I roll up my sleeves and jump into this I was wondering if
anybody had any observations about the errors I'm seeing?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*TINA*::*PAMINA*::*KLIO*::*TWLGHT*::*RARITY*::*FLUSHY*::*RBDASH*::*APPLEJ*::*PINKIE*::*DISCRD*::*TWENEX*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / BRG-0 <= A2RTR (2.1023) -1 -1
A2RTR (2.1023) =>DMC-31 /
?NETCFO Can't find Output Circuit parameter
*SAMT20*::
?NETURN Unreachable node
*TOMMYT*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / NI-0-0 <= TOMMYT (2.520) 1 1
*BITXT2*::*BITXT0*::*MINDY*::*FALLON*::*JOSHUA*::*OLAF*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / BRG-0 <= A2RTR (2.1023) -1 -1
A2RTR (2.1023) =>
?NETCFO Can't find Output Circuit parameter
*WALACH*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / BRG-0 <= A2RTR (2.1023) -1 -1
A2RTR (2.1023) =>DMC-29-206 /
?NETCFO Can't find Output Circuit parameter
*SOL*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / BRG-0 <= A2RTR (2.1023) -1 -1
A2RTR (2.1023) =>MUL-59-1016 / DMC-1 <= STORTR (59.1016) -1 -1
STORTR (59.1016) =>GRE-16 /
?NETCFO Can't find Output Circuit parameter
*FENCER*::
From Via Back Thru Cost Hops
VENTI2 (2.522) =>NI-0-0 / BRG-0 <= A2RTR (2.1023) -1 -1
A2RTR (2.1023) =>MUL-59-1016 / DMC-1 <= STORTR (59.1016) -1 -1
STORTR (59.1016) =>GRE-16 /
?NETPTH NTMAN failed, reason:
Parameter missing
$
There is now an OpenVMS/x86 system on HECnet, as I would expect/hope, DECnet Phase IV seems to be working just fine. It’s routing through my VAX/VMS 5.5-2 system.
Zane
Version 5.3 is the first major release of Kermit-20 in two decades and
represents over a year of development for the following functionality:**
·Updates Kermit to version 7 of Tops-20.**
·Adds DECnet NRT transport to Tops-10, Tops-20 and Ultrix hosts.**
·Adds pseudo-terminal support.**
·Support for batch stream execution, including extensive testing.**
·Microsecond timing (limited by Tops-20)**
·Efficiency Enhancements**
·Symbolic (C) escape sequences and enhanced parsing**
·New and Enhanced commands**
·Revamped and enhanced macro facility**
I am still working out where this is going up on the Internet, but for
now, HECnet users can feel free to access the package anonymously as
follows:
VENTI2::K20: Kermit-20 Executable and release notes
VENTI2::K20D: Kermit documentation in various formats
VENTI2::K20S: Macro source code plus build files for Batch (.CTL)
and Interactive (.MIC)
VENTI2::K20T: Extensive testing control files and results
*Gigantic* thanks to Bob Armstrong for providing /countless/ Tops-10
cycles, support and other resources to me for testing and troubleshooting.
I'm celebrating climbing out of this particular rabbit hole by breaking
Tops-20 NFT, but FAL is OK. I think.
I wonder if anyone can help me remember/locate a language/compiler for
RSX that some third party did. It was allowed to be used on a hobbyist
basis in the early 2000s, if I remember right.
My brain says XDT or GCML as the company, but searching for that gave me
nothing. The language might have been something like RPG II, but again,
I am not at all sure my brain is remembering things right.
I thought I also had it downloaded and stashed away somewhere, but
cannot find anything now that I'm searching.
So now I'm hoping this things a bell for someone, somewhere, and I can
get my brain sorted, and another tool added on Mim (eventually). :-)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Hi All,
I've dusted off my PiDP11/70 running RSX-11M+ (v4.6). Anyway the "stock"
image that came from the PiDP site is not to my taste so I've been
trying to customise it. Nothing fancy just changing the system name from
the standard "PiDP11" to "WITHER". I should stress that I am an utter
noob and have zero experience with RSX-11 so doubtless I will use the
wrong terms and I know my issues are due to that lack of understanding.
To make my life easier with SYSGEN I was using the existing answer files
(SYSGENSA1.CMD, etc) and simply editing the items I want. The trouble
is, generating a system with these files is producing a system image
that has a very small secondary pool (SECPOL). That then produces
various errors with commands grumping that there is insufficient SECPOL....
I have figured out how to expand the secondary pool from the command
line (which prevents any grumping) but I would like to permanently fix
the situation. From the documentation that I've read, and as I
understand it, I should be able to pause the SYSGEN and edit files
manually mid-generation. In this case I should be able to edit the
"SYSVMR.CMD" which is generated at an earlier phase within SYSGEN and
then continue the SYSGEN which will then utilise the file (SYSVMR.CMD)
in one of the later phases . Except, it does not seem to work. Editing
the SYSVMR.CMD file prior to starting SYSGEN clearly overwrites the
changes during an early stage. Pausing the SYSGEN and editing the
SYSVMR.CMD file mid-generation does retain the settings but does not
appear to make any difference to the final image.
By way of a little more explanation. I'm presuming once I've "paused"
the SYSGEN all I need to do is EDT the SYSVMR.CMD file (in other words,
I'm not doing anything further, running any other commands or what-not).
All I'm doing is editing the SYSVMR.CMD file (specifically the "SET
/PAR=SECPOL" line), and restarting the SYSGEN with "UNS AT.<ESC>".
I presuming I am missing out either a vital step or command or
completely misunderstanding the "set /par=secpol" line.
Any pointers gratefully received
Mark
I got asked what the power requirements would have been for 1985 vintage
KL10 based system.
Does anybody know where I would be able to find such information? I had
thought it was in the site installation guide, but I haven't found an
online version, yet.
About the only thing I can remember is that it was three phase power and
that the power supplies were very inefficient.
