7 Mar
2020
7 Mar
'20
6:41 p.m.
On 2020-03-04 00:57, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
However, as I've said before (viz., the NFT:
device and FTS), there are
parts of Tops-20 DECnet that strike me as not fully productized.? One
example is that there is no way for /anybody/ to extract the area and
number of a node once it is the monitor.? You can (and should) verify
that the node is 'legitimate' by using .NDVFY function of the NODE%
JSYS, which will also tell you some interesting things about it.
However, it will not divulge the aforementioned numbers.? It annoyed me
enough so that I modified the monitor to do just that with an additional
function, .NDVFX and I use this in DAP (but don't depend on it) and in
the mailer (where I do).
I haven't posted the changes anywhere because I can't make up my mind
whether this was fixing an oversight or breaking a design decision or
indeed, whether that should even matter.
In RSX there is no documented way to map between node names and
addresses, in either direction.
There is an interface for it, but it's not documented. Internally,
DECnet have a separate device and ACP which handles the nodename
database. If you just have the specifications for this device, you can
do lookups yourself, but DEC never intended that anyone should use it,
except DECnet internally does.
Another example is that, once a node is inserted into
the monitor data
base, there is *no* documented way to remove it.? As I was implementing
.NDVFX, I was looking at the in-area hashing code and noticed that it
appears that the monitor will remove a node marked as -1 (36 bits).? I
have yet to test this.? Certainly SETNOD gives no hint (another reason
I'm toying with a rewrite).
Curiouser and curiouser.? Do the above two functionalities exist in
other operating systems?
The ability to remove nodes from the nodename database works fine in
pretty much all OSes I know of, except for the PDP-10 world.
In VMS and RSX, it's NCP CLEAR NODE node ALL, for example, for the
current running system. In VMS you use PURGE in NCP for the permanent
database, while in RSX, you use PURGE, but in CFE, which is the
configuration file editor, for the permanent database.
I think RSTS/E does it all through NCP, like in VMS, but I guess Paul
can tell for sure.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol