I like that idea, although I do wonder how many "real" applications would really need, want, or even try to support DECnet directly in these modern times?  For the terminal server case that I am initially interested in building, CTERM and a few network diagnostic tools would keep me very satisfied,  Adding in some file transfer capabilities would be simply awesome.

It would be really useful even if some of these functions were only exposed through internal PyDECnet sub-commands instead of being available system-wide.  I've been happily using PyDECnet for a couple of years, but I haven't yet upgraded to your new test releases, and I haven't kept up on what all is included in your future plans?  Regardless, I suspect that any somewhat easier way to keep a version of DECnet running on Linux with even the minimal set of tools would be appreciated by many around here.  How do you think the performance would be with CTERM written in Python?

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 10:46 AM Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net> wrote:


> On Aug 2, 2022, at 10:40 AM, Brian Angus <brian.angus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm not a programmer, at least not a very good one, and I'm quite happy to expose my ignorance in the effort to learn something new, so I was wondering how real this dependency is on having Linux kernel support for DECnet.  We are quite able to put DECnet packets out on the wire using various user mode processes such as with our favourite emulator SimH.  I currently run VAX DECnet on several linux boxes without any special or unusual kernel shenanigans using a simple TAP ethernet driver.  I also use other non-IP based protocols such as LAT that do not require any special kernel mode modules, drivers or privileges.
>
> Wouldn't it be awesome if we could install a "simple" DECnet daemon on Linux and tweak the few user mode commands that we still use to point to that instead of the special kernel drivers that are needed today.  This is probably just wishful thinking, but a very simple non-kernel DECnet implementation might help ensure its survival for a few more decades.
>
> I could well be completely wrong, but I thought I would ask anyway.

What kernel support gives you is the ability to use the standard "socket" kernel API to communicate using DECnet.  User mode code means a different API.

Now if Linux were to add a way to create a user-mode back end to sockets, sort of like a socket analog to FUSE (file system in user mode), then you could do DECnet in user mode and still get sockets.

Hm... SUSE?  (Oh well, that acronym is taken...)

        paul


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