Hidden Value

Worst Practices: Shouldn't Happen to a Dog

By Scott Hirsh

Chaplin-A-Dogs-LifeThere is a saying in Washington about Washington: “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Ha! We system managers should be so lucky. We can’t even be our own best friend.

It’s sad but true: we system managers won’t cut ourselves any slack. We repeatedly put ourselves in jeopardy, often making the same mistakes time after time. We even break all the rules we impose on others. Don’t believe me? See if you recognize any of these examples.

1. Hand crafted system management

Ah yes, the good old days. Peace, love and tear gas (I never inhaled). But here’s a news flash, sunshine: for system managers, the ’60s are dead. Predictable, repeatable tasks can and should be automated. If you can script it, you can schedule it. And if you can schedule it, you can automate it. So what are you waiting for? Do you like (take your pick): streaming jobs by hand; adjusting fences and priorities by hand; reading $STDLISTs; staring at the console waiting for that one important message? For this you went to college?

And yet, we (or our management) come up with lots of lame excuses for running a stone-age operation. Can’t afford the automation products, don’t trust automation, can’t trap every error, blah blah blah. Those excuses may fly when you’re small, but suddenly you have more systems, bigger systems and manual management turns your shop into burn-out central. Now there’s turnover costs, downtime costs, opportunity costs.

Oh, and by the way, it’s much more expensive to implement automated management in a large, busy environment than it is to grow automated management from a smaller environment. Perhaps some of us are just adrenaline junkies, or we fear not being needed. Get over it and automate already.

2. The disappearing act

A close personal friend of mine — okay, it was me — once made a change to Security/3000’s SECURCON file, then left for an all-day meeting about 40 miles away. Guess what? None of the application users could log on after my change. Way back then, my pager almost vibrated off my belt from that one. And it made for some interesting meetings when I got back.

I have seen lots of cases where a system manager made a configuration change, installed a patch, or fussed with SYSSTART or UDCs, then immediately went home. Big mistake. If you’re lucky, you live near your data center and can zip right back to repair the carnage that was discovered right away. If you’re not lucky, first you don’t discover your mistake until the worst possible moment — say, around the heaviest usage period the next day — and then you’re forced to take the system down to fix the problem. Ouch.

3. A lack of planning on my part does constitute an emergency on your part

A variation on No. 1. We are the eternal optimists. No matter how invasive the procedure, everything will work out perfectly, right? How many PowerPatches must we install before we realize we must leave adequate time for testing the patched system and perhaps back that sucka out? No really, this time HP (or your favorite vendor) has learned from past mistakes and has a bullet-proof update. No need to leave a cushion for collateral damage. Right.

Every decent system administration book offers the same advice: Don’t do anything you can’t undo. Make a backup copy of whatever you’re changing. Keep track of the steps you followed. Be prepared to back out whatever you’re doing. Because that contingency time can inflate your update schedule by hours, it’s unlikely you can safely make a system change at any time other than weekends or holidays. 

4. I’ve got a secret

You make changes but don’t tell anyone about them. Let’s be charitable and say your changes worked as planned. Unfortunately, nobody knew you were going to make the change. I have seen a change as innocuous as modifying the system prompt have unintended consequences (Reflection scripts looked for the old prompt and now wouldn’t work). The term “system” implies interrelationships. Anything we do has a ripple effect. When we don’t tell others that we’re about to make a change — “they wouldn’t let me do it if I told them!” — we don’t do ourselves any favors. I would love to hear other war stories under this category (hint, hint).

Continue reading "Worst Practices: Shouldn't Happen to a Dog" »


Fine-Tune: Resetting your LDEV 21 Console

I have a 959 system at my site and there are times when I can't get the remote console port on LDEV 21 to work. How do I troubleshoot this problem and reset the console port? 

1. Is the port configured and available?

a) Check to be sure the system recognizes the port

:showdev 21

LDEV     AVAIL
     21     AVAIL

b) Is the SYSGEN configuration okay? 

:sysgen  sysgen>io
io> ld 21

LDEV:21  DEVNAME:  OUTDEV:21  MODE:  JAID
**ID: A1703-60003-CONSOLE-TERMINAL 
RSIZE:        40   DEVTYPE: TERM
**PATH: 56/56.1   MPETYPE: 16   MPESUBTYPE:  0
CLASS: TERM

c) Is the User Port configured in NMMGR?

:nmmgr
then ...

OPEN CONF, DTS, USER PORT

Logical Device [21  ]  (1 - 1800)
Line Speed [2400  ]  (300, 1200, 9600, or 19200 bps)
Modem Type [1] (0-NONE, 1-US, 2-European, 3 - V22.bis)
Parity [NONE] (None, Even, Odd, 0's, or 1's)

Continue reading "Fine-Tune: Resetting your LDEV 21 Console" »


Using MPE/iX to send SFTP files

I have a script that uses FTP to send files to a site which we open by IP address. We've been asked to change to SFTP (port 22) and use the DNS name instead of an IP address, and I don't believe the 3000 supports that. Does it? If so, how?

Allegro's Donna Hofmeister replies:

I'm not sure you want to do SFTP on port 22. That's the SSH port. SFTP is meant to use port 115. Have a look at one of our white papers on how to do SFTP on MPE.

If you are going to use DNS, you must have your 3000 configured for that. It's easily done. 

However, if you've never done anything on your 3000 to make it act like a real computer (oh -- that's right, it is a real computer and fully capable of using DNS), this can turn into a can o'worms.

Continue reading "Using MPE/iX to send SFTP files" »


Heartbeat at the center of CPU boost

Newswire Classic

By Gilles Schipper

The activity light on the 3000's LDEV 1 was abnormally high, and we noticed very sluggish response time, even though only the console was signed on and no batch jobs were executing. Having no idea what the problem was — and absent any tools such as Glance to shine a light on the situation — we began to revert to the previous configuration, software and hardware.

Only a week later, with some analysis of NM log files, were we able to establish what was going on. The performance problem was related to the 3000's transceivers. SQL heartbeat was disabled for all of them. The result was that the CPU was being inundated with an overwhelming amount of IO requests in order to log the missing heartbeat event in the NM log file.

This unnecessary and voluminous IO was enough to bring the system to its knees — even absent any other activity. In today's HP 3000 environment, this serious CPU wastage problem can be overlooked, because faster CPUs could render the problem relatively less noticeable. But I would venture to guess that there is a lot of the "wasted IO" that is affecting a large number of HP 3000s out there.

Fortunately, there is a very simple way to recognize whether the problem exists, and also a simple cure. To determine if you have this problem, simply type the following command and look at the reply that follows:

:listf [email protected],2

ACCOUNT=  SYS         GROUP=  PUB

FILENAME  CODE  ------------LOGICAL RECORD-------  ----SPACE----
                  SIZE  TYP    EOF    LIMIT R/B  SECTORS #X MX

H000000A*           1W  FB     5      66010   1      256  1  *
H000000B*           1W  FB     0      66010   1        0  0  *
H0909A5A*           1W  FB     5      66010   1      256  1  *

H0909A5B*           1W  FB     0      66010   1        0  0  *
H13ECEEA*           1W  FB     5      66010   1      256  1  *
H13ECEEB*           1W  FB     0      66010   1        0  0  *
H15F669A            1W  FB     5      66010   1      256  1  *
H15F669B            1W  FB     0      66010   1        0  0  *
HASTAT    NMPRG   128W  FB     347      347   1      352  1  8
HAUTIL    NMPRG   128W  FB     424      424   1      432  1  8
HP32209B  PROG    128W  FB     15        15   1       16  1  1

Notice the OPEN files (the ones with the associated asterisk suffixing the file name) that are 1W in size. There are two such files associated with each configured DTC, file name starting with the letter H, followed by six characters that represent the last six characters of the DTC MAC address, followed by the letter A or B. The EOF for these files should be 0 and 5 for the respective "A" and "B" files.

Otherwise your CPU is being subjected to high-volume unnecessary IO, requiring CPU attention. The solution is to simply enable SQL heartbeat for each transceiver attached to each DTC. This is done via a small white jumper switch that you should see at the side of each transceiver.

Voila, you've just achieved a significant no-cost CPU upgrade.

There is also another method of eliminating this excessive CPU overhead that involves using NMMGR to uncheck as many logging events as you can for each DTC, revalidating and rebooting.

But the SQL-heartbeat enable method is a surer bet.


Fine-Tune: Making the 3000's ports report

I have a port in an HP 3000 and I want to know the application that is currently using that port. Is there any command that can show me the applications accessing a particular port?

Kevin Miller replied:

:sockinfo.net.sys

Enter ‘c’ for ‘call sockets.’ Listeners are shown in port order.

The port for telnet on our 3000 is set to a different value then 23, but it is set to 23 on our HP Unix server. When I try to telnet from the 3000 to HP-UX I get the following message: Trying... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host. If I switch the port for telnet to 23 on the 3000, it works great.

My question is: Can I run telnet on two different ports on either box so that I can maintain my non-standard port on the 3000, but still allow telnet to run between the two boxes? If not, is there another way to make this work?

Jeff Kell replied:

Just ‘telnet your.3000.name nnn’ where ‘nnn’ is your ‘nonstandard’ port.

How do I point network printer configurations to specific ports on (external) multi-port JetDirect (or equivalent) boxes?

Gilles Schipper replied:

You need to add the tcp_port_number option, in NPCONFIG, as follows:

(network_address = 128.250.232.40 tcp_port_number = 9100) # for port 1
(network_address = 128.250.232.40 tcp_port_number = 9101) # for port 2
(network_address = 128.250.232.40 tcp_port_number = 9102) # for port 3

(Please note that everything on each line after and including the “#” represents a comment.)

My HP 3000 is set up for full access to the Internet. The telnet connection works fine, but I also see that VT-MGR also works. I know that inetdsec is used for restricting access for ip, http, ftp and so on. Is there something in NMMGR to restrict VT-MGR access, or do you use inetdsec for that also?

Chris Bartram replied:

Just an option logon UDC that checks the CIVars set for the IP address and hostname of the originator.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune: Making the 3000's ports report" »


Recovering a 3000 password: some ideas

I have an administrator who decided to change passwords on MANAGER.SYS. Now what's supposed to be the new password isn't working. Maybe he mis-keyed it, or just mis-remembered it. Any suggestions, other than a blindfold and cigarette, or starting down the migration path?

The GOD program, a part of MPEX, has SM capability — so it will allow you to do a LISTUSER MANAGER.SYS;PASS=

If your operator can log onto operator.sys:

file xt=mytape;dev=disc
file syslist=$stdlist
store command.pub;*xt;directory;show

While using your favorite editor or other utility, search for the string: "ALTUSER MANAGER  SYS"

You will notice: PAS=<the pwd> which is your clue.

It's said that a logon to the MGR.TELSUP account can unlock the passwords. The Telsup account usually has SM capability, if it wasn't changed.


Fine-Tune: Locking databases into lookups

Editor's Note: Monday is a holiday to commemorate Memorial Day, so we're celebrating here with time away from the keyboard. We'll be back with a new report May 30.

Lock files databaseWe’re migrating from our 3000 legacy applications to an ERP system hosted on another environment. Management has decreed the HP 3000 apps must still be available for lookups, but nobody should be able to enter new data or modify existing data. Should I do the simplest thing and change all of the databases so that the write class list is empty?

Doug Werth replies:

One way to do this is to write a program in the language of your choice that does a DBOPEN followed by a DBLOCK of each database (this will require MR capability). Then the program goes into an infinite loop calling the PAUSE intrinsic. Any program that tries to update the database will fail to achieve a lock, rendering the databases read-only. Programs that call conditional locks will come back immediately with a failed lock. Unconditional locks will hang.

This has been a very successful solution I have used on systems where a duplicate copy of the databases is kept for reporting and/or shadowing using IMAGE log files.

Steve Dirickson agrees with the poster of the question:

Since very few developers write their apps to check the subsystem write flag that you can set with DBUTIL, changing the classes is your best bet. Make sure you do so by changing the current M/W classes to R/R so the existing passwords will still work for DBOPEN, and only actual put/update/delete operations will fail.

The Big Picture: If protection is required for the database, that protection should reside in the database if at all possible. As mentioned, this is easy with IMAGE.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune: Locking databases into lookups" »


Fine-Tune: Setting up a 3000 as file server

I would like to set up an HP 3000 as a file server. In one of my accounts I want to have a share for my 100 users pointing to a separate directory in this account. The homes section in smb.conf normally points to the home group of the user, which is the same for all of them and is not helpful. Is there another way of solving the problem, or must I configure more than the 100 shares?

Mark Wonsil replies:

I saw a clever little trick in Unix that should work on MPE:

[%U]
path = /ACCT/SHARES/%U

This creates a share name that is the same as the username and then it points the files to a directory under the SHARES group.

How do I set my prompt setting in the startup script?

John Burke replies:

Here’s what I do for my prompt:
SETVAR HPPROMPT,”<SASHA: “+&
“!!HPJOBNAME,!!HPUSER.!!HPACCOUNT,!!HPGROUP> “+&
“!!HPDATEF !!HPTIMEF <!!HPCWD>”+CHR(13)+CHR(10)+”[!!HPCMDNUM]:”

This yields, for example,
<SASHA: JPB,MGR.SYSADMIN,PUB> THU, FEB 20, 2003 11:15 PM </SYSADMIN/PUB>
[7]:

A disk drive has failed on a user volume. How can I determine the accounts and groups on that user volume?

John Clogg replies:

Try REPORT @.@;ONVS=<volset>

Jeff Woods adds:

In addition to the suggestion to use “:REPORT @.@;ONVS=volset” (which may fail because it’s actually trying to look at the group entries on the volume set) you can do a “:LISTGROUP @.@” and scan the listing for groups where HOMEVS is your uservolumesetname. The advantage of LISTGROUP is that it uses only the directory entries on the system volume set. You may want to redirect the output of LISTGROUP to a file and then search that rather than trying to scan the listing directly.


How to Create Cause and Effect on MPE

Causality-iconHP 3000s took a big step forward with the introduction of a fresh intrinsic in 1995. Intrinsics are a wonderful thing to power HP 3000 development and enhancement. There was a time when file information was hard to procure on a 3000, and JOBINFO came into full flower with MPE/iX 5.0, back in 1994. "The high point in MPE software was the JOBINFO intrinsic," said Olav Kappert, an MPE pro who could measure well: his 3000 experience began in 1979. JOBINFO sits just about at the end of the 456-page MPE/iX Intrinsics Manual published in '94.

Fast-forward 24 years later and people still ask about how they can add features to an application. The Obtaining File Information section of an MPE KSAM manual holds an answer to what seems like an advanced problem. That KSAM manual sits in one of several Web corners for MPE manuals, a link on Team NA Consulting's page. Here's an example of a question where INFO intrinsics can play cause and effect.

I'm still using our HP 3000, and I have access to the HP COBOL compiler. We haven't migrated and aren't intending to. How can I use the characteristics of an input file as HPFOPEN parameters to create an output file? I want that output file to be an exact replica of the input file. I want to do this without knowing anything about the input file until it is opened by the COBOL program. 

I've tried using FFILEINFO and FLABELINFO to capture the characteristics of the input file, once I've opened it. After I get the opens/reads/writes working, I want to be able to alter the capacity of the output file.

Francois Desrochers said, "How about calling FFILEINFO on the input file to retrieve all the attributes you may need? Then apply them to the output file HPFOPEN call."

Donna Hofmeister added 

Have a look at the Using KSAM XL and KSAM 64 manual (Ed. note: link courtesy of Team NA Consulting). Chapters 3 and 4 seem to cover the areas you have questions about. Listfile,5 seems to be a rightly nifty thing.

But rather than beat yourself silly trying to get devise a pure COBOL solution, you might be well advised to augment what you're doing with some CI scripts that you call from your program.

Continue reading "How to Create Cause and Effect on MPE" »


How Details and Masters Get the Job Done

Masters and DetailsA Hidden Value question was posed about how manual and automatic masters work in TurboIMAGE. Roy Brown gave a fine tutorial on how these features do their jobs for MPE and the 3000 -- as well as how a detail dataset might have zero key fields.

Manual masters can contain data which you define, like Detail sets can, along with a single Key field. Automatic masters contain only the Key field. In both cases, there can be only one record for a given key value in a Master dataset.

A Detail dataset contains data fields plus zero, one, or many key fields. There can be as many records as you like for a given key value, and these form a chain accessible from the Master record key value. This chain may be sorted, or it may just be in chronological order of adding the records.

Continue reading "How Details and Masters Get the Job Done" »


Fine-Tune Friday: DDS diagnosis and tips

Series 928-LXWe have a tape device that is not responding; that is, we put the tape in, but it is not coming online. I also see that a user is logged into the system using the LDEV assigned to the tape drive. SHOWDEV TAPE also does not list the device.

Gilles Schipper replies:

I’ve seen this before for DDS drives, Probably during your most recent reboot, there was a (possibly temporary) malfunction with your tape drive’s power supply such that its existence was not recognized during the boot up process. That would normally result in a “device unavailable” condition and the subsequent disabling of that logical device number.

I have noticed instances where that LDEV number is actually made available to the logon device number pool (for subsequent assignment for logon session device numbers). Long story short, the solution appears to be a power cycle, START NORECOVERY reboot.

After shutting down and powering off the CPU and all devices, run ODE to ensure all devices are recognized before START NORECOVERY. Failure to recognize the device at that point should lead to further investigation of the power supply, SCSI device number setting, or other hardware malfunction. If this situation happens frequently, I would first suspect a problem with the power supply of that device.

Get rid of that internal DDS tape drive

By John Burke

People complain of problems with internal DDS tape drives in systems located in remote areas with little onsite expertise, problems that lead to frequent drive replacements and downtime. It reminds me of the old vaudeville joke where the patient comes to the doctor with a complaint, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” The doctor replies, “Then don’t do that.”

HP 3000 gurus have cautioned for years that people should not use internal tape or disk drives in 9x7, 9x8 or 9x9 production systems. The most likely failure is a tape drive and the next most likely failure is a disk drive. Everything else in the system cabinet could easily run for a decade without needing service or replacing. [Editor's note: John's advice came in 2004, so a decade-plus is definitely bonus time.] When an internal tape or disk drive fails you are looking at serious downtime while the case is opened and the drive is replaced. A common urban legend says that the primary boot device (LDEV 1) and the secondary boot device (usually LDEV 7) must be internal. Not true.

Bite the bullet now. Remove, or at least disconnect (both power and data cables) all internal drives. At the least, replace the internal DDS drive with an external DDS3 or DDS4 drive. In the case of the DDS drive, you will not even need to make any configuration changes if you set the SCSI ID to 0 on the external drive.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune Friday: DDS diagnosis and tips" »


What Does HP's Disc Brand Mean?

By John Burke

HP emblemAfter reading Jim Hawkins’ reply to my SCSI is SCSI article, I was reminded about HP’s 4Gb disk drive fiasco. These branded drives had a nasty habit of failing after being powered off after they’d been running for a while. The problems were not limited to the HP 3000 versions, either.

At one point we got so frustrated we just replaced all 4Gb drives with the much more reliable 9Gb drives. I never blamed HP for these failures, or the failures of the 4Gb drives on my HP 3000 — even though all were purchased from HP, and had HP stamped all over them. The failures were the fault of the manufacturer, and no amount of certification testing would likely have shown the problem. But the failures made me wonder: What does HP certification and HP branding mean?

In Hawkins’ reply, he puts great emphasis on the statement that “In the SCSI peripheral market, Industry Standard is really defined as ‘works on a PC.’ Unfortunately, the requirements for single-user PCs are not always in alignment with those of multi-user servers.” Maybe inside HP the desktops look different, but I have never seen a company use SCSI peripherals as a standard for desktop Wintel systems.

At my last employer, we had approximately 1,200 desktops, and not a single one had a SCSI disk drive. SCSI disks are used primarily in the multi-user server market, not the desktop market. While Hawkins says some interesting things in the rest of his article, these two sentences tend to prejudice the reader against everything else he says.

Unfortunately, Hawkins’ best argument came out in private correspondence: “Putting newer disks inside a 9x7, 9x8 or 9x9 may overtax the power supply and/or ‘cook’ your CPU or memory.” However, most of us outside HP have been advising against using internal drives in production machines for many years because of the obvious maintenance headaches. It still amazes me how many people believe you have to have at least one internal drive in an HP 3000.

The debate seems like it highlights at least four things going on.

Continue reading "What Does HP's Disc Brand Mean?" »


Fine-Tune: Net config file care and feeding

I’m replacing my Model 10 array with a Model 20 on MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET, so it'll require a reinstall. What’s the best way to reinstate my network config files? Just restore NMCONFIG and NPCONFIG? I'm hoping I can use my old CSLT to re-add all my old non-Nike drives and mod the product IDs in Sysgen—or do I have to add them manually after using the factory SLT?

Gilles Schipper replies:

Do the following steps:
- using your CSLT to install onto LDEV 1
- modify your i/o to reflect new/changed config.
- reboot
- use volutil to add non-LDEV1 volumes appropriately
- restore directory or directories from backup
- preform system reload from full backup - using the keep, create, olddate, partdb,show=offline options in the restore command
- reboot again

No need for separate restores of specific files.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune: Net config file care and feeding" »


Upgrade your hardware to homestead longer

Hardware toolsKeeping storage devices fresh is a key step in maintaining a datacenter that uses HP's 3000 hardware. Newer 3000s give you more options. Our net.digest columnist John Burke shared advice that's still good today while planning the future for a 3000s that will remain online for some time to come. Maybe not until 2028, but for awhile.

If you can, replace your older machines with the A-Class or N-Class models. Yes, the A-Class and some N-Class systems suffer from CPU throttling. (That's HP’s term. Some outside HP prefer CPU crippling.) However, even with the CPU throttling, most users will see significant improvement simply by moving to the A-Class or N-Class.

Both the A-Class and N-Class systems use the PCI bus. PCI cards are available for the A- and N-Class for SE-SCSI, FW-SCSI and Ultra-3 SCSI (LVD). You can slap in many a drive manufactured today, made by any vendor. SCSI is SCSI. Furthermore, with MPE/iX 7.5, PCI fiber channel adaptors are also supported, further expanding your choices.

If you are going to homestead on the older systems, or expect to use the older systems for a number of years to come, you have several options for storage solutions. For your SE-SCSI adaptors, you can use the new technology-old interface 18Gb and 36Gb Seagate drives. For your FW-SCSI (HVD) adaptors, since no one makes HVD drives anymore, you have to use a conversion solution. [You could of course replace your FW-SCSI adaptors with SE-SCSI adaptors, but this would reduce capacity and throughput.]

One possibility is to use an LVD-HVD converter and hang a string of new LVD drives off each of your FW-SCSI adaptors. HP and other vendors have sold routers that allow you to connect from FW-SCSI adaptors to Fibre Channel resources such as SANs. It's one way to accomplish something essential: get rid of those dusty old HP 6000 enclosures, disasters just waiting to happen.

As for tape drives, move away from DDS and use DLT (4000/7000/8000) with DLT IV tapes. Whatever connectivity problems there are can be dealt with just like the disk drives. If you have an A-Class or N-Class machine, LTO or SuperDLT both use LVD connections. If you have a non-PCI machine, anything faster that a DLT 8000 is wasted anyway because of the architecture lineups with 3000 IO.


Moving, Yes — Volumes to Another 3000

Newswire Classic

By John Burke

Here is a shortened version of the revised checklist for moving user volumes physically from one system to another without a RESTORE

  • Get the new system up and running, even if it only has one disk drive

(if you've purchased additional new drives, do not configure them with VOLUTIL yet)

  • Analyze and document the configuration on the old system, making any necessary configuration changes on the new system and creating an SLT for the new system;
  • Backup and verify the system volume set and the user volumes separately (be sure to use the DIRECTORY option on all your STOREs);
  • VSCLOSE all the user volume sets on the old machine;
  • Move all the peripherals over to the new machine. On a START NORECOVERY, the user volumes should mount. The drives that were on the system volume set on the old system and any new drives added should now be configured in using VOLUTIL;
  • RESTORE the system volume set:

RESTORE *T;@.@.@;KEEP;OLDDATE;
SHOW=OFFLINE;FILES=n;DIRECTORY

  • RENAME the following three files if they exist to something else:

SYSSTART.PUB.SYS
NMCONFIG.PUB.SYS
COMMAND.PUB.SYS (udc configuration)

  • RESTORE the above three files from your tape with the DEV=1 option.

The OS requires that some files, for example SYSSTART, be on LDEV 1;

  • RUN NMMGR against NMCONFIG.PUB.SYS, then using NMMGR, change the path for the LANIC, if necessary, and make any other necessary NMMGR configuration changes.
  • Validate NETXPORT and DTS/LINK, which should automatically cross validate with SYSGEN.
  • START NORECOVERY

Fine-tune Friday: SCSI Unleashed

Seagate 73GB driveAlthough disk technology has made sweeping improvements since HP's 3000 hardware was last built, SCSI devices are still being sold. The disk drives on the 15-year-old servers are the most likely point of hardware failure. Putting in new components such as the Seagate 73-GB U320 SCSI 10K hard drive starts with understanding the nature of the 3000's SCSI.

As our technical editor John Burke wrote, using a standard tech protocol means third parties like Seagate have products ready for use in HP's 3000 iron.

SCSI is SCSI

Extend the life of your HP 3000 with non-HP peripherals

By John Burke

This article will address two issues and examine some options that should help you run your HP 3000 for years to come. The first issue: you need to use only HP-branded storage peripherals. The second issue: because you have an old (say 9x7, 9x8 or even 9x9) system, then you are stuck using both old technology and just plain old peripherals. Both are urban legends and both are demonstrably false.

There is nothing magical about HP-branded peripherals

Back in the dark ages when many of us got our first exposure to MPE and the HP 3000, when HP actually made disk drives, there was a reason for purchasing an HP disk drive: “sector atomicity.” 9x7s and earlier HP 3000s had a battery that maintained the state of memory for a limited time after loss of power. In my experience, this was usually between 30 minutes and an hour.

These systems, however, also depended on special firmware in HP-made HP-IB and SCSI drives (sector atomicity) to ensure data integrity during a power loss. If power was restored within the life of the internal battery, the system started right back up where it left off, issuing a “Recover from Powerfail” message with no loss of data. It made for a great demo.

Ah, but you say all your disk drives have an HP label on them? Don’t be fooled by labels. Someone else, usually Seagate, made them. HP may in some cases add firmware to the drives so they work with certain HP diagnostics, but other than that, they are plain old industry standard drives. Which means that if you are willing to forego HP diagnostics, you can purchase and use plain old industry standard disk drives and other peripherals with your HP 3000 system.

Continue reading "Fine-tune Friday: SCSI Unleashed" »


Fine-Tune Friday: Account Management 101

Newswire Classic

By Scott Hirsh

Ledger-bookAs we board the train on our trip through HP 3000 System Management Hell, our first stop, Worst Practice #1, must be Unplanned Account Structure. By account structure I am referring to the organization of accounts, groups, files and users. I maintain that the worst of the worst practices is the failure to design an account structure, then put it into practice and stick with it. If instead you wing it, as most system managers seem to do, you ensure more work for yourself now and in the future. In other words, you are trapped in System Management Hell.

What’s the big deal about account structure? The account structure is the foundation of your system, from a management perspective. Account structure touches on a multitude of critical issues: security, capacity planning, performance, and disaster recovery, to name a few. On an HP 3000, with all of two levels to work with (account and group), planning is even more important than in a hierarchical structure where the additional levels allow one to get away with being sloppy (although strictly speaking, not planning your Unix account structure will ultimately catch up with you, too). In other words, since we have less to work with on MPE, making the most of what we have is compelling.

As system managers, when not dozing off in staff meetings, the vast majority of our time is spent on account structure-related activities: ensuring that files are safely stored in their proper locations, accessible only to authorized users; ensuring there is enough space to accommodate existing file growth as well as the addition of new files; and occasionally, even today, file placement or disk fragmentation can become a performance issue, so we must take note of that.

In the unlikely event of a problem, we must know where everything is and be able to find backup copies if necessary. Periodically we are asked (perhaps with no advance notice) to accommodate new accounts, groups, users and applications. We must respond quickly, but not recklessly, as this collection of files under our management is now ominously referred to as a “corporate asset.”

You wouldn’t build a house without a design and plans, you wouldn’t build an application without some kind of specifications, so why do we HP 3000 system managers ignore the need for some kind of consistent logic to the way we organize our systems?

Continue reading "Fine-Tune Friday: Account Management 101" »


Fine-Tune Friday: One 3000 and Two Factors

RSA SecurID fobPeople are sometimes surprised where HP 3000s continue to serve. Even in 2018, mission-critical systems are performing in some Fortune 500 companies. When the death knell sounds for their applications, the axe gets swung sometimes because of security. Two-Factor security authentication is a standard now, serving things like Google accounts, iCloud data, and corporate server access.

Eighteen years ago, one HP 3000 shop was doing two-factor. The work was being coded before smartphones existed. Two-factor was delivered using a security fob in most places. Andreas Schmidt worked for Computer Sciences Corporation, which served the needs of DuPont in Bad Homburg, Germany. CSC worked with RSA Security Dynamics to create an RSA Agent that connected a 3000 to an RSA Server.

Back in that day, authentication was done with fobs like the one above. Now it's a smart device sharing the key. Schmidt summarized the work done for what he calls "the chemical company" which CSC was serving.

Two-Factor Token Authentication is a state-of-the-art process to avoid static passwords. RSA Security Dynamics provides an MPE Agent for this purpose which worked perfectly for us with Security/3000, but also with basic MPE security. The technical approach is not simple, but manageable. The main problems may arise during the rollout because of human behavior in keeping known procedures and avoiding changes, especially for security. But to stay on HP 3000 into the future, the effort is worth it, especially for better security.

The project worked better when it relied on the Security/3000 software installed on the server hosting Order Fulfillment. Two-factor security was just gaining widespread traction when this 3000 utilized it. Schmidt acknowledged that the tech work was not simple, but was manageable. When a 3000 site is faced with the alternative of developing a replacement application away from MPE/iX, or selecting an app off the shelf like SAP, creating two-factor is within the limits of possibility. Plus, it may not be as expensive as scrapping an MPE application.

Schmidt's article covers an Agent Solution created by CSC. Even 18 years ago, remaining on the 3000 was an issue worth exploring. When many outside firms access a 3000, two factor can be key.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune Friday: One 3000 and Two Factors" »


Friday Fine-tune: Check on LDEV availability

Is there a way to have an HP 3000 jobstream check to see if a tape drive (LDEV) is available? I am not seeing a HP system variable that seems to list the status. I can see via a SHOWDEV that the device is available or not. I just need a jobstream to be able to do the same.

Roy Brown replies

We use a utility, apectrl.pub.orbit, that we found in our ORBIT account alongside Backup+. We use this, in a command file run as a jobstream, to check that tapes are mounted ready for our nightly backups, and, in the backup job itself, to eject them when complete.

Tom Hula says,

It's been awhile since I've messed with the 3000. I have a utility that I received from Terry Tipton many years ago that does that checking. It is called CHKTAPE. So if the tape drive is dev 7, I have CHKTAPE 7 in the jobstream and then check for the results in CHKTAPE_RESULT. We are looking for a value of 0, but here are all the results:

0 - Tape is unowned, online, at BOT and writeable
1 - Tape is unowned, online, at BOT and write protected
2 - An error occurred.  Probably an invalid device number
3 - Device is not a tape drive
4 - Device is owned by another process
5 - Device is owned by the system
6 - Tape is not online
7 - No tape in device

Terry has a reminder that the program must reside in a group with PM capability. I have been using it on all my backups since without any problems. Let me know if you are interested in getting a copy of this utility.

Alan Yeo adds,

We use the little ONLINE utility from Allegro to put a tape on-line, or back on-line; we use it to put automatically back on-line to do a verify after the store.

Donna Hofmeister replies

Here's a scripted solution to the question. MPE has the best scripting language of any OS. Thanks, Jeff (Vance)!

Continue reading "Friday Fine-tune: Check on LDEV availability" »


Friday Fine-tune: Deleting Bad System Disks

As HP 3000s age their disks go bad, the fate of any component with moving parts. Even after replacing a faulty drive there are a few software steps to perform. Wyell Grunwald explains his problem after replacing a failed system bootup disk

Our disk was a MEMBER in MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET. I am trying to delete the disk off the system.  Upon startup, the 3000 says LDEV 4 is not available.  When going into SYSGEN, then IO, then DDEV 4, it gives me a warning that it is part of the system volume set — and cannot be deleted. How do I get rid of this disk?

Gilles Schipper of support provider GSA said that INSTALL is something to watch while resetting 3000 system disks.

Sounds like your install did not leave you with only a single MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET disk. Could it be that you have more than one system volume after INSTALL because other, non-LDEV 1 volumes were added with the AVOL command of SYSGEN — instead of the more traditional way of adding system volumes via the VOLUTIL utility?

You can check as follows:

SYSGEN
IO
LVOL

If the resulting output shows more than one volume, that's the answer.

He offers a repair solution as well.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-tune: Deleting Bad System Disks" »


Using a PURGEGROUP to clean volumes up

Empty file cabinetIs using PURGEGROUP a way to clean up where groups reside on multiple volume sets? I want to remove groups from Volumesets that aren't considered HOMEVS.

Tracy Johnson says

The syntax for a command on group PUB.CCC might read

PURGEGROUP PUB.CCC;ONVS=USER_SETSW

Denys Beauchemin says

The ALTGROUP, PURGEGROUP and NEWGROUP commands act on the specified volumeset after the ONVS keyword.

The HOMEVS keyword is used to specify in which volumeset the group is supposed to reside and where the files will be found in a LISTF or FOPEN.

If you have the same group.account existing on multiple volumesets and they have files in them, the entries on volumesets—other than what is in HOMEVS for that group—are invisible. If you want to get to them, you need to point the group's HOMEVS to that volumeset and then you can get to the files.

If there are no files in the group.account of other volumesets, it's not a big deal.

Keven Miller says

You could review the volume scripts available that were once on HP's Jazz server. 

Take care in using  the PURGEGROUP command. You can have files existing in the same group name, on separate volumes—which makes mounting that group a problem. So make sure the group on the volume is clean of files you might desire before the PURGEGROUP.

HP's documentation for the PURGEGROUP command has a similar warning.

Continue reading "Using a PURGEGROUP to clean volumes up" »


Simplifying MPE/iX Patch Management

NewsWire Classic

By John Burke

Patching-machineEven though Patch/iX and Stage/iX were introduced with MPE/iX in 1996, these HP tools are poorly understood and generally under-used. Both are tremendous productivity tools when compared with previous techniques for applying patches to MPE/iX. Prior to the introduction of Patch/iX and Stage/iX, system managers did their patching with AUTOPAT, and you had to allow for at least a half-day of downtime. Plus, in relying on tape, you were relying on a notoriously flaky medium where all sorts of things could go wrong and create “the weekend in Hell.”

Patch/iX moves prep time out of downtime, cutting downtime in half because you create the CSLT (or staging area) during production time. Stage/iX reduces downtime to as little as 15-20 minutes by eliminating tape altogether and, furthermore, makes recovery from a bad patches as simple as a reboot.

This article is based upon the Patch Management sessions I have presented at Solutions Symposia. The complete set of 142 slides (over 100 screen shots) and 20 pages of handouts are downloadable in a file from www.burke-consulting.com. The complete presentation takes you step-by-step through the application of a PowerPatch using Patch/iX with a CSLT and the application of a downloaded reactive patch using Patch/iX and Stage/iX. Included is an example of using Stage/iX to recover from a bad patch.

Why should you care about Patch Management? Studies and surveys suggest that 50-80 percent of all HP 3000s will still be running by 2006-2009 – even HP now agrees. Keeping a system running smoothly includes knowing how to efficiently and successfully apply patches to the system. HP has committed to supplying bug fix patches to MPE/iX and its subsystems through 2006, including two PowerPatches per year. [Ed. note: The process continued through 2008.] There may also be new functionality added, either to support new devices or in response to the System Improvement Ballot (SIB).

Patch/iX is a tool for managing patches. It can be used to apply reactive patches, a PowerPatch, or an add-on SUBSYS tape with a PowerPatch. Patch/iX is actually a bundle including the PATCHIX program and a number of auxiliary files that are OS release dependent. Patch/iX allows you to:

• Qualify all patches in a set of patches;

• Install reactive patches at the same time as a PowerPatch;

• Selectively apply patches from a PowerPatch tape; and,

• Create the CSLT (or staging area for Stage/iX) while users are still on the system; i.e., when it is convenient for you without incurring downtime.

Continue reading "Simplifying MPE/iX Patch Management" »


Fine-tune: Policing logins, telnet on 3000s

How can I set up a time constraint to a particular login, or group of logins, onto the HP 3000?

If you do not have a security product, you could create a UDC using OPTION LOGON, which would check the system time (for example, < 6:00am OR > 7:00pm), then ECHO a warning to the user, and then issue BYE. You might want to include the OPTION NOBREAK as well.

How can I restrict inbound telnet by IP address?

You can limit incoming telnets to your machine by using the INETDSEC.NET.SYS file. If you haven’t made use of this file previously, there’s a sample file — INSECSMP.NET.SYS — that you can copy to INETDSEC.NET.SYS and make changes from there. You will also need to link it with the Posix name using this command:

NEWLINK /usr/adm/inetd.sec, INETDSEC.NET.SYS

Details are in HP's Configuring and Managing MPE/iX Internet Services manual.

How can I dynamically control hardware compression on my DDS drives?

The name of the command file is devctrl.mpexl.telesup. An example:

xeq devctrl.mpexl.telesup 38;compression=disable

The help command “help devctrl.mpexl.telesup” will display the parameters. 

The full syntax must be entered on a single line:

DEVCTRL.MPEXL.TELESUP dev=(ldev) eject=(enable/disable/nochange)
compression=(enable/disable/nochange) load=(online/offline/nochange)


Friday Fine-tune: How to add disks and redesign HP 3000 volume sets

Disk-drive-platter-hp3000I am in serious need of some hardware and hardware setup redesign. Essentially, we have 30GB of disk all in the system volume set and want to add 20GB more and go to multiple volume sets. How do I do this?

This checklist can be used to add new disks and completely redesign the volume sets:

1. Perform two full system backups and verify each.
2. Create a new sysgen tape.
3. Check the new sysgen tape with CHECKSLT.
4. Copy @[email protected] to a separate tape and verify.
5. Verify all disk drives configured and working properly.
6. Create a BULDACCT job for each new volume set with just the accounts destined for that volume set.
7. Verify that a current full BULDACCT exists on tape.
8. Shut down the system.
9. Restart the system.
10. From the ISL prompt, INSTALL.
11. In VOLUTIL, scratch all drives except for ldev 1.
12. In VOLUTIL, do "NEWVOL volset:member# ldev# 100 100" for each volume in the system volume set (other than ldev 1).
13. In VOLUTIL, do "NEWSET volset member# ldev# 100 100" for the master volume for each new set.
14. In VOLUTIL, do "NEWVOL volset:member# ldev# 100 100" for each volume in each new
set.
15. Restore SYS account files with ;KEEP;SHOW;OLDDATE options.
16. Stream all BULDACCT jobs to create accounts structure.
17. Restore all files with ;KEEP;SHOW;OLDDATE options.
18. Spot-verify applications.
19. Once everything appears OK, run a BULDACCT.
20. Perform a full system backup.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-tune: How to add disks and redesign HP 3000 volume sets" »


Disaster Recovery Optimization Techniques

Newswire Classic

Editor's Note: The 3000s still in service continue to require disaster recovery processes and plans. Here's a primer on crafting what's needed.

By Gilles Schipper
Newswire Homesteading Editor

While working with a customer on the design and implementation of disaster recovery (DR) plan for their large HP 3000 system, it became apparent that the mechanics of its implementation had room for improvement.

In this specific example, the customer has a production N-Class HP 3000 in its primary location and a backup HP 3000 Series 969 system in a secondary location several hundred miles removed from the primary.

The process of implementing the DR was more manual-intensive than it needed to be. As an aside, it was completed entirely from a remote location — thanks to the Internet, VPNs and the use of the HP Secure Web Console on the 969.

One of the most labor-intensive aspects of the DR exercise was to rebuild the IO configuration of the DR machine (the 969) from the full backup tape of the production N-Class machine, which included an integrated system load tape (SLT) as part of the backup.

The ability to integrate the SLT on the same tape as the full backup is very convenient. It results in a simplified recovery procedure as well as the assurance that the SLT to be used will be as current as possible.

Continue reading "Disaster Recovery Optimization Techniques" »


Friday Fine-tune: How to discover the creation date of a STORE tape

Newswire Classic

By John Burke

It is probably more and more likely that, as the years pass by, you will discover a STORE tape and wonder when it was created. Therefore it is a good idea to review how to do this. I started out writing “how to easily do this,” but realized there is nothing easy about it — since it is not well-documented and if you just want the creation date, you have to do a bit of a kludge to get it. Why not something better?

It turns out the ;LISTDIR option of RESTORE is the best you can do. But if you do not want a list of all the files on the tape, you need to feed the command the name of some dummy, non-existent file. ;LISTDIR will also display the command used to create the tape.

By the way, this only works with NMSTORE tapes. For example, when ;LISTDIR is used on a SYSDUMP tape that also stored files, you get something like this (note that even though you are using the RESTORE command, if it contains the ;LISTDIR option, nothing is actually restored):

:restore *t;dummy;listdir

>> TURBO-STORE/RESTORE VERSION C.65.19 B5151AA <<

RESTORE *t;dummy;LISTDIR
FRI, DEC 31, 2004, 3:22 PM
RESTORE SKIPPING SLT IN PROGRESS ON LDEV 7

MPE/iX MEDIA DIRECTORY
MEDIA NAME : STORE/RESTORE-HP/3000.MPEXL 
MEDIA VERSION : MPE/iX 08.50 FIXED ASCII
MEDIA NUMBER : 1

MEDIA CREATION DATE
WED, MAY 7, 2003, 7:06 AM

SYSGEN ^SLTZDUMP.INDIRECT;*SYSGTAPE;LDEV=7;
REELNUM=1;SLTDATE=52863;TIME=117839624

MEDIA CREATED WITH THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS
OPTION DIRECTORY
OPTION ONVS


How to make a date that lasts on MPE/iX

January 1 calendar pageNow that it's 2018, there's less than 10 years remaining before HP's intrinsic for date handling on MPE/iX loses its senses. CALENDAR's upcoming problems have fixes. There's a DIY method that in-house application developers can use to make dates in 2028 read correctly, too.

The key to this DIY repair is to intercept a formatting intrinsic for CALENDAR.

CALENDAR returns two numbers: a "year" from 0 to 127 and a "day of year" from 1 to 366.
 
FMTCALENDAR takes those two numbers and turns it into a string like Monday, January 1, 1900.  It takes the "year" and adds it to 1900 and displays that. "In a sense," explains Allegro's Steve Cooper, "that's where things 'go wrong'."
If one intercepts FMTCALENDAR and replaces it with their own routine, it can say if the "year" is 0 to 50, then add 2028 to it, otherwise, add 1900 as it always did.  That would push the problem out another 50 years.
This interception task might be above your organization's pay grade. If that's true, there are 3000-focused companies that can help with that work. These kinds of repairs to applications are the beginning of life-extension for MPE/iX systems. There might be more to adjust, so it's a good idea to get some help while the community still has options for support.

Friday Fine-Tune: Moving DDS stores to disk

Moving-van-640Editor's note: In the last two weeks 3000 owners have been asking about DDS tape storage migration and how to find 38-year-old systems. Here in the last working day for the year 2017, it seems like we're running in a time machine. Here's some help on moving old data to new media.

We're taking Monday off to celebrate the new year. Not many people figured the 3000 would have users working in that 15th year since HP stopped making the server. We'll be back Wednesday with a new story. Seems like anything can happen.

I want to restore some files from a DDS tape to a store-to-disc file. It been a while I am not sure if this is something that can be done. I need some help with the syntax.

Alan Yeo says

I think you need to restore the files from the tape and then store them to disc, as the resulting disc file needs to build a header of the files it contains.

So after restore, the store to disc syntax is something like

!SETVAR BACKUP_FILE "nameoffileyouwantocreate"
!FILE BK=!BACKUP_FILE;DEV=DISC
!FILE SYSLIST=!BACKUP_FILE;DEV=LP
!STORE fileselectionstring;*BK;SHOW;PROGRESS=5

Keven Miller adds

There is also TAPECOPY that reads STORE tapes and creates an STD (Store to Disk) on disk -- provided the STORE is all on one tape. I have a copy of the program on my website. Look for TAPECOPY, it's a tar file.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: Moving DDS stores to disk" »


Making a 3000 respond to networks, faster

I have a new HP 3000 A-500 installation that I can't Telnet to. Ping works both ways, but I get nothing with Reflection's Telnet. What do I need to check on the 3000 to get Telnet running?

Robert Schlosser says:

Two things come to mind: Check if the JINETD job is running [run it by streaming JINETD.NET.SYS]; and if the line "telnet 23/tcp" is in your SERVICES.NET.SYS file.

Donna Hofmeister adds:

You also need to have INETDCNF.NET configured.

There's a collection of 'samp' files in .NET that in most cases need to be copied to their 'real' file name in order to make TCP/INETD networking work.

Hofmeister, one of the community's more experienced hands with the standard Unix and Posix utilities built into MPE/iX and the HP 3000, explains.

The samp files are 

BPTABSMP -- bootptab (most people don’t use)
HOSTSAMP -- hosts
INCNFSMP -- inetd configuration
INSECSMP -- inetd security 
NETSAMP  -- reachable networks
NSSWSAMP -- nsswitch
PROTSAMP -- protocol
RSLVSAMP -- DNS resolving
SERVSAMP -- services

I believe each of the files also has a counterpart in /etc which is a link to the real file in .NET.SYS. If the real files are missing from .NET.SYS then many things (including Telnet and FTP) won’t work.
Our N-Class response times have slipped into unusable measurements. Linkcontrol only shows an issue with Recv dropped: addr on one path. Our enterprise network monitoring software sends a packet that the HP 3000 cannot handle. Do I need to shutdown and restart JINETD or restart the network to have my TCP changes in NMMGR take effect?

Craig Lalley wonders:

How are your gateways defined? If you change the gateway

NSCONTROL ;UPDATE=INTERNET

then you could try deleting the wrong gateway and see if it helps. You may have a router broadcasting a wrong gateway.

Continue reading "Making a 3000 respond to networks, faster" »


Fine-tune Friday: ODE's 3000 diagnostics

DiagnosticsOne diagnostic super-program, ODE, holds a wide range of tests for HP's 3000 hardware. These testing programs got more important once HP mothballed its Predictive Support service for the HP 3000 in 2006. Predictive would dial into a 3000, poke around to see what might be ready to fail, then report to HP's support engineers. ODE's diagnostics are a manual way to perform the same task, or fix something that's broken.

However, ODE includes programs that require a password. Stan Sieler has inventoried what was available in MPE/iX and examined each program for whether it's unlocked for customer use. That was back in the days when 3000 owners were still HP support customers. Today the 3000 owners are customers of third party support firms like Pivital Solutions, or Sieler's own Allegro. The locked programs remain in that state, more than six years after HP shuttered its support operations.

Continue reading "Fine-tune Friday: ODE's 3000 diagnostics" »


Dealing with PCL in modern printer networks

HP 3000s generate Printer Command Language, the format syntax HP created for its line of laser printers. The 3000s were glad to get PCL abilities in their applications and utilities, but PCL is not for everybody. Multifunction devices not schooled in HP technology, such as those from Xerox, need a go-between to extend the 3000's printing.

The easiest and most complete solution to this challenge is Minisoft's NetPrint, written by 3000 output device guru Richard Corn. When we last reported on Corn's creation it was helping the Victor S. Barnes Company pass 3000 output to Ricoh multifunction printers.

But for the company which can't find $995 in a budget for that 3000-ready product, there's a commercial Windows alternative you might try to integrate into your system designs. Charles Finley of Transformix explains that the path to print outside of PCL has multiple steps.

Continue reading "Dealing with PCL in modern printer networks" »


Advice on keys for 3000s, and KSAM files

When building a TurboIMAGE database, is it possible to have IMAGE automatically sort a segmented index for the key field?

Gilles Schipper says

No, but you can create TurboIMAGE b-tree index files which allows generic and range searches on items that are indexed - specifically master dataset key items. Only master dataset key items can be associated with b-tree index files.

You can find out more starting at Chapter 11 of the TurboIMAGE manual.

How can I reduce the size of my existing KSAM files? I have removed lots of records from the system and the KSAM files are consuming lots of magnetic real estate, even though there are few records left.

Chuck Trites says

Make a copy of the KSAM file. Then use the verify in KSAMUTIL to get the specs of the file. Purge the KSAMFIL and the KEYFILE if there is one. Build the KSAM file with the specs. FCOPY from the copy to the new KSAM file and you are done. It won't copy the deleted records to the new file.

Francois Desrochers explains

Do a LISTF,5 to get the current key definitions.

Build a temporary output file with all the same attributes:

:BUILD KSNEW;REC=-80,,F,ASCII;KSAMXL;KEY=(B,1,10)

Copy the records from the original file to the temporary file

:FCOPY FROM=KSTEST;TO=KSNEW

Purge the original file and rename the temporary file:

:PURGE KSTEST
:RENAME KSNEW,KSTEST


OpenSSL's gaps for 3000s surface again

HP did its best, considering what was left of the MPE/iX lab budget, to move the server into modern security protocols. Much of the work was done after the company announced it would end its 3000 business. The gaps in that work are still being being talked about today.

OpensslA message on the 3000 newsgroup-mailing list noted that installing the SFTP package for the 3000 uncovers one gap in software. John Clogg at Cerro Wire said that "I successfully generated a key pair and loaded the public key on the server, but that didn't solve the No key exchange algorithm problem. One posting I found seemed to suggest that the problem was an old version of the SSL library that did not support the encryption the server was trying to use." A note on enabling the 3000's OpenSSL from 2010 still wished for a library newer than what's left on MPE/iX.

The work that remains to be done—so a 3000 can pass sensitive info via SFTP—has been on a community wish list for many years. Backups using SFTP are missing some updates needed to the SSL library. At least the server's got a way to preserve file characteristics: filecode, recsize, blockfactor, type. Preservation of these attributes means a file can be moved to any offsite storage that could communicate with the MPE/iX system. Posix on MPE/iX comes to the rescue.

In the heart of the financial industry in 2003, a modest-sized HP 3000 connected to more than 100 customers through a secure Internet proxy server. That encryption combination was emerging as HP went into its last quarter of sales for the system. But today's standards are miles ahead of those of 2003.

"The old OpenSSL library does not support the ciphers needed to meet current standards," Clogg said. "I was able to make the connection work because the FTP service provider has a configuration setting to enable "insecure old ciphers." Fortunately, this will work for our purposes, but it would be unacceptable if we were transferring banking, credit card or PII data."

The 3000's OpenSSL library is older than 1.01e, which another homesteader says is the cutoff for security that protects from the Heartbleed hacks and RSA key generation compromises.

Continue reading "OpenSSL's gaps for 3000s surface again" »


Fine-tune: Database passwords, slow clocks

We are trying to access a database on our old system using QUERY and it is asking for a password. I have done a LISTF ,-3 on the database, but there is no lockword listed (which I assumed would be the password). Where do I find the password assigned to a database?

John Burke replied

Assuming you do not have access to the original schema and you want to know what the password is, not just access the database, then sign on as the creator in the group with the database, run DBUTIL.PUB.SYS and issue the command SHOW databasename PASSWORDS.

Mike Church and Joseph Dolliver added

If you just want to access the database, log on to the system as the database creator and, when asked for password, put in a “;” semicolon and hit return.

Why is my system clock running slow? Our HP 3000 loses about one minute per day.

Bob J. replies

One possibility was addressed by a firmware update. HP's text from a CPU firmware (41.33) update mentions:

“System clock (software maintained) loses time. The time loss occurs randomly and may result in large losses over a relatively short time period. Occurrences of the above problem have only been reported against the HP 3000 979KS/x00 (Mohawk) systems. Software applications that perform frequent calling of a PDC routine, PDC_CHASSIS, affect the amount of time lost by the system clock. Your hardware support company should be happy to update for you.”

[Editor's note: as this question was posed a few years ago, today's hardware support company will be an independent one. We've always recommended Pivital Solutions.]

Tongue firmly in cheek, Wirt Atmar noted

My first guess would be relativistic time dilation effects as viewed by an observer at a distance due to the fact that you’re now migrating off of the HP 3000 at an ever accelerating rate. My second guess, although it’s less likely, would be that your machine has found out that it’s about ready to be abandoned and is so depressed that it simply can no longer work at normal speed. We’ve certainly kept this information from our HP 3000s. There’s just no reason that they need to know this kind of thing at the moment.

And in the same vein, Bernie Sherrard added this, referring to HP's promised end of 3000 support on Dec. 31, 2006

Look at the bright side. At a loss of one minute per day, you won’t get to 12/31/2006, until 2 AM on 1/2/2007. So, you will get 26 hours of support beyond everyone else.


Getting the Message Across for MPE/iX

MessagesNot long ago, the HP 3000 community was wondering about the limits of message files in the operating system. HP introduced the feature well back in the 20th Century, but only took Message Files into Native Mode with MPE/iX 5.0. That's certainly within the realm of all operating HP 3000s by today. The message file, according to HP's documentation, is the heart of the 3000's file system InterProcess Communication.

Message files reside partly in memory and partly on disk. MPE XL uses the memory buffer part as much as possible, to achieve the best performance. The disc portion of the message file is used only as secondary storage in case the memory buffer part overflows. For many users of IPC, MPE XL never accesses the disc portion of the message file.

Yes, that says MPE XL up there. The facility has been around a long time.

What do you do with message files? A program could open a message file and write a data record every 2 seconds. The data record could be the dateline plus the 2-word return from the CLOCK intrinsic. In another example, a message file could be used to enable soft interrupts. It might then open a log file to write progress messages from the interrupt handler.

HP's examples of using message files are illustrated using Pascal/XL, so you know this is 3000-specific technology. You'd think they'd be little-used by now, but this month the developers on the 3000 mailing list were asking about limits for the number of message files. An early answer was 63, but Stan Seiler used a classic 3000-era method to discover it: testing.

The answer is 4083. Or, why testing counts.

I just successfully opened 4,083 new message files from one process. Since the max-files-per-process is 4095, I suspect I could probably have squeezed in a couple more, but my test program already had some files open.

That this programming facility is still in use seems to suggest it's got utility left. Multiple programs and processes use message files to communicate. HP explains in an extensive document, "Suppose that a large programming task is to be divided into two processes. One process will interface with the user. This process is referred to as the "supervisor" process. It does some processing tasks itself and offloads others to a "server" process. This process only handles requests from the supervisor and returns the results."


Staying Secure with MPE/iX Now and Then

Account-relationships-securityThe IT news is full of reports about security breaches. If an Equifax system with 143 million records can be breached, then Yahoo's 3 billion email accounts were not far behind, were they?

Security by obscurity for outward-facing MPE/iX systems isn't much protection. The high-test security that is protecting the world's most public systems seems to failing, too. A few years ago, the US Office of Personnel Management had its systems hacked. Millions of fingerprints were stolen from there.

Hewlett-Packard built good intra-3000 security into MPE/iX, and third parties made it even more robust. Back in the 1980s, I wrote a manual for such a product called EnGarde that made MPE/iX permissions easier to manage. Vesoft created Security/3000 as the last word in protecting 3000s and MPE/iX data. Eugene Volokh's Burn Before Reading was an early touchstone. The magic of SM was a topic explored by 3000 legend Bob Green in a Newswire column.

Homesteading managers will do well to make a place in their datacenter budgets for support of the 3000. Security is built-in for MPE/iX, but understanding how it works might be a lost art at some sites.

The fundamentals of securing an MPE/iX system go way back. A wayback server of sorts at the 3k Ranger website provides HP's security advice from 1994. It's still valid for anyone, especially a new operator or datacenter employee who's got a 3000 to manage. They just don't teach this stuff anymore. 3000s get orphaned in datacenters when the MPE/iX pros move on into retirement or new careers.

The printed advice helps. A direct link to the Ranger webpage can be a refresher course for any new generation of 3000 minders.

Managers of MPE/iX systems need to look out for themselves in securing HP 3000s. Hewlett-Packard gave up on the task long ago. In the era that led to the end of 3000 operations at HP, the vendor warned that its software updates for MPE/iX were going to be limited to security repairs after 2008. They weren't kidding. The very last archived HP 3000 security bulletin on the HP Enterprise website had stern advice for a DNS poisoning risk.

Continue reading "Staying Secure with MPE/iX Now and Then" »


Friday Fine-Tune: Libraries, Large Disks

LibraryWhere can I find a list of HP DLT libraries and what version of MPE can drive them?

No libraries are supported on MPE in random mode. While autoloaders can easily be made to work quite well on the HP 3000, one requires specialized software in order to make use of the full functionality of a DLT library. What is important from an HP 3000 point of view is as follows:

• The tape drives in the library must be supported on MPE and can be connected to the 3000. This means the drives must be DDS or DLT4000, DLT7000 and DLT8000. If the system is an HSC (pre-PCI) architecture, the drives must be HVD SCSI. If the system is a PCI system (A- or N-Class,) the drives can also be LVD.

• The connection to the library robot or picker, must also be supported on the 3000, again HSC needs HVD and PCI can do LVD or HVD.

• Finally you must have software that will connect to the picker and drive it. This software can either be running on MPE or on another system, to which the picker is connected. MPE itself cannot drive a robotic library.

I want to install disc drives larger than HP's 144GB. What issues should I consider?

The maximum disk size for MPE/IX is theoretically 2^31 sectors. Due to overhead and rounding DISCFREE output will show 2,147,483,632 sectors for such a disk, this is equal to 549,755,809,792 bytes. So, a disk of this size would likely be sold as a 550 GB disk (powers of ten) though it contains 512 GB from an engineering perspective (powers of two).

Even with the Large Disk Patches, MPE/iX users should be cautious when considering the usage of disks larger than 18-36 GB on MPE/iX systems for the following reasons:

MPE/iX transaction throughput increases when MPE is allowed to spread IO across disks. Even though newer disks are faster than older disks there are limits to disk speed and bus speed which must be taken into account.

Moving from nine 2 GB disks to one 18 GB disk, for example, will often create a disk IO bottle neck. For best performance we recommend that the number of MPE LDEVs never be reduced - if one has nine 2 GB disks then they should be replaced with nine 18 GB disks to ensure no loss of throughput.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: Libraries, Large Disks" »


Importing CSV Text Into COBOL II

CSV iconI'm importing a Comma Separated Value (CSV) text file into a COBOL II program. I want to compare a numeric field from the file to a number. But the input text field can be different for each record. How do I code in COBOL to accommodate the different number sizes in the text file?

Walter Murray, who worked inside HP's Language Labs where COBOL II was developed before moving out into the user community, noted that Suprtool was likely the best solution to the problem. But after someone suggested that COBOL's UNSTRING statement could be useful, he had his doubts. 

Along with suggesting that "importing the file into an Excel spreadsheet, and saving it in a more civilized format," Murray had these notes.

The UNSTRING statement will be problematic, because one of your fields may have one (or more?) commas in it, and you may have an empty field not surrounded by quotation marks. You might have to roll your own code to break the record into fields.  If you are comfortable with reference modification in COBOL, your code will be a lot cleaner.

Once you do isolate the check amount in a data item by itself, you should be able to use FUNCTION NUMVAL-C to convert it.  Yes, NUMVAL and NUMVAL-C are supported by COBOL II/iX, as long as you turn on the POST85 option.

Olav Kappert offered a long but consistent process.

First thing to do is to not use CVS; use tab-delimited. No problem with UNSTRING. Just use the length field and determine if the length = 0.

Do an UNSTRING of the fields delimited by the tab. Then strip out the quotes. Determine the length of each field and right-justify each field and zero-fill them with a leading zero. Then move the field to a numeric field.

You now have your values. Do this for each field from the unstring. You can create a loop and keep finding the ",".  By the way, determine the record length and set the last byte+1 to "~" so that the unstring can determine the end of record. Long process, but consistent in method.

Continue reading "Importing CSV Text Into COBOL II" »


Friday Fine-tune: Disk and memory checks

The utility cstm has the ability to show the configuration of your current memory installation: the makeup of 3000 memory in terms of boards used. What command delivers this information?

First, enter the MAP command to see a map of the hardware on your system. Each item on the resulting list has a line number. Note the line number for “memory” and use it in the “select device” command, then enter the “info” command. For example, if the memory is device 64:

cstm>select device 64
cstm>info

If you enter the map command now, you will see the status of the memory will be “Information starting” or “information running”. When the status changes to “Information Successful,” you can display the result with the “il” (information log) command. Note: You can avoid the necessity of repeatedly looking at MAP to determine whether the info function has completed by entering “wait” at the prompt following the “info” command. You will not receive another prompt until the info process has completed.

Another answer without using cstm is to run SYSINFO.PRVXL.TELESUP and at the prompt type MEMMAP. You should avoid this solution if using Mirror/iX, since it will break the mirror.]

What MPE command shows me much total hard disk space I have available to me, and how much of that is being used? Also is it possible to break that up per account? For instance, can it tell me how much hard drive space I would gain by purging a particular account?

Use :DISCFREE C for checking disc space used and available by drive and in total. :REPORT z.@ will let you know how much your accounts are using. You may want to run :FSCHECK and do a SYNCACCOUNTING first.


Fine-tune Friday: Moving systems quickly

Here in the 14th year after HP stopped building 3000s, customers continue to use them. They use them up, too, and when that happens it's time to move a system from one machine to another. Here's some timeless advice from a net.digest column of the NewsWire on how to move quickly.

How do you move a large system from one machine to a completely new system, including disk drives, in the quickest way possible and minimizing downtime? In this particular case, it is a 7x24 shop and its online backup to a DLT4000 takes 16 hours.

Stan Sieler came up with an interesting approach to this particular problem, an approach that can be extended to solve a variety of problems in large 7x24 shops.

• Buy a Seagate external disk drive.

• Configure the Seagate on both the old system and the new system.

• Connect the Seagate on the old system.

• volutil/newset the Seagate to be a new volume set, “XFER” (REMEMBER: Volume set names can and should be short names!)

• Do one (or more) STORE-to-disks using compression with the target disk being the new Seagate drive.

Continue reading "Fine-tune Friday: Moving systems quickly" »


Steps for a Final Shutdown

Kane-death-deadlineWe're hearing a story about pulling the next-to-last application off an HP 3000 that's run a port facility. At some point, every HP 3000 has to be guided into dock for the last time. These are business critical systems with sensitive data—which requires a rigorous shutdown for sending a 3000 into a salvage yard.

While this is a sad time for the IT expert who's built a career on MPE expertise, doing a shutdown by the numbers is in keeping with the rest of the professional skill-set you can expect from a 3000 manager. I am reminded of the line from Citizen Kane. "Then, as it must for every man, death came to Charles Foster Kane." Nothing escapes death, but a proper burial seems in order for such a legendary system.

Chris Bartram, whose 3k Associates website offers a fine list of public domain MPE/iX software, has chronicled all the details of turning off an HP 3000. "I have performed last rites for a 9x8 server at a customer site," he says, "and have been through the exercise a couple times before."

There are 10 steps that Bartram does before switching off the 3000's power button for the last time.

Continue reading "Steps for a Final Shutdown" »


SSDs: Not a long-shot to work with MPE/iX

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is not entirely sure if it's leaving the support forum it once devoted to the HP e3000. (After so many years, "e3000" is still the go-to keyword while looking at the HPE resources that remain online.) To test if the forum was still alive, or entirely in archive stasis, I posed a question. Could an IDE SSD drive get a hookup to a 3000 using an SCSI converter?

Is there enough bus connectivity in the e3000 to install an SSD on the server? There are SSD drives that can link up via IDE and I've found a SCSI to IDE converter.

One reply bounced back on the forum. "Torsten" said, "If this is really an HP3000 server, this sounds like the most crazy tuning idea."

Not so crazy, we've seen. In 2015, after one 3000-L newsgroup user compared putting SSDs in 3000s to a McLaren racing engine in an SUV, a more plausible solution emerged: using SSDs to support a virtualized 3000 running on an Intel-based PC. "You could house your 3000 in a Stromasys emulator running on a Linux box with VMware," said Gilles Schipper of GSA, "employing as many SATA SSD disks as you want on your host."

But there was a time in another May when SSDs running native in HP's 3000 hardware was a possibility worth investigating. It was also a necessity, because it was the only way.

Continue reading "SSDs: Not a long-shot to work with MPE/iX" »


Fine-tune Friday: SCSI codes, and clean-ups for UDCs and 3000 power supplies

Cleanup-siteI need to clean up COMMAND.PUB.SYS on my 3000. There's a problem with BULDACCT. Is there a utility to help manage the UDC catalog?

Stan Sieler replies:

One option is "PURGE," which ships on all MPE systems :) Of course, that means you have to rebuild the UDC catalog. We recently encountered a site where, somehow, an HFS filename had gotten into COMMAND.PUB.SYS. You can't delete UDC entries with HFS filenames, nor can you add them. I had to edit the file with Debug to change the name into something that could be deleted.

Keven Miller adds:

I believe you want the utility UDCSORT from the CSL, the UDC sorting and reorganization program.

There are so many SCSI types. It's got to be the most confusing four letter acronym. Is there a guide?

Steve Dirickson offers this primer:

SE (single-ended): TTL-level signals referenced to ground; speeds from 5 Mhz to 20 MHz

Differential (HVD): something around +/-12V signals on paired wires (old-timers think “EIA 20mA current loop”); same speeds as SE

LVD (Ultra2): TTL-level differential; 40 MHz clock

Ultra160: same as LVD, but data signals double-clocked, i.e. transfers on both clock transitions like DDR DRAM. LVD and Ultra160 can co-exist on the same bus with SE devices, but will operate in SE mode. HVD doesn’t co-exist with anything else.

Upon arrival this morning my console had locked up. I re-started the unit, but the SCSI drives do not seem to be powering up. The green lights flash for a second after the power is applied, but that is it. The cooling fan does not turn either. The  fan that is built into the supply was making noise last week. I can’t believe the amount of dust inside.

Tom Emerson responded:

This sounds very familiar. I’d say the power supply on the drive cabinet is either going or gone [does the fan ‘not spin’ due to being gunked up with dust and grease, or just ‘no power’?] I’m thinking that the power supply is detecting a problem and shutting down moments after powering up [hence why you see a ‘momentary flicker’].

Continue reading "Fine-tune Friday: SCSI codes, and clean-ups for UDCs and 3000 power supplies" »


Friday Fine-Tune: A Diagnostics Tour

Newswire Classic
From Stan Sieler

There are two kinds of diagnostics: online and offline.

The online come in two flavors:

1. Older releases of MPE/iX have online diagnostics accessed via SYSDIAG.PUB.SYS (which is a script that runs DUI.DIAG.SYS). (MPE/iX 6.0 and earlier, possibly MPE/iX 6.5 (I'm not sure))

2. Newer releases of MPE/iX have online diagnostics accessed via CSTM.PUB.SYS (which is a script that runs /usr/sbin/stm/ui/bin/stmc).

Both are, well, difficult to use. (HP-UX also switched from sysdiag to stm.) Both have some modules that require passwords, and some that don't.

The offline diagnostics are on a bootable CD or tape. The lastest offline diagnostics CD (for PA-RISC) that I could find was labelled "2004."

That CD has seven diagnostics/utilities. I tried running all of them on an A-Class system. The "ODE" one is special; it's a program that itself hosts a number of diagnostics/utilities (some of which require passwords).

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: A Diagnostics Tour" »


Friday Fine-Tune: HP 3000 DLT vs. DDS

Dlt Backing up enterprise-grade 3000s presents interesting choices. Back in the 1990s when the 3000 being built and sold by HP, DDS at first had only two generations, neither of which were reliable. A DDS tape used to be the common coin for OS updates and software upgrades. The media has advanced beyond a DDS-4 generation to DAT-360, but Digital Linear Tape (DLT) has a higher capacity and more reliability than DDS.

When a DDS tape backup runs slower than DLT, however, something is amiss. DLT is supposed to supply a native transfer rate of 15 MBps in the SureStore line of tape libraries. You can look at an HP PDF datasheet on the Ultrium SureStore devices certified by HP for MPE/iX at this link.

HP 3000 community partners such as Pivital Solutions offer these DLTs, At an estimated cost of about $1,300 or more per device, you'll expect them to beat the DDS-3 transfers of 5 MBps.

When Ray Shahan didn't see the speed he expected after moving to DLT and asked the 3000 newsgroup community what might be wrong. Advice ranged from TurboStore commands, to channels where the drives are installed, to the 3000's bandwidth and CPU power to deliver data to the DLT. Even the lifespan of the DLT tape can be a factor. HP's MPE/iX IO expert Jim Hawkins weighed in among the answers, while users and third-party support providers gave advice on how to get the speed which you pay extra for from DLT.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: HP 3000 DLT vs. DDS" »


Fine-Tune Friday: Moving Backup Files

Editor's note: Today's 3000 technique talk is written by Brian Edminster, an HP 3000 veteran who's been maintaining MPE/iX apps in a support role for many years. Edminster's experience goes back into the 1980s, making him a good match for some of the classic MPE/iX apps that are still serving companies. He's available for contract or long-term engagements through his company Applied Technologies.

By Brian Edminster 

First of two parts

Once store-to-disk backups are regularly being processed, it’s highly desirable to move them offsite — for the same reasons that it’s desirable to rotate tape media to offsite storage. You want to protect against site-wide catastrophic failures. It could be something as simple as fire, flood, or a disgruntled employee, or as unusual as earthquake or act of war.

Regardless of the most pressing reason, it really is important to keep at least some of your backups offsite, so as to facilitate rebuilding / recovering from scratch, either at your own facility, or at a backup/recovery site.

The problem comes in that the MPE/iX file system is far more structured than Unix, Windows, or any other non-MPE/iX file system-based storage mechanisms. While transferring a file off MPE/iX is easy via FTP, sftp/scp, or rsync, retrieving it is problematic, at least if you wish the retrieved files and the original store-to-disk files to be identical (i.e., with the same file characteristics: filecode, recsize, blockfactor, type, and so forth).

What would be optimal is automatic preservation of these attributes, so that a file could be moved to any offsite storage that could communicate with the MPE/iX system. Posix on MPE/iX comes to the rescue.

Continue reading "Fine-Tune Friday: Moving Backup Files" »


Friday Fine-Tune: Nike Arrays 101

Newswire Classic
by John Burke

Many 3000 homesteaders have picked up used HP Nike Model 20 disk arrays. For many years there has been a glut of these inexpensive devices on the market and they work with older models of HP 3000s. However, there is a lot of misinformation floating around about how and when to use them. One company posted the following to 3000-L:

Nike_Model_20_In_Close_Up“We’re upgrading from a Model 10 to a Model 20 Nike array. We're deciding whether to keep it in hardware RAID configuration or to switch to MPE/iX mirroring, since you can now do it on the system volume set. We’re considering the performance issue of keeping Nike hardware RAID versus the safety of MPE Mirroring. How do you switch from one to the other? You can use the second Fast and Wide card on the array when using MPE mirroring, but you can’t when using Model 20 hardware RAID."

“So, with hardware RAID, you have to consider the single point of failure of the controller card. If we ‘split the bus’ on the array mechanism into two separate groups of drives, and then connect a separate controller to the other half of the bus, you can’t have the hardware mirrored drive on the other controller. It must be on the same path as the ‘master’ drive because MPE sees them as a single device.

"Using software mirroring, you can do this because both drives are independently configured in MPE. Software mirroring adds overhead to the CPU, but it’s a trade-off. We are evaluating the combination of efficiency, performance, fault tolerance and cost.”

First of all, Mirrored Disk/iX does not support mirroring of the System Volume Set – never did and never will. Secondly, you most certainly can use a second FWSCSI card with a Model 20 attached to an HP 3000.

Another poster elaborated on the second controller. All of the drives are accessible from either controller but of course via different addresses. Your installer should set the DEFAULT ownership of drives to each controller. To improve throughput each controller should share the load. Only one controller is necessary to address all of the drives, but where MPE falls short is not having a mechanism for auto failover of a failing controller.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: Nike Arrays 101" »


Fine-tune Friday: opening disk, adding HASS

I need contiguous file space for my XM log file. How do I get this?

Many operations on the HP 3000 require contiguous disk space. Other files also require contiguous space; for example, consider the contiguous disk space on LDEV 1 required for an OS update. If you do not have one of the several third-party products that will create contiguous disk space on a drive, you may still be able to get enough free space by using CONTIGVOL.

However, occasionally, CONTIGVOL will stop with a message of “*Warning: Contigvol - Inverse Extent Table Full, Internal resource limit.” What can you do? Run it again. HP’s Goetz Neumann reported the message "is a warning that an internal table has filled up. It appears CONTIGVOL only handles looking at 40,000 extents at a time. You can run CONTIGVOL multiple times if the first run does not condense the free space enough because of this limitation.

I am adding two drives to a HASS (Jamaica) enclosure that already has several drives. How do I do this?

Gilles Schipper, Lars Appel and Chris Bartram reply:

First, a note of caution. If you dynamically add disk drives to, say, your MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET, you could find yourself in a pickle if you subsequently perform a START RECOVERY by accident or design. So while you can add drives dynamically as a convenience, it is a good idea to schedule a SHUTDOWN, START NORECOVERY as soon as possible to “fix” the new drives in your base configuration.

You do not even have to take down the system to add the drives to an HASS enclosure. The following steps will do the job.

Continue reading "Fine-tune Friday: opening disk, adding HASS" »


Fine-Tune Friday: Jazz refuge, Query-JCL tip

Editor's Note: We're taking Monday July 3 off to celebrate Independence Day, and we'll be back on July 5 with a new report.

Where did the files HP hosted on jazz.external.hp.com go? So many articles reference that HP 3000 labs site.

The Jazz server contents were moved to several servers. A system at Speedware (a company now called Fresche Legacy) has much of what was hosted on Jazz. Those Jazz links at Speedware (now Fresche Legacy, and deeply absorbed with IBM iSeries work) are tucked away under hpmigrations.com. Not exactly the place where you'd look for homesteading tools, but available anyway.

How can I supply to QUERY a variable from within a JCL job? The physical paperwork for a file on the 3000 is being copied to digital format. We mark the files as deleted, (logically, not physically). Tracking this destroyed paperwork is done manually (a tedious and error prone process). How can I write something on the 3000 to create a comma delimited file of files shredded the day before?

John Long replies

This may help:

:SETVAR PREVDATE, !HPYYYYMMDD - 1
:SHOWVAR PREVDATE
PREVDATE = 20170607

I'm not sure how (or even if) query reads variables. (Nothing in the manual about it). Which is why you might have to 'build' your jobstream daily and replace the date in the 'USE file.'

Continue reading "Fine-Tune Friday: Jazz refuge, Query-JCL tip" »


Friday Fine-Tune: A 3000's Intrinsic Savvy

Homer-at-blackboardAs the clock counts down to the 10-year deadline for calendar services changes, our thoughts turn to HPCALENDAR. That's the intrinsic HP wrote for the 6.0 and 7.x releases of the 3000 OS, a new tool to solve an old problem. Alas, HPCALENDAR is fresher than the bedrock CALENDAR, but it's only callable in the 3000's Native Mode.

But poking into the online resources for MPE Intrinsics, I learned that once more HP's re-shelved its 3000 docs. Things have gotten better: everything now lives on the much-better-focused HP Enterprise website. You can, for the moment, locate the guidelines to intrinsics for MPE/iX at hpe.com.

The Intrinsics Manual for MPE/iX 7.x is also a PDF file at Team NA Consulting. Independents like Neil Armstrong help the community that's using HP's resources for 3000s these days. It used to be much simpler. In the 1990s, the Interex user group ran a collection of well-written white papers by George Stachnik. We're lucky enough to have them with us today, cut loose from ownership and firewalls. One is devoted to the system's intrinsics.

Continue reading "Friday Fine-Tune: A 3000's Intrinsic Savvy" »