[Info-vax] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-02-01 17:56:29 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2013-02-01, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>> VMS itself is also comparatively difficult to manage and troubleshoot.
>> VMS is a hassle for even experienced users.  It reminds me of RHEL
>> around version six or so, for the arcana required to make good use of
>> it.
> 
> You mean you don't want to go back to using XF86Setup as well as
> building your own modelines ? :-)

Having to muck around in the config files for a default install with a 
C compiler and some basic IP networking — whether that's some arcane rc 
file or dot-file or SYS$STARTUP:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM file — gets old.  
Easy, familiar, tedious, fussy, and old.

Then I look at what CommodoreJohn and Phillip are going through here, 
just sorting out how to use the basic functions of the boxes.  VMS 
should not be this difficult.

> As someone who went through that era with Linux, you certainly had to know
> a lot more about the internals of your machines in those days.

Which is why I'm recalling that era of Linux while rebuilding VMS 
boxes, such as one that clobbered itself due to a VMS bug.

Once you've done enough installs on newer boxes — and boxes that can 
require five minutes of easy configuration for functional server — what 
you have to go through to get VMS and IP and C and patches and {DNS, 
web services, disk mounts, whatever} certainly starts looking tedious.

> BTW, I think you mean RH 6, not RHEL 6. RH version numbers went up to
> RH9 before they were reset for the RHEL series (which followed RH9).

Yep.  RH6.  Not RHEL.  Not Fedora.  The finger-memory went to RHEL, 
unfortunately.  My bad.



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