[Info-vax] VMS dying? Nah, it refused to die here

[David Froble]

Paul Sture wrote:
> On 2014-09-23, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
>> In article <lkr8fb-diu2.ln1 at news.chingola.ch>,
>> Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
>>> On 2014-09-23, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> $ shutdown -h now
>>>>> %DCL-W-DEFOVF, too many command procedure parameters - limit to eight
>>> Well VMS did refuse to die at the bidding of a Unix command :-)
>>>
>>>> Hey Paul, try this (assuming a fairly recent OpenVMS):
>>>>
>>>> $ MCR SYSGEN
>>>> SYSGEN> SET DCL_CTLFLAGS 8
>>>> SYSGEN> WRITE ACTIVE
>>>> SYSGEN> EXIT
>>>> $ shutdown -h now
>>>>
>>>> PS, don't do it in production. ;)
>>> Can't wait to see what it does :-)
>> It makes DCL accept up to 16 arguments instead of the typical 8 arguments.
>> Your "-h" and "now" would become parameters P9 and P10 and the shutdown 
>> procedure would be off and marching!
> 
> Aha. Thanks.
> 

Don't give Steve more ammunition in his crusade against VMS system 
management.  Really, I'm pretty laid back.  But that sequence of 
commands really sucks.  Even a +8 might have been acceptable.  But if 
you're going to set the number of acceptable arguments to 16, the "8" is 
really stupid.

Nice information, but, now Steve is going to get back onto his "too hard 
to manage" soapbox ...

:-)