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

[Paul Sture]

On 2014-09-23, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> 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.

According to SYSGEN help on Alpha V8.3 it's a bitmask and only the first
two are used.

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

He does have a point y'know.

-- 
$ exit 13492
%SYSTEM-F-GAMEOVER, all your base are belong to us