[Info-vax] How do I make zip, unzip etc. available to all users?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-01-09 11:51:49 +0000, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk said:

> Apropos of nothing much in particular: the VMS community generally used 
> to be proud of VMS's capabilities in terms of extended uptimes,

If your current versions of your front-line server tools are years out 
of date (e.g. Apache HTTPD, ISC BIND), think of how many patches and 
reboots you've saved.

> even if the broader mechanisms for patch management left a bit to be desired.

If by "a bit to be desired" you mean a ~twenty year old design that 
hasn't particular been evolved or updated or enhanced, and that's very 
limited by present standards, and with an utterly absurd requirement 
for manual operations, a hilarious requirement for a web site login, 
and who could forget the requirements to download and unzip the kits, 
sure.  But how could I forget the inability to notify folks of patches 
more directly, the utter inability to keep track of servers and server 
status, the inability to (opt-in) automate this stuff, no access into 
the non-existent patch pipelines for user and local apps, and a whole 
host of other issues.    Because, you know, VMS just doesn't really get 
networking and distributed computing.   So, yeah, "a little bit to be 
desired".

> It seems like one of the other OS vendors has finally caught on too:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRlTISvjww (4 minutes, though you'll 
> get the general idea very quickly. Probably suitable for work, may 
> cause persistent after effects)
> 
> Don't reboot it, just patch.

Live patches have been around for Unix for a while with now-at-Oracle 
Ksplice, and similar capabilities has been added to Linux 4.   That 
kernel patching infrastructure is, of course, a non-trivial part of how 
far behind OpenVMS is, in this area.   OpenVMS can't manage to unload 
device drivers, for that matter.    Then there's the whole "uptime" 
problem for developers; of getting an app "correctly" running in a 
cluster or otherwise surviving a failover — because servers can and do 
fail.   Most of the basic pieces are there, but you're left to figure 
out how build your own failover and live backups and cluster rolling 
upgrades and related... Basically... from scratch.

The OpenVMS team is unwilling or unable to believe that IP will always 
be present.   How many knock-off effects does that (in)decision have, 
and how much complexity does that add?




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