[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select 38" (OpenSSL on VMS)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-10-07 18:59:21 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> No, not now, of course not.

Time spent on DECnet is not time spent on getting rid of DECnet.   
Getting rid of DECnet means dragging the IP stack forward.

> Or did you make your FAL over IP + SMB etc. these last few days?

I haven't need to do FAL but a few times a year, and generally don't 
use the approach.   I much prefer distributed logging and distributed 
job scheduling, or just transferring the files on demand.

> But IP is changing, remember? we're going from IPv4 to IPv6. So we have 
> to adapt existing functionality to new circumstances, support for both 
> IPv4 and IPv6.

Everything is changing.   Except (preferably) DECnet.

> No, I did not. The design seems to be there, it has to be implemented. 
> It is not new functionality on the DECnet side, it is adapting DECnet 
> to IPv6.

You asked for fixes that might allow DECnet to work.   That is working 
on DECnet.   DECnet is dead.   DECnet work needs to end, and existing 
applications need to be off that protocol.

> I'm sure you will publish your FAL over IP the next week or so on your 
> web site, and then we can all pay tribute to you for finally designing 
> the IP functionality that made DECnet redundant.

This is OpenVMS.   Use COPY /FTP or sftp, and sling the file around.    
I don't expect elegant solutions.   As for this case, adding one more 
command is not an issue.

As for remote file access via FAL (and as much as I'd prefer dynamic 
remote volume mount support be added), that's not something I implement 
or depend on, as I'm usually working to remove deprecated, problematic 
and dead protocols.  Not add those dependencies.

For end-users that want to use dead protocols, that enjoy complex user 
interfaces, that need to use unencrypted and unauthenticated 
transports, have at.   Remote FAL is a wonderful thing, after all.



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