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

[Chris]

On 09/19/16 15:45, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-09-19 15:28:27 +0000, Michael Moroney said:
>
>> Of course the VMS builtin where you could access any file on your
>> DECnet with almost any software just by using the file spec
>> node::dev:[dir.sub]file.ext is really great, and is missed on TCP/IP.
>
> There's nothing to preclude RMS from being updated to connect to remote
> RMS FAL servers via TLS, using either certificates or Kerberos for
> authentication.
>
> Or — for a somewhat larger investment — via sftp, rather than requiring
> a FAL server.
>
> It'd be easier to implement if there was a central distributed
> authentication service and password store on OpenVMS, too. But I digress.
>
> On other platforms, this involves a mount and the use of SMB or NFS for
> remote access, or ssh. Remote FAL file access on OpenVMS hasn't been
> commonly used around any of the local systems I'm aware of or deal with,
> outside of file copies or maybe TYPE commands — and I can trivially
> display file contents or various other operations via ssh, if I'm not
> copying the file.
>
> But then I'd much rather see COPY /SFTP and better IPv6 integration than
> any sort of support for FAL access via TLS or sftp, too. Once the base
> OS is IP-aware and IP-integrated to at least the level of DECnet, then...
>
>

You might also have a look at the rsync utility, which has a myriad of
options and is used here and everywhere for backups and file access
across the network. No nfs mounts required either, as it uses a modified
ftp protocol for it's work. Works with IPV6 also...

Regards,

Chris