[Info-vax] VMS First-Boot on x86 Contest

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-15 21:26:39 +0000, Bob Gezelter said:

> On Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 6:33:03 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig 
> (undress to reply) wrote:
>> In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8-805d-238b89a11852 at googlegroups.com>, Neil
>> Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes:
>> 
>>> p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.
>> 
>> VMS with all layered products as well?  CD?  No.  DVD?  Blu-Ray?
>> 
>> Whatever.  Some of the complexity of a VMS installation involves 
>> choosing what to install, whether to de-compress stuff, and so on.  
>> About 20 years ago, I bought a 4-GB disk for f. 500 or whatever.  These 
>>  days, a disk 100 times as large can be had for about a tenth of the  
>> price---a factor of 1000.  (And 50 GB costs 99 cents a month in the  
>> iCloud.)  Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS  
>> installation installs EVERYTHING.  Disks are cheap.  Really cheap.  If  
>> necessary, some functionality could be restricted via licensing.
> 
> Phillip,
> 
> With all due respect, I disagree.
> 
> It would be nice to have a complete DVD distribution of all the kits 
> that could be loaded onto available mass storage.
> 
> However, it should not load to the system disk. That just increases the 
> volume of &*^%%% which must be backed up and restored (setting that 
> directory tree NOBACKUP is not an option, it leads to too many 
> operational errors).
> 
> Installation by default is also a definite non-starter. I do not want 
> any products installed on a system that I do not intend to be installed 
> on that system. Configuration control is a major audit issue.
> 
> Having kits online so that intervention is not needed for an install is 
> a different matter.

The whole OpenVMS installation and configuration scheme is baroque, so 
I guess it makes sense to somebody.   it's a complete pile of dreck, so 
I guess it's "great!" or "secure!" or "atomic awesome sauce!" or some 
such.   It's a particularly hideous approach to test all the 
permutations, so it must be "wonderful!"   There's certainly no reason 
to just install a server platform that has server features, even if all 
of those are shut down by default, because that would make things far 
more straightforward.   And as for auditing, that's something which 
OpenVMS had as an add-on decades ago but that ended up vaporized in the 
mists of time and so there's no way to tell what's actually part of the 
installation and what's been added, because OpenVMS needs to be 
"hairier" because it's the platform for "real developers" or some such.

But seriously, dragging the whole platform back to something as utterly 
antique as optical disks?  Or continuing with and adding to what is 
already massive complexity and to the zillions of is-this-installed and 
we-need-that-go-set-some-parameter and 
edit-those-configuration-files-to-start-these-dozen-products-and-which-are-part-of-other-server-platform-base-distros-and-remember-to-start-them-in-that-specific-order 
is even a remotely sane thing to do?    Load it all, configure it all, 
set up a sane way that the services are started, and provide a way to 
verify what's installed is as expected, except for {list of files}.  
And we have this little thing called "the internet", and for all dozen 
of you that cannot "internet" there's this odd little thingie called a 
USB flash drive.  Don't expect and don't require optical media.    
Anybody that's auditing is going to run a port scan on the box, and 
they're also going to want to audit what's installed, so... make that 
all easier.

In the best-possible world, the whole need for SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM and 
SYLOGICALS.COM can go away for most folks, too.  Automatic direct kit 
access at VSI servers, too, and not involving manual notifications and 
manually downloading kits unless that's specifically locally requested 
and expected.  Reinstallations get a whole lot easier, as we have 
server settings files we can re-load and can transfer as needed.  
Basically, we get out of writing our system configuration as code, and 
start writing our system configuration as, for instance, YAML.  
Detection of changes due to mistakes and corruptions and malicious 
activity gets easier, too.  We get... well...  server profile files.

Why?  I've spent way too much time trying to make add-on installation 
procedures and product documentation and product startups semi-sane, 
with testing all of the cases when 
this-and-that-but-not-that-other-dependency is present, and this 
current situation is utterly screaming bonkers, and it's only getting 
worse.   KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Encourage the behaviors that are best for the longer-term future of the 
platform and best for most of the users (even if some of those same 
users will grumble for now), and discourage the more problematic 
behaviors and requirements.  USB and network installs are the path 
forward, not optical media.   Reduce the complexity.  Reduce the 
configuration requirements.  Simplify.  Make the installations easier.  
Make the kitting easier.  Make the dependency checks easier.  Make 
integrity verification part of the environment, and maybe make large 
hunks of OpenVMS immutable by most users.   Make updates easier.   
Don't add to the complexity.  Don't add to the testing.  Don't assume 
servers have optical or Blu-ray.  Don't add to the organizational and 
the purchasing and pricing efforts, for that matter.



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