[Info-vax] Pathworks or one of its descendants on x86

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On Behalf Of
> terry-groups--- via Info-vax
> Sent: February 20, 2018 6:33 AM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: terry-groups at glaver.org
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Pathworks or one of its descendants on x86
> 
> On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 at 2:33:47 AM UTC-5, Andrew Brehm
> wrote:
> > Does anyone know anything about the availability, next year or so,
of
> Pathworks or its descendants on OpenVMS x86?
> 
> Which component, specifically? If you're referring to SMB / NETBIOS
file
> sharing, SAMBA would probably be your best bet. The overhead of VMS
> on x86 is unknown at this point, but if it is anything like
VMS-vs-Unix on
> VAX and Alpha it will probably make this an inefficient choice for
anything
> other than accessing files that must reside on the VMS system.
> Performance would be much better using either a Linux or Unix-like
> server with SAMBA or a Windows system with native SMB.
> 
> The last time I looked at it in detail (back in the VAX days),
PATHWORKS
> was an unholy mix of HP / 3Com TCP/IP networking stuff plus modified
> versions of Microsoft networking code that originated in Windows for
> Workgroups + WIN32S. I gave up and NFS exported the VMS disks via
> Multinet to an x86 Unix-like system and then served them to the client
> PCs via SAMBA. Even that double indirection was faster than
> PATHWORKS.
>

For something like Samba, the native file system and TCPIP stack are
critical components of the overall solution.

Lets not forget that an entirely new, more modern TCPIP stack and file
system will also be part of the upcoming OpenVMS X86-64 equation, so
comparing OpenVMS Samba X86-64 performance to the past is not likely
much of a comparison.

New OpenVMS file system notes:
<http://www.hp-connect.se/SIG/New_File_System_VMS_Boot%20Camp_2016.pdf>

As someone else stated, PathWorks is NT4 technology, so hardly worth
looking at for the future. That's the equivalent of looking at 386 or
486 PC technology for hardware deployment.

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com