[Info-vax] Distributed Applications, Hashgraph, Automation

[DaveFroble]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> On Sunday, 25 February 2018 07:22:01 UTC, DaveFroble  wrote:
>> Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>> On 2/24/18 12:33 PM, Kerry Main wrote:
>>>
>>>> In OpenVMS, you could also build master LD containers to image backup to
>>>> new OS, customize and reboot. Maybe 15-30 minutes start to finish?
>>> Then another month of tinkering to figure out how to change the node
>>> name without breaking anything.
>> This is the result of setting up some things once, and assuming they will not 
>> change.
>>
>> One would hope VSI takes a critical look at such, and perhaps uses some database 
>> to contain all such things.  Then there is still the question of whether such 
>> data would be set at boot time, or could be changed on the fly.  That could get 
>> sticky.  If not a re-boot, perhaps some other type of "refresh".  There would be 
>> the question of other computers "knowing" the node name, and getting confused.
>>
>> -- 
>> David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
>> Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
>> DFE Ultralights, Inc.
>> 170 Grimplin Road
>> Vanderbilt, PA  15486
> 
> What are names used for (and useful for) in the context of
> computers and applications (and, if necessary, users)?
> 
> How many of those uses are things that people outside the 
> IT Department should care about?
> 
> How many of them are things that should be important to
> the innards of OS, rather than (say) some OS-independent
> distributed naming layer on top of the OS?
> 
> Host names, for anyone outside the IT department, for
> example? In a seriously distributed environment, are 
> host names as such not a rather dated and devalued 
> concept? Perhaps they should even be deprecated (for
> things being designed from scratch)?
> 
> Even back in the 1980s, in a terminal-centric environment,
> things like terminal servers allowed user-visible 'service 
> names' to be distinct from IT-visible host names. A bit of
> 'terminal server magic' was all that was needed. For LAT
> users, or for telnet users (round robin DNS?).
> 
> What's the 'modern' equivalent, where what is needed is not
> just users talking to application services but applications
> talking to other applications, in a (semi?) standardised 
> fashion? (The obvious legacy approach is to use well-known
> IPhostnames and wll-known IP portnumber/name but that's 
> not really helpful for reasons that should be fairly obvious)
> 
> And why do the OS internals have to get involved in this, 
> except to provide the necessary facilities in a suitably 
> robust and trustworthy way?
> 
> As a historical side note, I'm thinking that back in the 
> 1980s, there was a VAX VMS software product that did the
> *technical* stuff of changing the SCSnode and DECnet 
> name and stuff like that as part of deploying what Kerry
> likes to call a 'golden image'. It might have been called
> VAX Remote Systems Manager or something like that, and it
> wasn't just intended for use within a VMScluster. No
> matter. Anyway, on top of that, there was still the licencing
> stuff, which DEC did one way, others did other ways (FlexLM,
> dongles, etc). Three decades later there still isn't a
> universally accepted licence management and enforcement 
> mechanism. 
> 
> DHCP and friends (mDNS etc?) may be part of a modern 
> follow on. Or may not. But I'm struggling to see why
> a host name (as such) is still important (outside the
> IT department). Application service names? Different
> matter; they may well need to be meaningful, or at
> least pre-agreed.
> 
> To an extent, the same naming issue applies to storage 
> (files etc). That data someone wanted, those files 
> that need restoring, are they on C: or are they on
> banana$dka300:[john] or /usr/users/john, or what (and
> where)?
> 
> Enlightenment welcome.

Some good questions.

There is actually two issues.

1) Is node names the way to ID a computer?

Well, you need to know someone's phone #, or email address, or such before you 
can contact them.  Sort of the same issue with computers, right?  Not saying 
node names is the best method, but, it is the method we're used to using.

2) How to manage such identification?

On VMS there is not one central app that can do so.  Nor could it be static, as 
requirements change, and the app would have to be updated to include new 
requirements.

Can such be managed?  Yes, and I've done so in the past.  If it's been a short 
while since the last change, I was able to remember the correct incantations to 
get the job done.  After a couple of years, it was a bit more questionable.  It 
should not be that way.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486