[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS Hobbyist Program Announced.

[Terry Kennedy]

On Friday, June 14, 2019 at 9:20:40 AM UTC-4, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
> <https://training.vmssoftware.com/hobbyist/?fbclid=IwAR2Fen_xpZ9EKGsI4ERi9Pzii-HJkwGXJLVNxLn97SDX7v5OTUnu2S9-NPQ>
> 
> To be blunt, this is a huge step down from the HP program for us that have our own compatible hardware and want to run it 24/7 or at least not have to redo the license every 180 days.

It might be the best thing since sliced bread, but since they apparently have a badly-broken SFTP server that dies after successful logins there's no way to tell.

Under VMS (Alpha 8.4 / MultiNet 5.5):
SERVER::$ sftp
sftp> ope VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com
Opening connection to VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com

Host key not found from database.
Key fingerprint:
xozel-favip-sydyk-zubem-cykun-fylum-robup-togaz-dakap-palug-tuxex
You can get a public key's fingerprint by running
(OpenVMS) $ multinet sshkeygen /ssh2/fingerprint=publickey.pub
(UNIX)    % ssh-keygen -F publickey.pub
on the keyfile.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Host key saved to SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYSPROG.TERRY.SSH2.HOSTKEYS]key_22_vsiftp_vmssoftware_com.pub
host key for vsiftp.vmssoftware.com, accepted by terry Fri Jun 14 2019 23:08:31 -0400


 Welcome to VMS Software, Inc. OpenVMS (TM) IA64 Operating System, V8.4-2L1

VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com's password: 
Disconnected; connection lost (Connection closed.).
Warning: child process (ssh_exe:ssh2.exe) exited with code -74.

Under FreeBSD:
(0:129) host:/data1/Temp# sftp VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com
The authenticity of host 'vsiftp.vmssoftware.com (104.207.199.163)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:Qh4nALrdCV3ztaXFOd6Rm60HkEHFas81PXmMkNaOn58.
No matching host key fingerprint found in DNS.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'vsiftp.vmssoftware.com' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

 Welcome to VMS Software, Inc. OpenVMS (TM) IA64 Operating System, V8.4-2L1
VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com's password: 
Connection to vsiftp.vmssoftware.com closed by remote host.
Connection closed

Under Windows 7:
C:\Temp>sftp
server : vsiftp.vmssoftware.com

user name : VSIPUBLIC

The authenticity of host 'vsiftp.vmssoftware.com (104.207.199.163)' cannot be established.
The fingerprint of the RSA key is:
MD5 Hex
  ee:cc:ca:37:67:65:f4:5f:49:3a:f7:e5:ae:9e:20:eb.
SHA1 Bubble-Babble
  xozel-favip-sydyk-zubem-cykun-fylum-robup-togaz-dakap-palug-tuxex.

Do you want to trust this new host key and continue connecting?
Please type 'no','once' or 'always': always

Warning: Permanently added 'vsiftp.vmssoftware.com,104.207.199.163,22' (RSA) to
the list of known hosts.

 Welcome to VMS Software, Inc. OpenVMS (TM) IA64 Operating System, V8.4-2L1

Enter password for VSIPUBLIC at vsiftp.vmssoftware.com:
error: Connection closed by remote host.

Connection closed to vsiftp.vmssoftware.com
error: SFTP subsystem startup timed-out (60 seconds).

In either case, entering a deliberately-incorrect password results in a re-prompt, so this looks like I'm "successfully" logging in and then the server is dying for some reason.

I'd also question why VSI wants the CPU overhead (particularly on an Itanium which predates AESNI and friends) of encrypting the payload, or even the username / password pair for a well-publicized account serving an invariant file.

Without looking at the kit, I'd say that it doesn't seem like it would be of any use to me, as I am running an emulated DS10 under AlphaVM-Pro (yes, as a hobbyist - I paid). There *IS* a happy medium between "full list price" (which, from what I've heard from various sources, tends to be based somewhat on the customer and somewhat on the product, BTW) and "free". Any Hobbyist program that takes a single VSI employee more than a couple of hours a week to administer probably needs to pay its way in order to be justifiable to the people who are funding VSI. Personally, I don't mind paying a small annual fee to cover my part of that, particularly if it came with the ability to send bug reports "over the wall" so a developer would read them (without any commitment to answer or fix the issue - but hobbyists have found a fair number of bugs in the past and had no way to get HPaqital to even look at them, unless they had a commercial support agreement at their place of employment).

This last part is a discussion I'd gladly have off-list with the appropriate people, but in the past I've been told that there were (at that time) no appropriate people.