[Info-vax] IBM nearing deal to acquire Red Hat

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Arne Vajhøj
> via Info-vax
> Sent: May 4, 2019 4:16 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] IBM nearing deal to acquire Red Hat
> 
> On 5/4/2019 2:22 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> > On 5/4/19 12:53 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> >> Probably because of concepts.  A reboot is not normally a part of
> >> running VMS.  That might not be so in other environments.
> >
> > Another myth that should be put to rest.  When the University was
> > still running on VMS it was managed by someone most people here would
> > recognize as an authority  on VMS management.  They used to reboot the
> > systems regularly and never left them running for more than a month
> > with out a reboot.  Just because some people let them go longer and
> > even see some value in the bragging rights doesn't necessarily mean
> > it's a good idea.
> 
> Yes. System boot is just like restore of backup. It need to be tested
> occasionally.
> 
> A well known story is the Irish Railroad VMS system that had not been
> rebooted for 17 years.
> 
> Imagine the scenario where it got rebooted and did not startup properly.
> 
> Sysmgr A: has anyone done something on the system without modifying
> systartup_vms?
> 
> Sysmgr B: since when?
> 
> Sysmgr A: within the last 17 years.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Arne
> 

As I recall, the Irish Railway system was a very early concept of Clusters. It was a dual server setup with DTO7 (DT03?) bus switches that allowed dynamic switching of Unibus peripherals if one server went down.

Not 100% sure but I believe it was the application itself that did not go down for 17 years.

Another tidbit I recall hearing was that in the Y2K event, they did some checking in their code and they did not have any hard coded references to the year, so rather than take any chances, at the proper time, they set the time back to whatever year had the same days.


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com