[Info-vax] SOLVED : Re: Process quota problem after upgrade to 8.4-2L1

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-12-22 21:29:48 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <rrt30e$aua$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> 
>> Cluster satellite workstations are also not configurations I'd expect 
>> to see a whole lot of usage or testing, generally. I'd expect little 
>> usage of these configurations outside of hobbyist environments.
> 
> Probably true today.  On the other hand, they tend to be rebooted once 
> a  day rather than once a decade, so non-dynamic parameters can be 
> tested.

Probably? Fewer and fewer folks are even running the configuration, not 
the least of which is because running an OpenVMS desktop satellite is 
💸 expensive. Seriously expensive. And it's SaaS-licensed now.

Outside of the existing apps that depend on OpenVMS and the associated 
(and old) X11, these cluster configurations are largely relegated to 
hobbyists, due in no small part to the OpenVMS pricing and features, 
which then factors into app availability and affordability.

And all that's before we start discussing the VSI focus on servers and 
not on desktops and the apps and tools and media that many (most?) 
folks find necessary. Those other than you, and some other stalwart 
hobbyists, that is.

I don't like dealing with EDT to start with, and EDT support for file 
formats is less than fun, and using a text editor with ^V support for 
reformatting embedded controls and/or writing DCL to fix these sorts of 
issues is no fun.

Quick, untested, fits-in-a-tweet 
file-read-write-loop-reformatting-or-file-untangling DCL:

$ on warn then goto err
$ close/nolog if
$ open/read if ‘p1’
$ close/nolo of
$ open/write of ‘p2’
$ loop: read if x/end=eof/error=err
$ x=f$edit(x,”compress”) ! or whatevs
$ write of x
$ goto loop
$ err: write sys$output “p1: infil, p2: outfil”
$ eof: close if
$ close of
$ exit

>> We'd see yet fewer of these cases too, if OpenVMS were better about its 
>> installation and re-installation and provisioning and which would ease 
>> cloning
> 
> I would really like the ability to do an upgrade to the OS without 
> affecting any customized settings.  One has to jump through hoops to do 
> it, and after the upgrade look for more hoops for next time.  Making 
> "official" a third (cluster-wide) translation to SYS$SYSROOT between 
> SYS$SPECIFIC (for the local node) and SYS$COMMON (for all machines 
> booting from this disk AND for all machines in the world) for 
> cluster-specific stuff would go a long way to improving things in that 
> area.

OpenVMS installs and re-installs and upgrades—both OpenVMS itself, and 
layered products—are unnecessarily complex and baroque, compared with 
what's possible and with what's available elsewhere.

Cluster system roots were a useful construct in the previous 
millennium; when storage was precious and small and expensive. Now? Not 
so much. And for all that approach does provide, there are now other 
configurations with approaches based on LDAP and such.

Way too much user and LP "stuff" gets scattered around within the 
system roots. Necessarily. Startup giblets for instance, because 
there's no better approach than manually adding stuff to SYSMAN or to 
SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM or ilk. The whole area of OpenVMS is hard to 
automate, and clusters more so. Which then also means efforts toward 
better operating system security that much more intractable—tracking 
files and changes and corruptions, app additions and removals, etc.

-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC