[Info-vax] Abnormal DECNET proxy behaviour

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-01-19 16:50:01 +0000, Marc Van Dyck said:

> Doing some system cleanup right now, among which DECNET proxies.
> And stumbled on the following :
> 
> MC AUTHORIZE LIST/PROXY issues a file NETPROXY.LIS, where I can find the line
> 
> NODE1.VMS.MYCOMPANY.COM::USER1
>          USER1 (D)

Obviously SHOW/PROXY is the direct path, so I'm assuming there are a 
lot of proxies around.

FWIW, there's a real and registered DNS domain using mycompany.com

$ dig +short mycompany.com
52.5.196.34
$

Which is why example.com, example.net, and example.org exist. Most 
IP-related constructs have reserved-for-documentation domain names 
and/or address ranges and/or subnets, and such, again entirely FWIW.

> Now, account USER1 on NODE1.VMS.MYCOMPANY.COM does not exist anymore. 
> So I want to remove that proxy.
> 
> When I do MC AUTHORIZE REMOVE/PROXY NODE1.VMS.MYCOMPANY.COM::USER1,
> I get an error message telling me that this proxy does not exist.

If there's a TCP/IP alias established over in the hosts database 
(TCPIP> SHOW HOST), try removing a proxy with that in place of the full 
path.

Might be NODE1 based on the SEARCH mentioned below, but you'll want to 
look over in the hosts database; TCPIP> SHOW HOST, etc.

Maybe REMOVE/PROXY NODE1::USER1 if NODE1 was the hostname used as a 
TCP/IP Services alias for the host.

This is the Phase V DOMAIN: name alias and not the LOCAL: FQDN host 
name that gets stored, and OpenVMS and DECnet doesn't deal well with 
this case, if this is what happened.

> There are some other cases (let's say 4 or 5) but all other proxies I 
> wanted to remove (more than 100) went away without issues.
> 
> Using copy&paste for the commands, so not a typo.
> 
> Digging a bit further, I find that
> $ SEARCH /MATCH=AND netproxy NODE1, USER1 reports "no string matched"
> but $ SEARCH /MATCH=AND net$proxy NODE1, USER1 reports a match.
> 
> So the two files seem desynchronized.
> 
> Where does that come from and how can I fix it ?

Rebuild the proxy database from NETPROXY into NET$PROXY (supported, 
ugly), or find and delete the entry directly (unsupported).

> P.S.1 OpenVMS V8.4-2L1 on Itanium, DECnet over IP, latest TCP/IP version

So DECnet Phase V / DECnet-Plus and not Phase IV and possibly with some 
patches.

VSI is offering two stacks for OpenVMS I64, and this reply assumes the 
HPE/VSI TCP/IP Services stack, and not the new (but now soon gone?) VSI 
TCPIP stack.

> P.S.2 No need to tell me how awful it is to still run DECNET, etc...

Yeah; welcome to the murk that is DECnet. If this is a production 
configuration as implied by your phrasing, contact the folks at VSI 
support.


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