[Info-vax] Unexpected DECnet Phase IV functionality with possible captive account implications

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/17/2021 10:53 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 5/17/2021 8:41 PM, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article <s7ufph$l2m$2 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley 
>> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>> On 2021-05-17, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> 
>>>> Please tell me now to SYS$OPEN a file on another host with TCP/IP.
>>>
>>> Times change Brian and how you implement such things changes as well.
>>>
>>> There are multiple options. You could use CIFS or NFS (for example).
>>>
>>> There's work going on with filesystems over SSH. Whether VMS will ever
>>> see any of that work is another matter.
>>>
>>> If the other node is in a VMS cluster, you don't need DECnet.
>>>
>>> For an example of a different approach in the Linux world, there's GFS2:
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFS2
>>
>> NODE::DEVICE:[DIRECTORY]FILENAME.EXT;VERSION
> 
> It's a bit funny, and a lot sad, that even though people know what they 
> are advocating doesn't exist, they still promote it.
> 
> As far as I know, GFS2 doesn't exist on VMS.  Somebody know something I 
> don't know?

GFS2 sort of exist on VMS. And has since way before GFS2 was invented.

:-)

GFS2 is a cluster wide accessible file system using a distributed
lock manager to control access.

Just like VMS has done it for almost 40 years.

And it is not just functional equivalent.  Supposedly the
DLM design went VMS -> Tru64 -> Linux.

And the API sure does look familiar:

int dlm_lock(uint32_t mode,
         struct dlm_lksb *lksb,
         uint32_t flags,
         const void *name,
         unsigned int namelen,
         uint32_t parent,        /* unused */
         void (*astaddr) (void *astarg),
         void *astarg,
         void (*bastaddr) (void *astarg),
         void *range);            /* unused */

On the other side then cluster wide mount and transparent
file access to remote files is still not the exact same thing.

Oh and to complete the story, then VSI has announced that they plan
on porting GFS2 to VMS (to get around certain limitations in current
file systems). Current roadmap says after 9.2 aka 9.3 or 10.0.

Arne