Re: DECnet-Plus for a hobbyist

Robert Jarratt wrote:

I made a lot of progress thanks to this posting. I thought that all OPCOM messages were already going to the console, but they weren't. It turned out that after running DSVCONFIG.COM I needed to copy the SYS from SYS$COMMON:[DECSERVER] to SYS$COMMON:[MOM$SYSTEM]. I am not clear why DSVCONFIG did not copy it there for me or point MOP to the right location.

That is because it was expecting MOM$LOAD to be a search list that included SYS$COMMON:[DECSERVER], MOM$SYSTEM:.

I do not remember if the installation of the package that installed the DSVCONFIG command file did it automatically or if it was a post installation step.


On Phase IV, I stopped running DSVCONFIG.COM a long time ago. It was faster to put together a DCL script that did the important part. That was putting in the name to I.P. address mapping in the DECNET tables.

After the service is enabled for the ethernet circuit, and the DECServer load image is put where MOM$LOAD will find it, your basically done.


None of the information is actually used in a DECServer downloading its load image.

The I.P. address to name mapping is used for two purposes only:

1. It gives the name of the DECserver that is doing the download on the opcom messages. This is why I used the script to make sure that the DECNET tables were up to date on all of the systems. When I heard the opcom beeps, I could look at any console to see which DECServer rebooted.

2. It allows TSM and manual commands to connect to the command interface of the terminal server by specifying the node name instead of the I.P. address.

If you are using TSM, then you will probably want the scripts I wrote that are in the Freeware 5.0 distribution in the tsm_tools directory.


Decservers will load their boot image from any host on the network that answers the MOP request by claiming that it has a load filename of the name requested by the DECServer.

Nothing that DSVCONFIG.COM does will affect this. Which means on a large network with multiple VMS administrators, it is very possible that there will be out of date DecServer load images, and you could find sometimes that you are running an out of date version. And at the site I was at, that could really mess up the production printers.

Generally I made a copy of the current download image, giving it a site specific name.

Then I changed the DECserver to request that specific image when it boots. This was the only way that I could guarantee that my DECservers were loaded with the correct image.

In the NCP database, you can put almost any text for the download filename of a DECserver, as it is totally ignored by everything.

As I recall, TSM also requested the name of the load image for it's database of managing the server. It also ignores this information, other than possibly putting it in the DECNET database where it is ignored. Only the NOVRAM in the DECserver matters.

-John
wb8tyw@xxxxxxxxxxx
Personal Opinion Only
.

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