Posted on

15-Oct-2009

New kid on the block
The new Personal Workstation I obtained a few weeks ago didn’t boot properly. Whatever I tried, it kept booting into ARC – the (graphical) NT console. First of all, I assured I had the latest software – had to get it in ROM using the FAT formatted floppy disk, and choose to update the firmware. That didn’t show any errors so it may be assummed it worked.
Next came the question how to force it into SRM – the VMS /Unix console. It took some digging in the docs but I finally found it: Boot into ARC, hit F2 to enter setup, tab to CROM settings and hit F6 to get into the advanced mode – where the right console can be choosen, hit F10 twice, then Enter, and last Escape – and cycle power. (Is this the famous “intuitive” interface?)
But on reboot, ARC re-appeared and much to my surprise, the console was reset to be “NT (AlphaBIOS)”.

More surprising: ARC mentioned the machine to be a PWS 500a – where the front bezel clearly stated it to be a PWS 500au – the first will only run NT, and for VMS (and Unix) you need an au-type! But given the mentioning on the exteriour and the presence of the board containing the 2 Mb cache memory, it indeed looked like a au – type.

👿 What was going on here?

I put the question on the OpenVMS ITRC forum, and I got the answer within an hour: The battery might be dead. On second thought, that was feasable since ARC constantly mentioned the time was invalid and set to factory default (1-Jan-1995). Other settings were fine, though, and changes were persistent over boot. After replacing the battery (a cost of 4 eruo’s…) I could finally boot into SRM ( 😀 Hurray !!!!) and prepare for installation of OpenVMS. So the BIOS data may be split into flash-memory (keeping settings without power) and cells requireing battery backup. It’s the only reason I can think of, for this weird behavior
Next I installed OpenVMS 7.3-2 on the box, for the time being anyway, mainly to see what’s in the box: 256 Mb of memory (I know that already) and one (!) 4.1 Gb disk….Well, that will do for now.
Tomorrow, or this weekend, I’ll try to get it booted from the shared SCSI – the second SCSI controller is a KZPBA, though from a different type that is located in Diana: KZPBA-CX in stead of KZPBA-CY. It has already been set up to host on LUN 5 (the HSZ50 runs on LUN 7, the Diana host is set on 6, so 5 would be the right choice here.

The machine will be known as “Daphne” – and if possible, it will run clustered with Diana.

Posted on

14-Oct-2009

Testing again

What I intended to do today: testing the used PHP code against the new PHP version, on Eden, the VMS emulator, simply didn’t work. Booting was no problem, the WASD webserver did start OK and I could present PHP_INFO. But there accessibility ended. Both PHPMyAdmin and WP284 gave me "Not permitted" – weird, since there hasn’t been changes in configuration. In order to find out what happened, I tried to start the admin page – but that failed as well, with the same message: "403 – Forbidden", and I would expect a log-in page! Something broke in the configuration, appearently.

Testing WindowsLive Writer

As I just downloaded WindowsLive and locate the ability to use it to add an entry to the blog, I gave it a try. Well, it works for most what I want. Adding plain text requires similar activity as under the WP edit pane, it looks like adding images is easier to accomplish – something I didn’t test yet. The only exception seems that adding en excerpt is not possible. However: worth taking a look at, anyway, and keep it in the back of my mind, if all others fail (2.8.4 , or the new program…)

Less mail – less spam

In the last weeks, the number of mail messages has dropped significantly. I used to get at least one message an hour (and such a low rate was seldom), today it happens that no message appears within a few hours: the only messages I see are the log timestamps, several after eachother without interleaving SMTP signals:

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 12:01:38.51 %%%%%%%%%%% Logfile time stamp

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 12:17:42.16 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user INTERnet on DIANA
INTERnet ACP SMTP Accept Request from Host: 192.168.0.2 Port: 54918

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 13:01:38.63 %%%%%%%%%%% Logfile time stamp

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 14:01:38.65 %%%%%%%%%%% Logfile time stamp

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 15:01:38.66 %%%%%%%%%%% Logfile time stamp

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 15:30:06.13 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user INTERnet on DIANA
INTERnet ACP SMTP Accept Request from Host: 192.168.0.2 Port: 54953

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 13-OCT-2009 16:01:38.68 %%%%%%%%%%% Logfile time stamp

Such low rates are uncommon: I’ve not seen reports of spam-enabled servers being downed, but there may well be some.

Posted on

12-Oct-2009

Backlog
After a week’s holiday, it’s time to get rid of the backlog of content creation, patches and testing of new software: PHP 5.3 (looking good), PhPMyAdmin 2.10 and WP 2.8.4 (both looking dim). PHP itself seems to have no, or little problems, so it’s quite likely it will be installed into production soon, it seems to work well with WP 2.6.5, but WP 2.8.4 still has it’s redirection issues causing a loop that prevents a main page to appear, signaled by Firefox, and causing IE to time-out. The WP forums have not been of any help here, it may be required to adjust the code. Or abandon WP altogether and finally write my own program….
Furthermore, there is quite some work to be done on the content side. I still have a number of trips, tracks and travels to prepare and publish the results; I did two last night: one just the maps because it cannot be followed, and a walk we did in June; and I repaired one that bore mistakes. But a few big ones await processing. All to be published with the newest version on JAlbum; I’ve seen another nice tool the other day, but I cannot remember what it was, but it looked really nice. I’ll have to ask around again….
And of course, there are some updates to be done on the VMS side (on Windows and Linux, it’s easier, because there are a LOT of them), and I’ll have to setup the new VMS workstation a s well. The Console software could not be downloaded before the holiday because the server was being maintained (and hence inaccessible). But using FTP it was not a real problem – it’s possible that the link is broken. I now have the file available – something to be kept in a safe place!

Posted on

01-Oct-2009

The ususal maintenance
First of all: mail statistics for September: it has been quiet in SPAM, compared to other months; a few slipped the filter, but overal, the number of messages has been lower than before, the number of valid messages therefore is relatively higher than before:

PMAS statistics for 09
Total messages    : 4609 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted   : 3001 =  65.1 o/o (Files: 30)
Relay attempts    :  189 =   4.1 o/o (Files: 30)
Processed by PMAS : 1419 =  30.7 o/o (Files: 30)
        Discarded :  229 =  16.1 o/o (processed),   4.9 o/o (all)
     Quarantained :  307 =  21.6 o/o (processed),   6.6 o/o (all)
        Delivered :  883 =  62.2 o/o (processed),  19.1 o/o (all)

I save the logs – took the WASD webserver logs apart for analysis of web traffic that is attempting abuse. Login failures will be scanned; this action will be added to the daily or weekly procedure to get a feeling of who’s trying access, and when.