03-Sep-2021

Just the usual
There seems to be nothing peculiar, one more.
Spam gets less and less:

PMAS statistics for August
Total messages    :   1063 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted   :      0 =    .0 o/o (Files:  0)
Relay attempts    :     86 =   8.0 o/o (Files: 29)
Accepted by PMAS  :    977 =  91.9 o/o (Files: 31)
  Handled by explicit rule
         Rejected :    447 =  45.7 o/o (processed),  42.0 o/o (all)
         Accepted :    116 =  11.8 o/o (processed),  10.9 o/o (all)
  Handled by content
        Discarded :    262 =  26.8 o/o (processed),  24.6 o/o (all)
     Quarantained :     67 =   6.8 o/o (processed),   6.3 o/o (all)
        Delivered :     85 =   8.7 o/o (processed),   7.9 o/o (all)

and other than last months, the number of relay attemps have been a bit more, but minor numbers (except from the expected standard tests by tiscali.it, a few from China (using sender test@82.161.236.244, recepient mtyndallo@yahoo.com.tw, and one other one) and a few from the UK (from “anonymous” email addresses at yahoo and msn, sending to ndo927416@gmail.com) on 03-Aug-2021, causing this log to be over 2Kb in size, be it just.

Change of ISP ahead
This month, I will change ISP. Have to, since the current one (XS4ALL) will stop all hosting activities (including DNS registration) at 01-Oct-2021. I could just change registrar but changing ISP (Freedom.nl) has been in the pipeline for a long time, so I decided to move registration AND access – making it easier to adapt DNS if needed.
However, there is a gap between the date that XS4ALL will stop handling my registration (12-Sep-2021) and installation of my new connection (15-dec-2021). Connection to the internet is simple enough, just another login, the method will be the same. Voip is also a matter of another server, but IPTV may be a bit different, though it should work as simple as it is: defining another route.
Hopefully, the transition will be as simple as it looks. Fingers crossed.

CMS
Some work is still needed on the presenter, and little time is spent on it. So it is (again) delayed some time…

CME presenter almost ready to run

With some help from the VSI community forum, the VMS calling standard documentation and re-educate myself with 30-year old code, the presenter now works: gives the same output from the dataset designed about 10 years ago. The set contains all file-contents I ever showed on my home screen. There are a few things I still need to reconsider, so it it possible to browse through these texts. The same applies to the newer structures, that will hold more facilities as well. and I still need to test if random access on date (or number) is working – just change the CGI-parameters. It may mean I have to do something in the URL-interpreter. And in the end, I have to clean up the code a bit – remove debug output, or make it configurable.

CMS: Descriptor issues

The basic presenter does its work, except presenting the whole text. One problem is that the current template defines the output as a line of 132 characters, that is repeated for each line in a passed array. Since the code of this routine is written in Fortran, it is no problem if the routine is called from Fortran. The new program however is written in Pascal; where it should work, and the data is indeed passed, but it seems there is a difference in the descriptors between the languages. It can solved but the documentation (and observations) are confusing.
I put a question on this on this subject in the VMSSoftware Community Forum; the code has been adapted already but the details may need some adjustment.

CMS content loader done, presenter works – except for texts

The procedure to load the current text files into the datafile and passing data to index works fine. It’s not the most perfect program but it works as intended.
So now I can start with reading the files: Getting the last post via index, and the text based on the found index record, seem to work: I will get the latest post, but I’m not totally convinced it’s the way I intended to: Last dated post is 07-Apr-2021, and I pass current date (and time), so 12-Aug-2021. Just a coincidence?
Anyway, given the record number (1 for this date) – added first in the database (defined descending). There is still some work to do on these files….
Second, it seems the data is read but given the max size of the text (8K – 4 bytes for the key) I need to do something to see what has been read. The output page is than created – complete as it is now, except for the text: just the first character. So some work here as well.
Nevertheless: some progress.

CMS progress: The presenter and loading current posts

Getting on and off on the project…each time, there is progress: Using the program I developed (and dropped) in 2008, I was able to correct a number of mistakes in the program, up to a point that accessing data did actually work. But the record definition (keys etcetera) were not correct, and there was no text – just a number of index lines. So I had to rework the file definitions, once that was done, reading index was file, but since textdata was missing, it stopped there.

Next step was obviously a matter of getting texts loaded. Since I already use a much limited version on the home page, and all these texts (since 2008) are still on the server, I created a procedure to list them, converted their date and create a list that I can sort on that date. Next a program to read that file, read the textfile itself, add the data into the datafile and add a line into the index.

That also meant some adaptations in the file acces code – since adding lines wasn’t tested at all, not even in 2008, but finally, all 100 files are now in the database of this type.

Though there is one more larger change to be done in the file containing the texts: Currently record size is fixed to 8K (minus 4 bytes for the key) but most posts are far less: So either I have to create (and handle) multiple records, of use records of variable size. Just to find out how to handle these, in the access routines of this file.