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Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE (and some in Vesoft’s MPEX) that can improve your productivity with HP 3000 systems. Get a free NewsWire HP 3000 Always Online cap — submit your MPE tip directly to us here at the NewsWire. Send your tips to editor@3000newswire.com, or fax them to 512.331.3807.

Edited by John Burke

We are about to open up our HP 3000 to the Internet. We have a firewall and I have only allowed connection to this one system through port 1570 (nsvt). I was wondering if there is a way to disable outbound telnet for the HP 3000. Maybe I’m just concerned for nothing, but I figured if anyone got into our system, this would prevent them from telnetting out to other systems on the network.

Jeff Kell replies:

Just :purge or :rename telnet.arpa.sys; but be sure to put it back before starting any patches/updates.

Richard Gambrell adds:

A lockword would work too. In all of these cases, you should put it back before a MPE update or patch install. Your firewall should be able to stop outbound telnet to the Internet, if that is your desire.

[Editor’s note: Jeff and Rich bring up a good point about putting things back before updates or patches. For example, if you rename QUERYNM to QUERY or put a lockword on QUERY, you will have problems with any update or patch that contains QUERY. Been there and done that.]

We used FTP to copy web pages to a 3000 running Apache/iX. In the first case, the files were from an existing, apparently HP 3000, Web site. In the second case, the files were from a Windows NT machine. In both cases, browsers seemed to hang trying to load pages. Why?

Kevin Newman, Michael Hensley, Greg Stigers and Joe Geiser reply:

You need to convert the files to “bytestream.” MPE is a more modern operating system than Unix, and actually supports file structures like “records”. Programs written for Unix (like Apache) expect all files to be streams of bytes, hence “bytestream”. The MPE POSIX bytestream emulator reports the size of non-bytestream files as RecordSize*NumberOfRecords, but when you actually read the records, trailing blanks (for ASCII files) are truncated, so reading all records in the file gives fewer bytes than the filesize. Thus, Apache/iX tells your browser the file is “x” bytes long, but sends less than “x” bytes.

To convert files after FTP’ing, use “tobyte.hpbin.sys” from the MPE command line.

If you have not already FTP’ed the files, issue

binary
quote TYPE L 8

to indicate to the 3000 to expect a bytestream file.

Better yet, especially if a Windows box is part of the mix, use Samba/iX. It’s free with MPE/iX 6.0, or downloadable from Jazz for 5.0 (PP6 or higher) or 5.5 (PP2 or higher). Map a drive letter, edit the HTML in your favorite HTML Editor or notepad and save directly to the 3000. Guess what the resulting file is? Bytestream.

Is there a way to produce a list of files off of a STORE tape without restoring any of the data?

Use VSTORE *T;@.@.@;show=offline. This should verify the files on the tape and produce an offline listing of the files on the tape.

[Greg Stigers, Lee Gunter and David Burney all noted that if you just want a listing, not a verify, and the tape is an NM STORE tape:]

FILE T;DEV=TAPE
RESTORE *T;@.@.@;LISTDIR

David Burney quotes from the HELP system:

“This option may not be specified with any other option, other than DIRECTORY. It displays information from the tape directory and tape label, but does not restore any files. The type of tape created, the record size, and any files that match your filesetlist are displayed. If specified with DIRECTORY, the names of all the volume set directories and all HFS directories on the media are also displayed. The security restrictions that apply to filesetlist also apply here. The output goes to SYSLIST. The LISTDIR option applies only to NMSTORE tapes. It cannot be used for MPEv format tapes.”

How do I find out the MAC address for the LANIC on our HP 3000?

Robert Schlosser and Doug Werth both reply:

Use LINKCONTROL to get the MAC address. If you are not positive of the link name you can bypass a trip through NMMGR with

:LINKCONTROL @,ALL or

:LINKCONTROL LINKNAME=@;STATUS=ALL

to show all network links. This will include 100bt, PSI cards, and FDDI cards as well.

Does HPSORT preserve the chronology of the records when multiple records have the same sort key value? When I experiment, SORT seems to preserve the chronology, but can I depend on it?

Michael Berkowitz replies:

From the Sort-Merge/XL Programmer’s Guide manual, page 1 5:

“You may use multiple keys. The major key determines the part of the record examined first in the sort. As Figure 1-4, Key Comparing Operations shows if the major keys of two records are the same, the secondary keys determine the new sequence of the records. If two records have the same first keys and the same second keys, their third keys are compared to determine the sequence. If all the key fields in two or more records are identical, the output file preserves the order of the input records.”

The last sentence is most relevant.

Dennis Handly adds:

The technical term for this is a stable sort. The ANSI COBOL standard requires it, so if HPSORT changed, there would have to be an option to enforce it.

I am attempting to recreate our production account (PROD) on our development system while calling it another name (DEV). I understand I can use BULDACCT to accomplish this. I am also going to be building the account on a private volume. The command I am currently using, which isn’t working is:

:BULDACCT REVIEW;INFO=[ACCT=REVQA;ONVS=DEV_VS]

What is the correct syntax?

Michael Hensley replies:

The correct syntax would be:

:run buldacct.pub.sys;info=”PROD%VSACCT=DEV_VS

or

:buldacct “PROD%VSACCT=DEV_VS”

But neither one of these will change the account name. You’ll have to manually edit the BULDJOB1 file and change “PROD” to “DEV” in all.

[Editor’s note: this following is a problem that has frustrated many people over the years, including some HP engineers I’ve dealt with.]

I’m dialed into LDEV 21 on an HP 3000, which has PCLINK2 version: 3.14.02. (You can get the version by doing: RUN PCLINK2.PUB.SYS;INFO=”VERSION”)

When I try to start a file transfer (either direction), I get an immediate “host does not respond” error. I’m termtype=10, with the default settings, settings that usually work on other dial-ins.

When I go back to the main terminal window, I see that Reflection successfully started PCLINK2.PUB.SYS which is “prompting” with the (@#@#@#@). If I switch various settings on/off (e.g., disable DC2 or host prompt), the problem sometimes changes to “timeout”.

The value of HPTYPEAHEAD is false. I’ve tried two PCs (two different copies of Reflection), and two modems with the same results.

Doug Wirth and Joe Silagi responded:

Reflection’s file transfer uses Ctrl-B as the transfer start character. LDEV 21 is not a full-function terminal port and, among other things, strips this character out of the data stream that results in the “host does not respond” message even though pclink2 has been started. Switching to “HP 3000 over X.25” will work around this problem at the expense of performance.

For last year or so (probably after a “patch” was put on?) our HP 3000 LX928 refuses to do a shutdown properly. I do a =SHUTDOWN and wait until all the processes are shutdown. I used to have to do a control-b and then get the CM> prompt. Here I’d type RS, then BOOT, interact with IPL and then do a START NORECOVERY.

Now, after the =SHUTDOWN, I have to get up, go to the computer, and manually power off the unit. I put the power back on and it comes up in the Main menu where I type in the BOOT command. Why the change?

Jim Alexander replies:

On the back of the box you will see a small toggle switch which will have two positions, “Normal” and “Remote”. It is a fairly small switch, but you should see it. It will be in the “Normal” position and you should switch it to “Remote”. This should solve your problem.

[Editor’s note: On some machines there is a key that must be turned to “Service” or something else for control-B to work. There are other permutations of switches and keys so be careful. For example, on the 9x9 systems, turning the key to “Standby” shuts off the power!]

We got the following error message when putting in several tapes in a row on an HPIB connected DDS tape drive:

I/O error ignored during AVR I/O status %74

The drive was replaced not more than one month ago. We tried cleaning the drive, using several new tapes and even powered the drive off then on but still get the same error. What does this mean? The backup seems to work okay, even after these errors.

John Clogg, Jeff Woods and Thomas Madigan reply:

The “I/O error ignored during AVR” means that during “Auto Volume Recognition” there was an I/O error. This is the point where the system tries to read the first block of the tape volume to determine whether or not it’s labeled and, if so, the label information. This always happens on new or otherwise blank tape loads, as there is no block there to read. The message is MPE’s way of saying, “I can’t read the beginning of this tape.” It’s also possible that the tape has data on it that can’t be read by that drive. Perhaps it’s a compressed tape in an uncompressed drive or perhaps it’s unable to read the data for some other reason.

If you get this error on a tape you expect you should be able to read, then it may indicate an error. It probably means you won’t be able to read what, if anything, is already on it.

If you get this error on a new tape, that’s perfectly normal.