We have a 65-user license that we are bumping up against. We would prefer to more effectively use what we have. I set the ctimeout value to 90 for the session parameter of the miscellaneous configurator. This works for terminals sitting at a colon prompt and inactive for the 90 minutes, but it does not work for a terminal setting idle with a menu displayed. The other disadvantage is that it keeps logging off the operator console. Are there alternatives?

Michael D. Hensley replies:

1. Modify your menu program to do a timed read. If the timer expires, have the program set a JCW and exit. Modify the UDC the users use to run the program to test the JCW — if the timer expired, log them off.

2. Create a program for the console that prompts for a password and train your operators to run this program whenever they walk away from the console. This gives you the advantage of added security, as well as preventing the CI timeout.

3. You could have a UDC which checks the logon LDEV, and if it’s 20 sets the HPTIMEOUT variable to 0, but I like solution number 2 better.

When you do a CI comparison such as: IF CIERROR = 0 THEN you get this result:

*** EXPRESSION FALSE: COMMANDS IGNORED UNTIL MATCHING ELSEIF/ELSE/ENDIF

Is there a way to make this not appear on the terminal screen?

Gavin Scott replies:

The ‘***’ messages appear to be displayed only if you execute the IF/ELSE/ ENDIF commands from the top CI level. If you put your IF logic into a UDC or command file then you’ll stop seeing the messages.

If you do this, you’ll have to put the complete IF/ENDIF sequence into a single UDC or command file. MPE insists that the IF nesting level be the same when you leave a UDC/command file as it was when you entered.

‘IF’ seems to ignore HPMSGFENCE and all forms of CIO redirection.

Quest’s NBSPOOL utility has the cute feature that if you list a $STDLIST containing ‘***’ messages, it will display the commands that did *not* get executed with the half-bright display enhancement. This makes it much easier to read $STDLISTs with lots of conditionals.

Paul Christidis mentions:

[HP’s] Jeff Vance proposed some additional ‘settings’ to the ‘hpmsgfence’ variable that would accomplish just that.

Glen Cole adds:

Jeff posted about “recently modified CI stuff” that included this feature (as well as showing vars from a DIFFERENT job/session!), though the specific MPE version was not stated.

A year ago he wrote that this feature would be available on 6.0, but that no patch was available for 5.5.

Is there a system variable on 6.0 only, that I can check for its existence with the HPCIGETVAR intrinsic, to say I’m on 6.0 or not?

HP’s Jeff Vance replies:

You can try to execute a benign command such as “:LISJOBQ >$null”.

Wirt Atmar adds:

HPVERSION works well for gross OS-level determinations.

How can I get the Posix command “ls” to give me the kind of file listing the “listfile,6” command gives me ?

Mark Bixby replies:

You want to use “find” instead of “ls”:

find /COMM/DOC/html -type f | xargs grep searchstring

The -type f says to return just files; the default is files and directories

Are there limits to the number of PCBs (Process Control Blocks) in MPE/ix 5.5? If so, is this configurable and if so what is the parameter. Is there any command/function that will show me my current utilization vs. configured maximums for PCBs?

HP’s Scott McClellan replies:

The maximum number of concurrent processes on MPE/iX 5.5 is 8190, and it is limited by the maximum size of the PCB data structure. This is not configurable (in the standard sense) and the table is “maxed out” on all systems (except small memory systems those with less than 64Mb of memory).

HP’s Pete Crosby adds:

There is a program called TBLMON which will show PIB utilization, which by definition, is the same as PCB utilization. It should be found in the TELESUP account on your systems.

While I work in EDITOR or Quad, the control-y trap works just fine when you first get in the program, but over time, I tend to lose the trap and get stuck watching a “list all” go by on the screen. Why does this happen and how can I work around it?

David Rutherford replies:

I’ve experienced the same scenario as yourself over the years, particularly using editors and Query. One solution I found was to press the BREAK key and then type :RESUME. I’ve found that this somehow re enables the CTRL-Y.

How does the MustRecover flag work in DBUTIL? There is only the sketchiest documentation in my IMAGE manuals, and it looks like it might be a useful tool for my situation, and could be a real time-saver after a system failure.

Mike Hornsby replies:

Enabling MUSTRECOVER allows only read (open modes 5-8) access to the database after a system failure until the database is recovered. It is part of the rollback recovery process.

In the event of a system abort, hang, or power fail overage you may not want to restart user logging before running DBRECOV. Log records may have been lost! If user logging is resumed without an intervening recovery, the resulting broken log file may invalidate any subsequent recoveries.

These same issues are also relevant to the various forms shadowing