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Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE that can improve your productivity with HP 3000 systems. Send your tips to john@burke-consulting.com, or fax them to 512.331.3807.

Edited by John Burke

In VOLUTIL, what is the difference between SHOWUSERLOG, SHOWSYSLOG? Or between ALTUSERLOG and ALTSYSLOG? I thought that SHOWSYSLOG was for the system volume set and SHOWUSERLOG for all the application volume sets. But it appears that the system has two different log files for each volume set.

Paul Courry quotes from the MPE/iX 6.0 Communicator article on the Transaction Manager:
“Transaction Manager (XM) is an integral part of the MPE/iX file system. It provides a facility to log all the transactions that are done on a file that is attached to XM via a system intrinsic. It ensures data integrity by protecting such files across system crashes.
“Files on MPE/iX are of two categories: system files and user files. System files are label tables, directories and SSM bitmaps. User files are those created by the user. All the transactions on system files are logged onto an XM system log file on the master volume of each volume set, just as all the transactions on user files (such as IMAGE/SQL and KSAM files) are logged onto an XM user log file on the master volume.”

Is there a list somewhere of why the HP impact printers start flashing 13 when there is no paper jam?

Cynthia Fowler replies:
Your “jam sensor” is probably going bad. We had that problem before with our 256x printers and had to have the sensor replaced.

I am considering running Apache/iX with PRI=CS. Any negatives?

John Burke replies:
I’ve been running Apache/iX this way for years on several different machines. No negatives whatsoever. In fact, I recommend that Apache always be run in the CS queue. Remember, the transactions are generally very short. In my job stream I use altproc pin=0;pri=cs. This way I do not have to worry about the global jobpri setting. Of course the Apache user the job runs under must have OP or SM to issue this command, which might violate your security procedures.

When booting from the alternate path (a tape created by sysgen) I get - IPL error “BAD LIF MAGIC”. Any ideas what is wrong?

Doug Werth replies:
Typically this is because the tape was created on, for example, a DDS-II machine but is trying to be read on a DDS-I. [Note: the original poster confirmed this was the problem.]

I came in this morning to a crashed system. It appears I have a ‘Bad System Logical Sector’ that caused the crash as that was the last thing on the console when it went down and now when it tries to recover the MPE_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET it gives me the error again (and again). I assume at this point, I will need to replace that disc drive and do a reload. Fortunately, the drive is part of the smallest volume. Are there any websites that show the necessary steps to do a reload (assuming I can find my latest SLT)? Are there cheat sheets available?

John Burke replies:
Do you have a copy of the System Software Maintenance Manual? This has the instructions. Otherwise, just print out what you need from one of the SSMMs at docs.hp.com. If you are using something other than HP’s TurboStore, you should also check your backup product’s manual for guidance.

We try to allow certain computers to connect to one of our HP 3000s via FTP in the File INETDSEC.NET.SYS. As the list of IP-Adresses will exceed one line, we tried to follow the editing tips from the manual: “To continue an entry on the next line, place a slash (/) at the end of the line to be continued.” Why doesn’t this work?

Greg Skvorak replies:
My testing indicated that it is a backslash ‘\’ as the final character on the line rather than a forward slash for the continuation character.
[Ed. Note: Jeff Kell suggested that you could also use vi from the shell and have one very long line.]

I’m trying to get an old 927LX on our network. How do I determine the physical path of the LAN interface controller (the format is something like xxx.yyy).

John Burke and Bob J both replied that the path for the 9x7 is 56. However, Steve Macsisak suggested that to find this out for any system, run mapper at the ISL prompt or, if the system is up, SYSGEN -> IO -> LPATH.

I need to know the values of previous month and year from HP variable. Is it possible? I mean, if HPDATETIME and HPYYYYMMDD can show today’s date and month, is there any such variable that shows me previous month and year?

Jeff Vance replies:
The simple answer is “no”. If you are willing to run a script that returns these values, then “yes”.

I’m running into conflicting advice on whether I can put HSC FW SCSI cards into my 9x9. What is the answer?

Bob J replies:
Can’t do it. We wish the HSC cards would work on a 3000 as they are much faster. The HSC 100BT cards actually get up near 100 megabits/s. The A2969A FWD cards can burst at nearly triple the speed of a 28696A.

John Clogg elaborates:
The HSC SCSI cards are not supported by MPE. The only HSC device supported is the upper bus converter that is used to drive the PB expansion cage. I visited the CSY headquarters in Cupertino for an “executive briefing” back in 1998 or 1999, and asked the people there when MPE would support the HSC FW/D SCSI cards which were available on the equivalent 9000’s at the time. The answer I got was “never.” They were already planning the move to the PCI bus, and had made the decision not to support the HSC cards on MPE.

I’m running into trouble on a MPE/iX 6.5 system sorting a large variable length record file and I was hoping someone would have some input. I have tons of contiguous space on that volume set. I’ve tried setting the ;STACK= on RUN SORT.PUB.SYS, but nothing is working.

Craig Lalley replies:
When sorting a variable length record file you should use the syntax >input filename,#numrec,rec-size, where rec-size is: “A positive integer specifying the maximum allowable number of bytes in a record. This parameter may be used to set the record size of the output file, but is used mainly for files containing variable-length records. When sorting such files, this parameter should be set to the size of the largest record present in the input. If rec-size is not specified when sorting variable-length record files, SORT/XL will use the block size as the maximum record size. This could result in more space than necessary being used for the scratch file, as well as causing some degradation of performance.”

A fellow developer of mine is attempting to read an entire message file nondestructively. Several attempts have been made using the fcontrol 47 and read commands but the application just keeps reading the same record in the message file. Is there a way to nondestructively read a record in a message file, move the pointer, do a nondestructive read, move the pointer, etc until the end of the message file?

Ken Hirsch and Michael Abootorab reply:
What you want to do is open the file with the COPY aoption. Either you can specify COPY in the file equation or use an aoption of 10000 (octal) in the FOPEN call.