Hi all,
In May 2004 I communicated vCSY's plans regarding the top 16 SIB '04
items. The complete SIB '04 list appears at:
http://www.interex.org/advocacy/survey/2004mpe_results.html
Now that we are in 2005, I'd like to update our MPE customers on the
status of the tactical SIB '04 items which we previously indicated to be
IN PLAN. I've added the label "UPDATE:" to designate the current status
for each item. I'll also cover three SIB '03 items at the end.
1. "Network printing to work with non-HP printers by adding a
pcl_supported = false option in NPCONFIG.PUB.SYS. If this option is
paired with pjl_supported = false, the spooler would just dump the ASCII
data to the printer and strip any PCL sequences from the beginning of
the spool file. No device status checking and reporting, failure
recovery, imbedded PCL sequences, or handling of CCTL information would
be done. The customer would be responsible for ending each of the spool
files with a form feed command to flush the last page. HEADON would not
be supported."
1429 total votes, 140 individual votes.
Status: In plan.
UPDATE: The investigation is complete and coding has begun. We intend to
have a patch available by Spring '05.
2. "Request that MPE's FTP server be enabled to support 'ftpusers'
(users not allowed access to the FTP server) and 'ftpaccess' (files not
allowed to be retrieved), like FTP on UNIX. The addition of these files
would allow a system manager more granular control of an MPE system.
These features would be valuable now and in the future (for
homesteaders)."
1422 total votes, 145 individual votes.
Status: In plan. We plan on a full implementation of the ftpusers file
and a partial implementation of the ftpaccess file. At this point, after
a brief investigation, we believe we can support the following features
controlled by ftpaccess: noretrieve, log commands, log transfers, deny
option, and banner option. 'Noretrieve' seems to be the most desired
ftpaccess feature.
UPDATE: ftpuser is done and system level testing is pending. ftpaccess
noretrieve is also done waiting for system level testing. We are coding
a subset of the other ftpaccess features, including logging ftp commands
and file transfers, the command deny feature, and possibly a few more.
As with NW printing, we intend to be finish the FTP work in the Spring
'05 timeframe.
4. "Enable FWSCSI card firmware level reporting and update immediately.
ODE/MAPPER doesn't show the firmware level on FWSCSI and MFIO cards.
This needs to be fixed. The suplicen password for FWSCSIPB in SYSDIAG or
STM is needed to get the level information and update the firmware, if
needed. A new procedure needs to be supplied for all users, regardless
of HP support status, to update the firmware, downloaded from the ITRC,
on an MPE/iX machine."
1024 total votes, 110 individual votes.
Status: Partial implementation: we plan on providing a privileged
program which reports the firmware information. The updating aspect of
this item will be addressed as part of our business decision-making.
UPDATE: we have created a tool to report this firmware information. This
tool will be available on Jazz (without official HP support), and may
also be distributed in the TELESUP account. It only reports firmware
revisions for NIO F/W SCSI, thus it is not intended for A- and N-class
systems. Below is a sample output:
NIO Fast/Wide SCSI device adapter card firmware versions:
Path Device Active Inactive
10/16/4 HP28696A 3728 3543
10/16/12 HP28696A 3728 3543
10/4/4 HP28696A 3543 3543
10/4/24 A2372-60003-FWSCSI 3524 ffff
5. "Make future I&I open source products (Apache, Samba, Sendmail,
etc...) include the source trees and build scripts used to create the
binary releases starting with the current releases."
989 total votes, 106 individual votes.
Status: In plan.
UPDATE: We are doing this as seen in our latest releases of Sendmail,
Samba, and Apache. We plan on updating BIND later this year and that
release will also include source code.
8. "Enhance MPE/iX to allow applications to send SCSI commands directly
to SCSI devices (most likely to be implemented via POSIX ioctl()
function). A primary goal will be to allow a "one I/O at a time"
connection to most SCSI device types -- even types previously not
supported by MPE/iX. NOTE: Devices will be limited those able to connect
to existing HPe3000 Host Bus Adaptor cards (e.g. Parallel SCSI buses.
For 9xx: SE and FW SCSI. For A/N-Class: HVD and LVD SCSI). Support of
newer HBAs and connection protocols (e.g. 10Gbit FC, iSCSI, etc) will
not be considered as part of this item".
865 total votes, 110 individual votes.
Status: Under Investigation. We are currently investigating this item
to fully understand what the limits and restrictions are in MPE so we
can communicate these restrictions and validate that this request, given
the constraints, is still desired.
UPDATE: We have completed the investigation and are evaluating the
results to determine whether we will staff the project. We intend to
make that decision by the end of Feb '05.
11. "SPOOLINFO CI functions. Similar to FINFO and JINFO, provide a CI
function which provides information for a spoolfile, based on spoolfile
# or spoolfile name."
640 total votes, 96 individual votes.
Status: In plan.
13. "DEVINFO CI functions. Similar to FINFO and JINFO, provide a CI
function which provides information for a device, based on LDEV # or
device name. This function could get the desired info from
AIFDEVCLASSGET and/or AIFDEVICEGET."
395 total votes, 80 individual votes.
Status: In plan.
15. "VOLINFO CI functions. Similar to FINFO and JINFO, provide a CI
function which provides information for a device, based on LDEV # or
device name. This function could get the desired info from HPVOLINFO."
345 total votes, 74 individual votes.
Status: In plan.
UPDATE: I'd like to refer to the above three new functions collectively
as "CI Functions", that's our internal name anyway. This project is
staffed and we are close to sharing the individual pieces of information
each function will return to its caller in order to get feedback. After
that it's just a simple matter of coding. We intend to be done by Spring
'05.
----------- And a few items from SIB'03 ---------------
7. Verify FTP for >8GB files both ways, fix problems
UPDATE: This is completed in releases 6.5, 7.0, and 7.5. The original
and latest patch Ids follow:
Original Latest
-------- ---------
6.5 FTPHD07 FTPHD74A
7.0 FTPHD08 FTPHD67A
7.5 FTPHD09 FTPHD75A
8. Make sure MPE can mount any disk up to ~ 1TB
UPDATE: Today we officially support up to a 146 GB disk and MPE can use
all of the space. We have started several new patches to address the
changes to MPE to support this request. These patches will allow MPE to
mount any size disk, even greater than 1TB; however, MPE will only
recognize the first 512 GB of the disk. The patch Ids are MPEMXT[1-4].
10. User Functions: call another script as a function
UPDATE: Completed in 7.5 by patches MPEMXP9 and MPEMXQ0. So far four
sites have requested these patches with almost no feedback to the
Response Center. Therefore the patches are still in "Beta Test" status.
If you have installed these patches please provide feedback. If you
voted for this enhancement and are running MPE/iX 7.5 please consider
installing these patches.
Regards,
Jeff Vance, vCSY
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