Jeff Vance writes:
> I have been collecting a list on POSIX related items.  Mark Bixby
> asked to see the list since he can't atend IPROF.  So, here it is...

I see you've been reading my POSIX posts on HP3000-L, so most of my items
are already included, except for:

> B. Missing Functionality / Deficiencies
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> *5) Some POSIX functions should not require PM: read/write to a port,
> write to $stderr via the FWRITE intrinsic, I know there must be more!!??
>
> 7) Support CGI MPE programs (in Pascal, COBOL, C, etc) and MPE scripts.
> this includes letting $stderr be opened non-privileged, not requiring PM
> to read/write to pipes, and more...

The inability of more than one MPE file system intrinsic to understand a
file number of 0 (i.e. stdin) is related to both of the above items.

> 10) Allow terminal file descriptors to interoperate with network fd's.
> Specifically, allow network sockets to be passed to processes that are not
> using NetIPC. Support within the ioctl functions for I_SENDFD and IRECVFD
> commands would improve the situation by allowing unrelated processes to pass
> file descriptors to each other

A related item I just discovered this week is the requirement of still using
sfcntl() to manipulate sockets.  Generic code in the FastCGI Developer's Kit
is attempting to fcntl() descriptor 0.  This works in a CGI environment when
descriptor 0 is a pipe, but fails in the FastCGI environment when desc 0 is
a AF_UNIX socket.

This particular code doesn't know prior to fcntl() whether or not it's
dealing with a pipe or a socket.  It's hard for me to determine how to choose
whether or not at runtime I need to use fcntl() or sfcntl().

POSIX fcntl() needs to be enhanced to work with sockets without the end-user
code having to call sfcntl() instead.


> D. Documentation
> ----------------

I'd love to see online man pages for all of the POSIX function calls just like
on my HPUX systems.  Maybe it would be easier to publish up-to-date
documentation this way -- when HP updates the software, HP updates the man
page too.  We customers would no longer have to rely on outdated paper/CDROM
POSIX manuals from 1994 (an eternity ago).


> Z. Miscellaneous
> -----------------
>
> 4) The lack of a DNS server on MPE forces a non-MPE box into a site
> if they wish to get on the internet.  Supporting DNS on MPE helps the
> installed base by not requiring them to learn/support an additional O/S.
> Additionally,  perhaps the "bind" package can be ported.  This provides
> nslookup and the named daemon.  We may be able to get DHCP (or at least
> bootp) too.

Add syslogd and syslog() support too.  Many of the major Internet server
packages log error messages to syslog.  I took a stab at building BIND today,
but stopped once I remembered that it wants to be able to syslog().  Sendmail
is another one that wants to syslog, as well as INN, etc.

You could probably justify doing syslog() because HP JetDirect devices are
willing to log status messages there.

> 7) Support Control-C in the POSIX shell.  Possibly other interrupts too?
> Related to "CI elimination" since the logon shell may want MPE break
> functionality.

God, yes!  It's very annoying to have to break/:ABORT the shell to stop a
hung or looping program.  Then I have to re-run the shell, and re-establish
my environment.  Tedious and annoying.

Control-Z suspend would also be nice to be able to put the running foreground
process into the background.

I'll post again if I think of any more before IPROF.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)