[HECnet] Downtime next week

[Zane H. Healy]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Paul Koning wrote:

Excerpt of message (sent 20 August 2009) by Zane H. Healy:

Ditto, though last I tried Linux DECnet was in the late 90's.   It's
also worth mentioning that DECnet/E seems to have trouble coexisting
with just about anything, so DECnet/Linux isn't alone. :-)

Oh really?   That wasn't our experience when we built it...

  paul

I suspect it is one of those "version creep" sort of things.   I've noticed
that VAX/VMS V5.5-2 is much happier talking with things such as RSTS/E, and
IIRC even RSX-11M+ than say OpenVMS V8.3.   Of course my secondary OS is
OpenVMS (primary is Mac OS X), so my comments are coloured a little by it.

Another area I've had problems with DECnet/E is with the network hardware
itself, and software installation.   It is incredibly touchy about your
network switches.   I had one switch that every other OS and network stack I
through at it would work, not so DECnet/E, in fact I had to put the PDP-11
on a hub to be able to even install it, as I couldn't do the install when
attached to the switch.   The other installation problem was that the
distribution kit doesn't like living on a 4mm DAT.   You can install RSTS/E
from 4mm DAT, but as near as I can tell, DECnet/E needs to live on a TK50
(or I assume 9-Track).

It has been several years since I've been able to play with it much, has
anyone managed to install DECnet/E on an emulated system?   About 6 years ago
it refused to install on either E11, or SIMH for me (of course at that point
SIMH networking code was very primitive).   IIRC, that is long enough ago I
was using a different switch than the one that gave me so many problems.

Zane