[HECnet] Introducing myself... and my little network

[gerry77 at mail.com]

On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:46:26 +0200, you wrote:

1) Defining the permanent node database for both TOPS10 and TOPS20. NCP 
rejects the DEFINE NODE commands. I guess there is some sort of utility 
like the one in RSX (CFE) to define the "permanent" node list, but I've 
not been able to find that one. There is a NIPGEN in TOPS-10 to build a 
CMD file with the SET NODE commands, but no NIPGEN in TOPS-20 that I've 
been able to find...

Please, note that I'm really not versed in TOPS-20 configurations so I shall
write about TOPS-10 only. :)

As Peter Lothberg has already pointed out, there is no permanent database in
TOPS-10 DECnet, but just the volatile one that has to be reloaded after every
reboot. If I'm not wrong, NIPGEN was used only when setting up front-end-based
DECnet, i.e. DDCMP links and such, but not Ethernet. The official way to pass
node definitions to NCP should be to feed it with a SET NODE command for every
node to be defined, but that would be noticeably slow, in particular with long
node lists. So NODNAM was born, which uses a faster method to load the DECnet
database reading from INI:NODNAM.INI, and then optionally starts MX.

If your INI: device points to a non-existant [5,34] directory, you may use
CREDIR to create it, like this:

| .R CREDIR
| Create directory: INI:
|     Created DSKB1:[5,34].UFD/PROTECTION:775
| Create directory: ^Z

Then, to have NODNAM automatically started by the monitor, just add NODNAM at
the end of SYS:SYSJOB.INI without preceding it with LOG (or LOGIN). That's
because NODNAM does not "stick" but starts, does its thing, then exits.

More details can be found in NODNAM.HLP:
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops10_tools_bb-fp64b-sb/01/10,7/decnet/nodnam/nodnam.hlp.html

2) LAT. LAT works fine in TOPS-20. In TOPS-10 LCP tells me LAT is 
active, but it does not work (does not even announce itself). How do I 
enable LAT in TOPS-10?

Well, I'm using a homemade LAT-enabled monitor and I have the following in my
SYS:SYSTEM.CMD file (among other things):

| LCP SET GROUPS 0
| LCP SET SERVICE-NAME xxxxxx /RATING: DYNAMIC
| LCP SET SERVICE-NAME xxxxxx /IDENT:   "Xxxxxx blah blah blah"
| LCP START

Moreover, I had to modify SYS:TTY.INI like this:

| ALL:       KSYS CHECK:DEFAULT NORUN TEXT NONOTICE EDITOR
| CTY:       GALOPR NOREMOTE ACCOUNT:"SYSTEM"
| APC:LAT NOCHECK TYPE:VT100
| STOMP     ACCOUNT:"SYSTEM"

(Notice the NORUN parameter!)

4) A few minutes after startup of TOPS-10. I get the following message 
at the console:

CCPOEF Output error on DSKB:SER001.EXE[10,1], status=40017

It does not seem to have any advert effect, but I'd like to know what's 
wrong. I've not seen such a message in my KS-based TOPS-10 running under 
SIMH.

That message is from the crash dump copy program (CRSCPY, message prefix CCP).
Whenever the monitor crashes and is reloaded or encounters a continuable error
for which a memory dump is taken, it then calls CRSCPY to copy the dump from
SYS:CRASH.EXE to XPN:xxxxxx.EXE (XPN: is [10,1]). The first three characters
of the copied dump file are the stopcode for which the dump was taken or SER
if the stopcode is not available or is a six-character stopcode.

Status 40017 might be "Block too large" (I'm not sure at all): a quick lookup
in alt.sys.pdp10 suggests that CRSCPY may complain with that message when some
filesystem parameters are not sized as expected.

Anyway you'd still have to discover why your monitor has crashed... You can
see a log of your dumps by running CRSCPY interactively and giving it the
REPORT command at the CRSCPY> prompt.

HTH,
G.