[HECnet] DECnet default access on RSX...

[Paul_Koning at Dell.com]

On Jun 15, 2013, at 9:19 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

On 2013-06-15 14:59, Bob Armstrong wrote:
My workaround for that is to use DECnet proxy information.
However, I'm not sure that is available in 11M.

  Sadly, there is no proxy support on M - only M+.

  I still don't understand how it works when talking to a VMS system,
though?   LENTO is doing the same thing in either case, but with a VMS system
on the far end all is well and with an RSX system on the other end it
doesn't work.

In all cases, if account information is passed in the request, it is used. For any OS. If no account information is passed, but both requesting node includes proxy information, and responding nodes make use of proxy information, this is used to get an account under which to process the reqeuest.
With VMS, if a request comes in without any account information, VMS applies the default account as the user under which to run the request. The requesting node have no involvement in this.

Proxy access is not standardized or documented (at the protocol level).   I think it's simply this: the access control fields in the session control protocol are optional.   If they are omitted, it's up to the receiving node to decide what to do about it (if the application protocol in question has the notion of access control).   In some systems, the answer is "reject".   In others, the answer is "use a default account" (RSTS has this).

A variation which some OSs might use (I forgot) is to handle the case where a user name is supplied but no password.

	paul