[HECnet] My RSTS/E system...

[Johnny Billquist]

Hi all. I thought I'd just make a final report on this story.

This turned out to be a combination of two issues.

1) There is a bug in the RSX kernel, which can cause crashed by any 
program, if they just do the right (wrong) thing. I've known about this 
problem for quite a while, and it has been fixed in my non-released 
RSX-11M-PLUS V5.0. So if that ever goes out, this problem is no more.

2) There was a bug in the program to connect to RSTS/E from RSX 
explicitly, which triggered the #1 bug. This bug I have now fixed as 
well, so the program works fine, even on older versions of RSX. When 
that bug was introduced, I have no idea. I would assume that it wasn't 
there from the start, or I would have expected that DEC would have noticed.

Anyway, all is good. And if someone wants to, they can fetch the fixed 
RRS program from MIM::DU:[5,54]RRS.TSK

   Johnny

On 2018-08-14 10:30, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2018-08-13 16:12, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Aug 12, 2018, at 8:11 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>>
>>> By the way, Steve. What version of RSTS/E?
>>>
>>> I noticed another "odd" thing here.
>>>
>>> .set /host=pluto
>>>
>>> NCT -- CTERM is not available on host
>>> NCT -- Using RMT
>>>
>>>
>>> RMT -- Remote Host incompatibility error
>>
>> The first message from the responding node contains OS and protocol 
>> identifiers.  The protocol identifiers, if I read the RSTS client 
>> correctly, are RSTS, RSX, VMS, and TOPS-20 protocols respectively (for 
>> 1 and up).  TOPS-20 is also used by RT-11; I forgot what Ultrix uses, 
>> either RSTS or TOPS-20 protocol I think.
>>
>> If you run the "official" network terminal client on RSTS, it will 
>> give you a very similar message when connecting to non-RSTS because 
>> only the RSTS protocol was officially supported.  But the "netuns" 
>> client supports all four.  I have a summary of all four protocols 
>> somewhere which I used to extend the DECnet/Linux client; or you could 
>> use that code as a reference implementation if you need one.
> 
> Thanks for the clarifications. I have never looked closer at this older 
> protocol itself. But just like RSTS/E, the RSX DECnet distribution 
> provides a bunch of unsupported tools. And there too are a programs to 
> connect to other operating systems. But in RSX, it's a different tool 
> for each type of OS to connect to.
> So you have a program called RRS to connect to RSTS/E systems, and a 
> program called HOST to connect to TOPS-20.
> RVT for connections to VMS.
> (And RMT is the program for RSX to RSX communication.)
> 
> So I don't really need some reference implementation. The code already 
> exists, but I suspect it has rotted some over the years, so I need to 
> fix it.
> 
>    Johnny
> 

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol