[HECnet] VMS/RSX Guest accounts

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2020-04-23 04:49, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
> I've had my fill of FAL and DAP for the moment and have turned to some 
> other things as sort of a 'break'.  The Tops-10 NFT client breaks on 
> certain file names that the 20 sends it, so there is going to be some 
> debugging to track that down.  Fortunately, a very patient person gave 
> me PPN on one of their 10's.
> 
> Right now, I'm working on bringing the Tops-20 mail system a bit more up 
> to date with respect to DECnet communications.  These were largely put 
> aside when full Internet connectivity happened. Still, the PANDA 
> distribution has some bit rot because I know that certain Columbia 
> changes for DECnet (to support CCnet) are not there.  I can't imagine 
> that we didn't send them to MRC; that would have been unthinkable.
> 
> Fortunately, I was able to remember enough to put some of them back so 
> that I got SMTP over DECnet working well, again.  It had been suffering 
> from about two minute timing delays and now it's instantaneous between 
> 20's, like I remember.   Oddly enough, I don't remember what else ran 
> SMTP over DECnet; I'm certain that RSX and VMS could have done it.  I 
> think some VMS site might have.
> 
> However, most non-SMTP DECnet hosts on CCnet were running Mail-11, which 
> the 20 also groks.  In fact, it can convert Mail-11 addresses to SMTP 
> and route over other transports such as PUP, Chaos and TCP/IP as well as 
> DECnet.  We did a lot of mail routing for CCnet to the Internet on 
> CU20B, back in the day.
> 
> Unfortunately, there is some bit rot in some of the Tops-20 Mail-11 
> code, so I've got some tinkering to do.  Does anyone have a VMS or RSX 
> system that they'd care to give me a guest account on?  It doesn't need 
> any special capabilities; I'm just going to be sending mail and looking 
> a few raw headers over.

Just log in to Mim.Update.UU.SE (MIM::). There is a guest account, with 
password guest. That should do it, I think.

With that said, RSX definitely do not speak SMTP over DECnet. And we 
should also actually go into some detail about how to speak MAIL-11. 
Even VMS cheats...

   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