[HECnet] VMS/RSX Guest accounts

[Thomas DeBellis]

Yes, that's what I've been doing, but I need a little local storage for 
data capture, control files and some other odd and ends, so I was hoping 
to get my own personal account.  However, when I went to send you some 
Mail-11 about it, the 20's mail agent crashed, so I guess that's one 
request you never got.

I can't really remember what else spoke SMTP over DECnet.  I know Ultrix 
could have done it, but it has that losing bind interface, so you'd have 
to change some code in sendmail to make it work. The Tops-20 mailer uses 
the unified JFN interface, so all you have to do is open the connection 
and away you go, more or less.

Be aware of the following: my testing is extremely unlikely to crash 
anything.  Unless it does.  It could also leave some crud around from 
broken connections.  So, you might have some scrubbing to do; that's not 
a problem is it?

Once I fix the MMAILR crash, I'll contact you about Mail-11.  I'm fine 
being a purist about the matter.

On 4/22/20 11:12 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 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
>