topic Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers in Operating System - OpenVMS

Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Kivanc_1 — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:31:47 GMT

Hi ...
We are using dec server 90M+ and we want to test alternative terminal servers which has 16 or 32 ports.
In our system.trp file naming convention is like ;
LTA7508 means 8th port of dec server 750.
When we switch to 32 port dec servers what should be the naming convention ?
For example what would it be when i want to set a printer on port 25 of a 32 port dec server ?

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Steven Schweda — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:19:45 GMT

Who cares what you call them? Why not use
logical names, so you can call them (pretty
much) whatever you want to call them?

(What/who is "dec server 750"?)

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Robert Gezelter — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:26:51 GMT

Kivanc,

Welcome to the OpenVMS Forum!

My standard recommendation to clients for many years has been to use logical names, and use the LATCP CREATE PORT /LOGICAL (documented in the HELP text) to create a LAT port with an automatically assigned unit number and store the result in a Logical Name (table, name, and access mode specifiable in the command). This is a far safer alternative than trying to assign numbers.

I have seen many accidents when statically created numbers were used. Logical names are far, far safer.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Ian Miller. — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:29:00 GMT

have you looked at the current DECserver range

http://www.vnetek.com/s-211-decserver.aspx

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Kivanc_1 — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:47:49 GMT

we have routines that company standart and i have to use these routines for adding dec server to the system ...

Anyway ,

Can the naming of a LTA be like "LTABB25" ? "BB" is for dec server ID and "25" is for the port number.

The way we use is , "LTA7502" which means that dec server ID 750 and port ID is 2. And the restriction in a file is that the logic says first 3 char is for dec ID and the last char is for port ID.
The dec servers we use are all 8 port dec servers and we want to use 32 port dec servers but naming conventions restrict us to use these servers.
We will change the logic that "if terminal server id is BB , use 2 and 2 , not 3 and 1"

I want to know that if i could use letters for LTA naming in order to prevent overlapping ...

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Karl Rohwedder — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:06:19 GMT

LTA (and other) devices names are in the form LTAnnnn, where nnnn is a numeric from 1-9999, no hex and/or other non numeric characters here.

rehards Kalle

Re: Alternavie to 90M+ Terminal Servers

Robert Gezelter — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:13:16 GMT

Kivanc,

As has been observed, the LTAxxxx numbering scheme is limited to decimal digits. The xxxx is directly derived from a numeric field in the Unit Control Block for the particular LAT device.

Thus, the ability to create a numbering scheme as described in the original post depends upon the fortuitous [lucky!] circumstance that a) the port numbers on a given server did not exceed 8; and b) that the number of servers did not involve more than could be fit in three decimal digits.

For programming, such a naming convention is not often needed, although as implied by the original posting, it does have advantages for operational support (which is often the case with numbering conventions).

One can represent 16 and 32 port servers as TWO servers for the purposes of your configuration, although it will be necessary to do some changes to set up the correct port numbers when using LATCP, to wit:

LTA1008 (terminal server 100, port 8)
LTA1010 (terminal server 100, port 9)
LTA1018 (terminal server 100, port 16)

While the above numbers can be decoded by sight, it is admittedly not as obvious as your existing scheme.

The F$GETDVI also provides the Terminal Server and Port information using the TT_ACCPORNAM parameter. This, combined with removing the explicit numbering from the port creation procedure would PROBABLY IMHO, be the best choice.

Finally, one can also create logical names as the LAT ports are created (using the CREATE PORT /LOGICAL, as mentioned previously) and generate the name of the form LATTERMINAL__). With an additional "decode" DCL command procedure to search the logical name table for the correct LTA device, this would also work.

IMHO, using F$GETDVI (or the corresponding SYS$ call) to get information about server and port is far better than decoding the number. If programs need to be able to address lines by some form of PORT/SERVER, I would create logical names using the CREATE PORT/LOGICAL in a proforma way as described above.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com