topic Re: Phone Utility in Operating System - OpenVMS

Phone Utility

The Brit — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:36:18 GMT

OpenVMS 8.3-1H1 on BL860c blade cluster using DECNet Phase V and DECNet-over-IP.

When I enter

$ Phone BAXTERD

I get:-

OpenVMS Phone Facility 12-NOV-2009
%
That person's terminal cannot be used as a telephone.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUD::SYSDAB

Any idea of the cause, or resolution for this??

Note: BAXTERD is logged in on the same node.

Dave.

Re: Phone Utility

Jon Pinkley — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:06:34 GMT

Can you have BAXTERD do sho show term/full
and provide the output?

In V7.3-2 if the terminal is set /nobroadcast
of has used

$ set broadcast=nophone

Then it will display

That person's phone is unplugged (/NOBROADCAST).

But that's a different message than you are reporting.

I just searched sys$system:phone.exe on a 8.3 alpha, using Hein's STRINGS program, and I don't see any strings that match the string. In fact using search doesn't find the string "telephone".

Are you sure you are using the real phone.exe from VMS?

$ sho sym phone ! make sure it isn't doing something funny
$ sho log phone
$ ! if you have the verb utility, verify that phone is using image phone

$ analyze/image/select=(id,build,link) 'f$parse("phone","sys$system:.exe")'

Jon

Re: Phone Utility

Hoff — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:12:26 GMT

Some related reading on getting PHONE to work, and some alternatives that are available:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1091

Re: Phone Utility

Hein van den Heuvel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:09:34 GMT

You get that message when the terminal is not a CRT.

I just tried with SET TERM/LA36 and got that.

On the terminal itself you get
%PHONE-F-BADTERM, you cannot use this type of terminal as a telephone

For me the fix is: $SET TERM/INQ

Cheers,
Hein.

Re: Phone Utility

Jon Pinkley — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:03:07 GMT

Dave,

Give Hein 10 points.

The reason STRINGS and SEARCH didn't find the text is becaue these messages are in the sys$message:cliutlmsg.exe file.

Jon

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:38:09 GMT

Thanks for your suggestions guys, unfortunately, nothing helped so far.

Some additional information:

1. Have 4 node cluster, 3 blades sharing 8.3-1H1 system disk, and DS10 using its own system disk. Also have 3 external standalone development blade systems (8.3-1H1).

2. The problem only manifests itself when one (or both) of the communicating systems is/are a production cluster blade. The phone utility is working fine between the standalone systems.

As Hoff will probably remember, we had some issues with networking back in Feb, when we first migrated to blades, and as part of the troubleshooting process we trimmed the DECNet Phase V configuration to the absolute minimum, basically reducing all of the references to a single interface. This primarily affected the net$routing_startup.ncl file, and the net$cmsacd_startup.ncl file.

Once the problem was resolved, we were a bit wary about putting the files back, so they have remained as they were.

I suspect that this is a part, if not all of the problem.

Does this make any sense, or explain anything in the context of the "Phone" issue??

Dave.

Re: Phone Utility

Hein van den Heuvel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:14:27 GMT

When you do a $ SHOW TERM in the target session, what does it indicate?

When you just launch $ PHONE in the target sesssion without a user to phone, what does it report? Does the phone screen appears, or the message I indicated earlier?

Hein.

Re: Phone Utility

Hoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:31:19 GMT

> Does this make any sense, or explain anything in the context of the "Phone" issue??

No, and No. :-)

SHOW TERMINAL on the target session on the target host. Is the target session marked as a DECCRT-class terminal? If not, then PHONE won't work.

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:35:30 GMT

Hein, Hoff,

In the attachment I have added the information you were asking for.

Basically, between my development machines, Phone is working fine, so I have to assume that the terminal setups on those machines are also fine.

I then matched the production terminal setup to the development machines, (which did require some changes to the DEC_CRT3 and DEC_CRT3 settings), and I get the following results.

When I Phone out from Prod to Dev:

Appears to work OK, i.e. the " is phoning you..." message appears on Dev Session, however when I try to answer I get;

"Attempting to continue after a transmission error..."

When I Phone from Dev to Prod, or from Prod to Prod, I get;

"That person's terminal cannot be used as a telephone."

Dave

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:52:45 GMT

Dave,

a quick look in the sources indicates: PHONE is looking for TT$M_SCOPE, if that fails, it will issue the 'targterm' message.

If DECnet links are involved, there is a mapping between various status codes to 'universal' codes, this code is more complicated to look at...

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

Hoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:15:28 GMT

PHONE is bog-standard DECnet task-to-task communications; there's not all that much that can go wrong.

See if the PHONE servers are enabled and active in the DECnet configurations and if the passwords are correct across the hosts involved.

As for transmission errors...

First, see if PHONE works locally; on the box.

Here's PHONE on a nearby OpenVMS box...

Object = PHONE

Number = 29
File id = SYS$SYSTEM:PHONE.EXE
User id = PHONE$SERVER
Proxy access = incoming and outgoing
Alias outgoing = Disabled
Alias incoming = Enabled

To see details in NCL:

NCL>sho sess control application phone all

Node names and back-translations are also something to check; that the hosts all have the same set of node names. If the nodes disagree on DECnet names and addresses, confusion can ensue.

Check accounting or auditing for failures around the time of the transmission errors, too.

Privileges? I'd expect at least NETMBX and possibly or probably TMPMBX.

Configuring Jabber or IRC or other such IM tools on your client boxes would seem to be an alternative, too; PHONE hasn't seen much in the way of changes in eons.

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:31:53 GMT

Dave,

how about PHONE operations involving DECnet links, like %DIR node:: ? Do they all work as expected ?

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:54:30 GMT

Dave,

the PHONE network protocol just seems to send 1 byte of data (using io$_writevblk) as the 'universal status' value for a remote operation:

phn$_linkerror -> send '0'
phn$_targterm -> send '7'

One of the other universal status values, which can easily be reproduced is '9' which maps to 'hn$_unplugged'. Can you try, if this works correctly ? Have a remote user issue a SET TERM/NOBRADCAST=PHONE and dial it using node::user, you should get the 'unplugged' message.

Did you check, whether is makes any difference, if the DECnet goes via native DECnet protocol or via DECnet-over-ip ?

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:33:46 GMT

See new attachment.

1. Phone setup in NCP and NCL looks to be correct.

2. DECLinks (i.e. %DIR ::) works fine in all directions and between all systems.

3. Setting broadcast=nophone did not give the "unplugged" message, just gave the same "...terminal cannot be used as a telephone." message.

4. I'm not in a position to try Phase IV, I only have Phase V nodes.

5. "Node names and back-translations". What would be the best way to confirm this?

Dave.

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:57:16 GMT

Dave,

does the following message always show up in NET$SERVER.LOG on the remote node, if you get the phn$_targterm error message ?

%SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHDEV, no such device available
That person's terminal cannot be used as a telephone.

Then the next question would be, which operation may fail with NOSUCHDEV and could this failure then be mapped to the 'phn$_targterm' status message.

To find out, whether DECnet-over-IP is being used, do a $ SET HOST node, login and check, whether you see an IP connection to ports 102 or 399 from your source node.

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:35:06 GMT

HI Hein,

I tested DECNet over IP, as you suggested, (see attachment). Looks like it is working.

As for the error message, I dont recall seeing any other message in the NET$SERVER.LOG.

Dave.

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:55:25 GMT

Dave,

assuming that the users are connecting via TELNET, what do the TNA device unit numbers look like ? Maybe greater than 9999 ?

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:17:34 GMT

Hi Hein,

I think you might be getting warm. On Bud, (the production machine)

Bud:BaxterD>> show proc

14-NOV-2009 09:13:20.01 User: BAXTERD Process ID: 203BB516
Node: BUD Process name: "BAXTERD"

Terminal: TNA47274: (Host: 10.20.22.110 Port: 2565)
User Identifier: [BAXTERD]

????

Dave
Base priority: 4
Default file spec: USERROOT:[BAXTERD]
Number of Kthreads: 1

Devices allocated: TNA47274:

whereas on the development machine,

Oesdev:BaxterD>> show proc

14-NOV-2009 09:16:03.98 User: BAXTERD Process ID: 000048F9
Node: OESDEV Process name: "BAXTERD"

Terminal: TNA226: (Host: 10.20.22.110 Port: 2571)
User Identifier: [125H,BAXTERD]
Base priority: 4
Default file spec: USERROOT:[BAXTERD]
Number of Kthreads: 1

Devices allocated: TNA226:

Re: Phone Utility

Volker Halle — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:43:16 GMT

Dave,

it's me: Volker ;-)

It's not only getting warm, it's getting HOT !

Consider to have a look at this thread:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1074590

Volker.

Re: Phone Utility

The Brit — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:06:57 GMT

Volker,
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

I am certain that this is the problem, (and I apologise for keep calling you "Hein")

Old age I'm afraid. I can either concentrate on who I'm talking to, or I can concentrate on the problem, unfortunately not both. (never used to be like that!)

I will need to discuss with my compatriots regarding what they need most, i.e. large numbers of tna/bg devices, or the phone utility. I imagine that the Phone Utility will be the thing to go.

Thanks again

Dave.