URGENT - Logical Names disappearing mysteriously

[Phillip Thayer]

I have a problem with out systems here since yesterday that I cannot figure out. Some of out group level logical application names are being deassigned somehow. Here are the symptoms:

1. The system is running along happy as can be and sudennly some of the lower level group logical names are no longer defined. For example:

"UTL_EXE" = "APPLICATION_DISK:[H_H.COMMERCIAL.UTL.EXE]"
"APPLICATION_DISK" = "COMM_APP_DISK" (LNM$GROUP_000400)
1 "COMM_APP_DISK" = "DSA1:" (LNM$SYSTEM_TABLE)

When we start having problems I do a SHOW LOGICAL on COMM_APP_DISK and I get the error %SHOW-S-NOTRAN, no translation for logical name COMM_APP_DISK which causes the programs to not be found. The root logical names for the data disks are also disappearing which creates major problems for detached processes and batch processes.

2. System logical names are being deassigned or disapperaing somehow. What brought this to my attention was when I tried to do a SHOW CLUSTER and got an error message about the language not being defined. The logical name SYS$LANGUAGE was not defined as well as SYS$ANNOUNCE and SYS$WELCOME. There were several other system level logical names that were not defined as well. All of them were some of the logicals set in VMS$INITIAL-050_LIB.COM command procedure.

I am stumped and do not know what is happening. Our configuration is a cluster between a VAX 4000-705A running VMS V6.2 and an AlphaServer ES40 running VMS V7.3. The cluster was rebooted 10 days ago and we have been running smooth until yesterday afternoon.

I know this is not a standard VMS cluster and that it is not officially supported but we have been running like this for the last year and a half with absolutly no problem. I would love to upgrade the VAX to VMS V7.3 but we are running an application that is now owned by Kodak, they are not supporting the application anymore and will not give up the source code. So I cannot upgrade to a newer version of VMS because I cannot make application changes that are needed. (Like recompile /re-link in a new major operating system version to even run the programs.) All I have are executables.

Any help with the problem of the logical names would be greatly appreciated.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert · Accepted solution]

You can try to put an acl on the logical name table and generate an audit alarm when it is modified.
Then analyze audit to find the process id of the logical name killer.

Wim

[Heinz W Genhart]

Hi Phillip

this sounds very strange to me. I have never seen that logical names in the system and the group table are suddendly missing.

I think there must be something or somebody who deassigns those logicals.

About your kodak application. Did You try to run this application on VMS 7.3. I would expect, that those image are running without to recompile and to relink. (If that is normal usercode and not depending on SYSDEF)

You may see a hopefully small performance degradation, but in most cases the will run


regards

Heinz

[Phillip Thayer]

Wim - I will try the ACL idea and see what I get from that. I totaly forgot about that. Thanks.

Heinz - VMS does not allow you to take an executable from a V6.x system and run it on a V7.x system. You get an error that says something about the image not being compatible. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Check http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v6/protecting_and_monitoring_openvms.html
in the middle "Example of Logical Name Table Security Auditing".

More simple but try with access delete or write.

Wim (didn't use that myself yet)

[Robert Gezelter]

Phillip,

I agree with the suggestion of instrumenting the system with alarms.

On the images being incompatible with releases later than 6.2, that does indeed sound unusual. Can you be more specific on the precise error message(s) that are appearing.

There are some run-time library issues, but they generally can be circumvented.

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

[Phillip Thayer]

Robert, I cannot remember the exact error message. I know is had something to do with the image being built on a different major version of VMS. It has been a while since I tested this on a VAX I temporarily had access to with VMS V7.2. My concern at the time was running an upgrade on a production system, having our primary application not run and having to fall back to VMS V6.2 all in one afternoon.

Phil

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Just tried the example. It generates some output. Use disable to deactivate it again. You don't see what is exactly modified.

Wim

[Phillip Thayer]

Wim,

I am not too concerned about what is modified but rather who or what is the culprit that is modifying the logicals. I did the example and it generated a huge number of alarms. I disabled it and now have it enabled for audit logging ONLY without alarming so I can get the data when the problem happens without having the system console beeping like crazy until then. After that I will disable the audit logging.

Phil

[Phillip Thayer]

I have a correction to make to the symptoms I described. The logicals in the group tables are not being affected. The logical I listed COMM_APP_DISK is actually in the system table (LNM$SYSTEM_TABLE). So are all the other logicals that seem to disappear.

Phil