Daylight saving on OpenVms 7.2

[Kulothungan]

Hello,
I am very new to VMS. I had a problem when I tried to change the time of one of our Alpha servers running VMS 7.2. I do not know anything about DTSS or NTP.

The problem was, on last 27th macrh I submitted a job to change the system time from 01:00 to 02:00 @ 01:00. By then I did not know that there are options in VMS to set the system to change time automatically according to daylight saving. When I checked the time the next day, I found the time was advanced by two hours. This is because when the batch job I submitted changed the time from 01:00 to 02:00, some other process(which was set to change the time from 02:00 to 03:00), advanced the time another hour. Then I started investigating and found that there are services like DTSS and NTP to manage time. When I checked the system it was running DTSS$CLERK (I don't know how to find whether NTP is running).
Can I get some advice in how to get a service running on VMS and in particular how and where to start for this DTSS setup and how to configure the system to adjust the system clock according to dy light saving?

Thanks in advance

[Anton van Ruitenbeek]

Hello,

First: Welcom to the forum and hope you will like it.

As you mentioned there are several options to manage time in VMS.
The best thing is to use DTSS. This is part of DECNet and is started automaticly when starting DECNet. If you are using DTSS and you want to manage the time _MANUALY_, stop DTSS in NCL, change the time, start DTSS.
You don't have to do anything if you set the autodaylightsaving correctly.
1. Make sure AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV is 1 in SYSGEN
2. Configure the timezone correctly using SYS$STARTUP:UTC$TIME_SETUP.COM !
To disable DTSS you have to set the logical NET$DISABLE_DTSS to TRUE in NET$LOGICALS.COM . This cannot be done in SYLOGICALS because a part of DECNet is already running then.

Another possibilty is NTP. This is part of TCP/IP suite and must be set within TCPIP$CONFIG (Configure it for startup, but do not start it yet).
Also for this the timezone must be set correctly and the AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV must be set to 1. If you are synchronizing to another site and the AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV is not set, the timedifference is at once more then 100 seconds and nothing will be done anymore unless _YOU_ set the time _MANUALY_.
After configuring IP you have to edit the SYS$SYSROOT:[TCPIP$NTP]TCPIP$NTP.CONF with the knowing information. The file is good selfexplaining !
After this is done, startup NTP by using @SYS$STARTUP:TCPIP$NTP_STARTUP.COM .

We unfortunaly went from DTSS to NTP and we got nice results. Using the DTSS years we never changed the time manualy. We had over the whole country timesync over DTSS. Now we went to NTP and in the beginning sometimes it went ok, and most of the times wrong. Yes its only twice a year so you cannot test it much. The previous time time it went OK and the last time two nodes in the cluster stayed at wintertime. This because for one (unknown) reason I lost the timezone rule. This is hopely corrected now.

AvR

[Robert_Boyd]

On VMS 7.2 the AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV system parameter is not available. You have to wait until you upgrade to V7.3-x to have that capability.

You may wish to find out more about the time synchronization architecture in your environment. If you're running DTSS there is probably at least 1 node, if not more, running as a DTSS SERVER.

You can use NCL to show the DTSS characteristics of the system you are dealing with. For instance you can enter:

$ MCR NCL SHOW DTSS ALL ATTRIBUTES

You can find out if NTP is configured on your system by entering this command:

$ TCPIP SHOW SERVICE NTP

If you see NTP in a state of "Enabled" then you have NTP running. You can look in SYS$SYSROOT:[TCPIP$NTP] for the config file and log files. If you have executed the SYS$STARTUP:TCPIP$DEFINE_COMMANDS.COM in your login or by hand, you can also do things like
$ NTPTRACE
to see what the current status is. NTPDC and NTPQ are useful for looking at current state as well.

Usually, if you are running DTSS you would only run NTP as a server node, since DTSS has control of the clock. You can look at the NTP template config file for comments on how to set that up if you have other systems that need an NTP server.

Once you find out which system(s) are running as your DTSS server(s) you might also inquire about what time reference they are using(if any). There are a variety of configurations possible.

Robert

[Ian Miller.]

Notice that one of the characteristics disabled for NCL SHOW DTSS ALL CHAR is
Automatic TDF Change
Which if true then DTSS will do the clock
change. Also displayed will be
Next TDF Change
which tells you when DTSS will next do the clock change.

[Kulothungan]

Thank you very much for all of yours advice. They were much helpful. I am trying to work them out in one of our test serevers, I will get back to you once again. Again many thanks for your time.

Kulothungan

[Ian Miller.]

Kulothungan, see
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

report back after your testing.

[Kulothungan]

Hello,

I have tried working out the solutions you suggested. Thanks again.

Robert Boyd, you are right. There is no AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV parameter in VMS 7.2.

But without my knowledge the time on one of our clients' VMS (7.2) machine changed automatically last march. Until then I did not know that there was such an option in VMS. Now all I want to know is how to configure a VMS box to change the time automatically according to day light savings - from scratch.

When I issued the command 'MCR NCL SHOW DTSS ALL ATTRIBUTES', I received the following error:

%DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image NCL
-CLI-E-IMAGEFNF, image file not found MYBOX$DRA0:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSEXE]NCL.EXE;

But I think DECNet is installed on the machine (How I confirmed this is I issued the command Show Net which gave an IP and a DECNet addresses. Is it the way to check whether DECNet is installed on a machine or not?). Is it that DECNet is installed on the machine, but not started?

And I get the following message when I issued 'TCPIP SHOW SERVICE NTP' command:

%TCPIP-W-NORECORD, information not found
-RMS-E-RNF, record not found

At the moment I want to focus on DTSS (at this level I could not judge the merits and demerits of NTP and DTSS). Because DTSS is already running on one machine and I can refer to it if I have nay problem.

I am using a test machine to do this setup and all the details above are gathered from that machine. When I checked the services, I could not find the service DTSS$CLERK running on the test machine (how to start it if everything else is normal?). What is the way to find out whether DECNET is installed on a machine or not and if it is installed whether it is running or not? In the case of my test machine, I can able to log on to it from remote terminal using both IP and DECNET addresses.

As I am a beginner, please bear my confusions and let me know if you need more clarifications.

[Robert_Boyd]

If you are running DECnet and NCL is not present on your system, usually this is a sign that you are running DECnet Phase IV on that system. You might search your SYS$STARTUP:*.com files for references to DTSS to see how the software gets started and see if that gives you some clues about how to look at it. You will probably need to consult your documentation for DECdts management on a DECnet Phase IV system unless someone reading the forum has more familiarity with it than I do.

Robert

[Robert_Boyd]

For systems running DECnet Phase IV, you usually use the NCP command to display and manipulate the configuration.

I should have mentioned in my last message -- you can try:

$ MCR NCP SHOW CHARACTERISTICS KNOWN OBJECTS
or
$ MCR NCP SHOW KNOWN OBJECTS
for a summary.

Look in the output to see if you observe any reverences to DTS.

Robert

[Volker Halle]

Hi,

DECdts is part of DECnet Phase V (also called DECnet/OSI or DECnet-Plus).

$ MC NCP SHOW EXE CHAR will show you, if you're running DECnet-OSI or just DECnet (which would indicate Phase IV).

If you've seen a DTSS$CLERK process, then you must be running DECnet Phase V on that node. MC NCL SHOW DTSS ALL will show you all the attributes of DTSS on that system.

You might also want to configure TIME auditing to find out, if more than one job would be changing the time:

$ SET AUDIT/ALARM/ENABLE=TIME
(will send alarms to OPERATOR.LOG)

S SET AUDIT/AUDIT/ENABLE=TIME
(check ANAL/AUDIT/EVENT=TIME SYS$MANAGER:)

Volker.

[Robert_Boyd]

Volker,

As I recall, there was a release of DECnet Plus migration tools that included some pieces of Phase V that would run along side of Phase IV.

I'm not sure if that included DECdts or DECdns but I remember there was something. It has been too long ago and I don't recall what version of the OS that might have been under -- I would guess it was around V5.4-V6.2.

The fact that there is no NCL image in SYS$SYSTEM and DECnet seems to be running would be a pretty good sign that it's not running pure Phase V, unless someone moved the NCL image to an alternate location and hid it.

I agree about the NCP show commands to find out just what version is running.

Robert

[Volker Halle]

Robert,

you may remember DECnet VAX Extensions, but this was VAX only around OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2 timeframe.

Volker.

[Ian Miller.]

I remember a long time ago using DECnet VAX Extensions to manage X.25 Router 500 - the joy, the fun, the long nights :-)

If you are running DECnet IV on some systems and DECnet/Plus on others and you can't change to all DECnet/Plus then parhaps ntp is the way to go (if a tcpip stack is available on all nodes).