List of Archived Posts

2003 Newsgroup Postings (07/12 - 08/17)

VSPC

Dealing with complexity

Rexx vs. Batch

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?

What is timesharing, anyway?

Security models

What is timesharing, anyway?

z VM 4.3

What is timesharing, anyway?

What is timesharing, anyway?

humor in source code

humor in source code

What is timesharing, anyway?

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

RFC # for DCC protocol?

Dealing with complexity

Dealing with complexity

How do I know currently used RFC?

Dealing with complexity

What is timesharing, anyway?

smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?

What is timesharing, anyway?

virtual machines for security

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

virtual machines for security

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead

IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing"

Where the Good Jobs are Going

What is timesharing, anyway?

The Vintage Computer Forum

RFC2557?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved

What is timesharing, anyway?

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA

Differnce between LF and NL

Share lunch/dinner?

An Understanding Database Theory

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

Who said DAT?

S/360 IPL from 7 track tape

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

Linux gets sensitive government use approval

dissassembled code

Getting old

dissassembled code

S/360 IPL from 7 track tape

Obsolete mainframes

Window field in TCP header goes small

What is timesharing, anyway?

One big box vs. many little boxes

Confessions of a first-time SHARE attendee

The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces

The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces

SPXTAPE status from REXX

C & reliability: Was "The Incredible Shrinking Legacy"

Share lunch/dinner?

Digital signature and Digital Certificate

What is timesharing, anyway?

VSPC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: VSPC
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 16:25:00 GMT

terry.sambrooks@BTCLICK.COM (terry sambrooks) writes:

"Did anyone work at a shop which ran CALL/OS or VSPC?  I'd love to
compare notes."

I worked with a VSPC system circa 1983/84 in our "little ol'
capital". I did a two month stint writing an online work request
system to replace a fax based system. The object was to replace
paper with request into the scheduling system. It took about three
days to become familiar with the dialogue structure, a couple of
weeks to map and code the system, and the rest of the time was
testing and documenting the end result.

It was all very interesting, but a one off other than similar
exercises in ISPF at other installations.

there was the interactive pli from the (ibm) boston programming center
... that also included special RPQ ROS for 360/50. in the early '70s,
the boston programming center was on 3rd floor, 545 tech. sq ... and
was absorbed by the rapidly growing vm/370 group ... before it outgrew
tech sq. and moved out to a vacated sbc (which had been sold off to
cdc) in burlington mall.

in the early to mid '70s ... the PCO (personal computing option) group
(later renamed vs/pc when they discovered some TLA conflict with
organization in france) ... had a couple people that built a pco
simulated model. They would run benchmarks in the pco model ... and
then the vm/370 group was asked to compete with real benchmarks
against the pco benchmark model. For an extended period of time ... a
significant portion of the whole vm/370 development group was absorbed
in doing internal benchmarks matching the pco modeled/simulated
benchmarks.

Frequently the PCO simulated benchmarks demonstrated better
thruput/performance than the actual vm/370 equivalent benchmarks
.. until the vm/370 group had time to do various optimizations and
then frequently showed effectively equivalent real benchmark thruput.

The real eye-opener was when PCO finally became operational and they
were able to measure real PCO benchmark thruput that was something
like 1/10th of the thruput of what was being predicted by the
model. However, it did have the side effect of side-tracking and
tieing up huge number of person months out of the vm/370 group
... supposedly justifying their existance ... to show that PCO wasn't
twice as good as vm/370 .... when the model was actually shading the
truth and the actual PCO thruput was less than 1/5th that of vm/370
(or worse).

misc. 545 tech sq. posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

random past pco / vspc posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#1 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#51 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#26 LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.sys.super
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:04:05 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

errmm...No.  There weren't any others back then.  In those days,
computers were just starting to go from batch ala cards to interactive
systems.  Computer _systems_ (as opposed to dedicated hardware) were
not a production item (I'm thinking about mainframes here).  Computer
systems were built (almost from the ground up) on a _per customer_
basis.  I'm not sure about IBM, but I think they built the big systems
for each customer, too; Lynn can talk about this.

Nobody went to a retail store or web page and ordered a system that
was delivered the next day.  Whenever we sold a KA system, the whole
system was put together in the Mill, all software installed, and
checked out (this last one took a long time).  Then the system
was dismantled, crated (boxes were too small), put on a semi truck
or two and driven to the site.  (hmmm...I don't know how we shipped
overseas.)  The hardware and software people were not crated but
they were also shipped to the site.  Then the hardware was uncrated,
put back together and nursed back to bootable health.  This took
months.

stretch may have been like that ... but 360 had the pieces
manufactured in different places; processors in POK, Endicott, and
various places outside of the United States, disk drives in San Jose
and overseas, other parts in a number of places. Shipments arrived at
customer location .... which might have half dozen to couple dozen
outside people helping with the installation. On-site, ongoing support
staff (system and field engineers) could be a half dozen to couple
dozen people for the larger installations. system engineers did large
percentage of the software installatation and maintenance.

That significantly started to change with unbundling 6/23/69 ... with
not only pricing of software ... but also the pricing of the system
engineer time.

sometimes there was more work done on manufacturing engineering than
there was on technology/product engineering (aka the engineering of
the manufacturing of the product ... as opposed to the engineering of
the technology of the product).

The disk product test lab (bldg. 15 in san jose) would tend to get low
single digit serial number processors ... six months or more before
processors were available to customers ... for extensive testing of
new processors with disks ... and new disks with processors. because
of finagling with support of disk engineering and product test labs in
the late '70s ... i sometimes had better access to new processor for
various kinds of benchmarking ... than some of the engineers back in
the processor labs. misc disk engineering/product test lab:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

misc. unbundling
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#42 early (1950s & 1960s) IBM mainframe software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#43 early (1950s & 1960s) IBM mainframe software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#29 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: origin of the phrase
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#30 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: origin of the phrase
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#58 When did IBM go object only
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#209 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#18 On RC4 in C
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#6 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#38 Big black helicopters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#42 Big black helicopters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#30 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#27 IBM SHRINKS by 10 percent
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#28 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#62 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#44 50 years ago (1952)?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#7 myths about Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#16 myths about Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#18 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#56 Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#58 40th Anniversary of IBM System/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#66 software pricing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#36 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#48 June 23, 1969: IBM "unbundles" software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#54 June 23, 1969: IBM "unbundles" software

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Rexx vs. Batch

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Rexx vs. Batch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:49:02 GMT

tjpo@AIRBORNE.COM (Patrick O'Keefe) writes:

Another opportunity to climb onto my poor, abused soap box.

Having "... scrolling and the plethora of other mundane interactions
..." on the PC implies that the data is also on the PC.  One of the
advantages to the 3270 interface into TSO is that the 3270
datastream is a very light-weight, and the datastream for an
individual screen images is very small (by today's standards).  That
makes the 3270 datastream ideal for slow and/or dirty communication
connections.  And, unfortunately, such communication links still
exist.

Any interface taking advantage of the PC's strengths needs to be
able to a light-weight datastream mode (3270 or not is immaterial)
when conditions require it

Pat O'Keefe.

discussion of it within the context of cp/67 and vm/370:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#57 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

the issue was that VM/370 was translating the 3270 events into virtual
1052 ... and then assuming all operations to a virtual 1052 were of
"long" duration. The change discussed in the above reference was
originally to cp/67 ... which kept a count of outstanding i/o based on
real "high-speed" device type. (i/o that would be of short duration as
opposed to i/o that would be of long duration).

the translation to vm/370 maintained summary flags of outstanding
"high-speed" i/o based on virtual device type. As a result ... vm/370
was constantly dropping from queue and swapping the cms virtual
machines. The other feature dropped in the cp/67 to vm/370 translation
was a record of how long was the previous queue drop.

There was an official fix in vm/370 ... which left the virtual
structure as is (i.e. the real "bug" was that the high-speed/low-speed
determination was based on virtual device type ... which wouldn't
necessarily indicate the speed characteristic of the real device
type), but added a fixed 300ms delay to every queue drop operation
....  to catch all the cases where the system thot the address space
should be dropped from queue and pages swapped out ... but was
constantly getting it wrong (as in using the 3270 hardware sequence to
have all the queue drop/add chatter based on real 3270 being mapped to
a virtual 1052).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ping:  Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:03:04 GMT

skowen@ufl.edu (UF Scott) writes:

I have seen a couple of your posts in an archive mentioning the IBM
"Los Gatos Lab" (bldg. 29).  My grandfather used to work in that lab,
and still lives about 100 feet behind where it stood.  I remember
hiking around the hill where the radio dish was when I was a kid.  Do
you have any other stories or anecdotes about that facility?  Thanks,

i only had a wing of offices (no more than or 6-7). There is the T3
collins digital radio (microwave) repeater tower that was on the hill
above the san jose dump (between bldg 29/lsg and bldg 12 at the san
jose plant site) ... same as the tower currently above the ridge
between bldg 12 and bldg 90 (stl) along santa teresa blvd.

there was also the 4.5 meter satellite dish that HSDT put in the back
parking lot. zoning wasn't too bad in lsg ... it was much worse in
Yorktown ... putting in a 4.5 meter satellite dish behind the tj
watson research bldg. the local towns people were absolutely certain
that the radiation would do bad things to them.

it was difficult to describe to them it was only 25 watts ... max.
... typically half that in clear weather ... and only boosted to 25
watts during heavy rain fade (ku band ... similar effects that you see
in microwave ovens with h2o absorbing radiation). They were even shown
that they got significantly more radition from the local 50,000 watt
radio transmission tower than they would get from a 4.5 meter dish
that focused approx. 13 watts straight up. It was even caculated that
if they were suspended straight above the dish in the path of the
focused beam ... they would still be getting more radition from the FM
transmission tower. other hsdt posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

sorry ... strayed from lsg/bldg. 29.

they tore it down and turned the whole area into a housing
development.

misc. folklore stories i've heard in the past:

the cafeteria had an outside courtyard in the back ... that was
currended by an 18inch high wire mesh fence. some executive tried to
have it removed because he didn't consider that it look asthetically
pleasing. It was patiently explained to him that it was a rattlesnake
fence ... the bldg had been built on a migration(?) path of
rattlenakes between the hill in the back and the creek out front. the
executive quickly changed their mind about having the fence removed.

there was one year when wild boars spent some time tearing up the
grass outside the window of my office. not many people argue with wild
boar.

the first (ibm) ATM (automatic teller machine) was developed
there. They had vault installed in the basement where they kept $50k
in US 20 and equivalent number of bills from dozens of other countries
for testing.

some airline reservation terminals were developed there. one of the
design issues was that the top of the terminal has heat vents ... and
directly underneath the heat vents is a tray that has the capacity
designed to hold a quart bottle of coke.

LSM simulation machine was used to do digital chip design in some
cases involving some analog circuits ... aka as in disk read/write
heads.

technique of using a scanning electron microscope for examing operation
of running chip was developed there.

misc. references to the los gatos simulation machine/engine
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#77 Pipelining in the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#82 Future architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#26 LSM, YSE, & EVE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#23 Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#31 asynchronous CPUs

misc. refs to LSG work on blue iliad first 32bit 801/risc chip design:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#16 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#39 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#27 End of Moore's law and how it can influence job market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#3 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#69 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#25 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?

misc. other bldg. 29 mentions:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#57 South San Jose (was Tysons Corner, Virginia)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#45 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom.tech,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:10:16 GMT

Lon Stowell writes:

In 1983, in the AT&T datacenter at 444 Hoes Lane, there were
several mainframes running VM, all attached to front end
processors from [defunct] Computer Communications for dial
in users using big modem banks.  Plus a few Votrax units.

About '75, a highly modified VM kernel was made available to AT&T
longlines (NJ) by cambridge science center. It was possibly 50k locs
of custom code.

around 1983 ... the ibm national marketing rep for AT&T tracked me
down ... because the custom kernel had proliferated around AT&T and
was being carried onto new processors as they were introduced by
IBM. The problem was that it was not trivial to adopt the kernel to
the next generation of IBM mainframes ... and IBM was looking for
whatever help they could find to assist AT&T in migrating to a
current, standard VM product.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 01:09:44 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

A timesharing OS is designed to service large numbers of interactive
users who are primarily doing light-duty computing work.  Many unix
servers don't qualify by this definition, and most unix desktops are
single-user.  In the old days a computer at a college computer center
(remember them?) running unix would qualify, since it would be running a
lot of small edits and compiles.  TSO doesn't qualify because it's
basically a bag added onto the side of a batch OS.  I'd have to include
VM/CMS, which is one of the best dmn timesharing systems I've ever
seen, though it's really designed to be something else entirely.  I'd
also include my favorite UTS for Xerox Sigma systems, though it also did
batch well.  If your sticking to IBM systems think MTS (TS), DOS/VSE
(non-TS, despite ICCF)...

actually cp/67/cms was designed to be a follow-on to CTSS ... running
on 360/67 ... but a carefully chosen API ... effectively separating
the microkernel from the user domain ... the API happening to be the
360 principle of operations. It turned out that the microkernel could
concentrate on resource management of address spaces ... w/o the
confusion of user services type issues. then the CTSS user interface
then was developed in CMS (cambridge monitoring system)
... impleemented to the 360 POP API. it was somewhat side issue that
the original was done on a 360/40 with custom relocation hardware and
that CMS could be developed and tested on the bare hardware in
parallel with the development of cp/40 (pending the availability of
360/67 and porting cp/40 to cp/67).

it also, just happened that it was also possible to partition the
machine and run other guest operating systems for batch activity in
parallel with the cms interactive workload ... all using the same API
to the microkernel.

cp/67 then became vm/370 in the transition from 360/67 hardware to 370
hardware .... and the cambridge monitor system become the
conversational monitor system (and a couple lines of code was removed
crippling its ability to run on the "bare" hardware).

misc. about resource management algorithms on cp/67 and vm/370:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

the API also provided a fairly definable abstraction for security
isolation .... which has been investigated a number of times since
the original.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Security models

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security models
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:28:16 GMT

ramup@tech.globalesecure.com (Ramu Ponugupati) writes:

Bottom line is that in both RSA and DH based signature schemes, there
exists multiple private signing keys corresponding to one single
public verification key.  Does it not defeat non-repudiation? How to
take care of these possibilites in security proofs? Is there any
mechanism known in literature to develop computational models (Turing
machines) to prove security?

actually norepudiation requires a whole lot more than just showing
that the signature could only have originated in one and only one
place.

part of the problem seems to be confusing authentication and intention
... as well as some semantic confusion because the term
"digital signature" includes the word "signature".

in general, non-repudiation implies that the person agrees with the
contents or meaning of the message ... and that their signature is a
indicator of that agreement. however, "digital signature" is basically
a mechanism that authenticates the integrity of the message and the
originator of the message .... but w/o a whole lot more infrastructure
carries with it no sense that the person agrees with the contents of
the message.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 12:31:31 GMT

adam@fsf.net (Adam Thornton) writes:

Removed?  I thought the issue was that CMS I/O moved to fast path DIAG,
rather than an actual SIO, so that the interface between CP and CMS was
not the PoO anymore (cf. Varian p.25).  Of course, I also thought you
implemented that, so I may well be confused.

Speaking of which, sort of: Jay, do you offhand know whether Hercules
implements the DIAGs necessary to run CMS (to keep things simple,
whichever version it is you get with VM/370r6) on the iron, without the
intervention of CP?  I sort-of remember that this was something Roger
was looking at in the 1.6x or so days.

I originally implemented the (cp/67) CMS fast I/O as a special CCW
op-code (while undergraduate). Bob Adair insisted that all
"violations" of the POP be thru diagnose op-code ... so the
implementation was changed to use diagnose. (cp/67) CMS at boot would
determine if it was running virtual machine or on bare hardware and
appropriately use diagnose operations or bare machine oeprations. For
VM/370, CMS had the test and the option to use bare machine
implementation eliminated.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

z VM 4.3

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:21:18 -0600
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Subject: z VM 4.3

At Sat, 12 Jul 2003 08:46:07 -0400, Mauricio E Gleizer wrote:

Hello all,

 My name is Mauricio and I am a student in Campo Grande-MS-Brazil. I
am preparing a survey for z/VM R4.3. I founded (and used) biggest
amount of material in IBM sites. But I need (if possible, of course)
place real experiences and screenshots of this system in
action. Anybody here work with this system, and can help me?

Mauricio E Gleizer

I originally implemented the fair share advisory deadline while an
undergraduate on cp/67 (precursor of vm/370 precursor of vm/esa,
precursor of z/vm) in the late '60s.

In cp/67, it didn't use a real timer-value .... but a software
implemented number that was constantly incremented based on elapsed
time. the 360/67 had the location 50 interval timer ... but the TOD
timer didn't appear until 370.

the original point of calculating the current time plus detla for
advisory deadline in the future ... was to include in the delta
calculation a multitude of factors. first it was proportional to the
size of the time-slice. The original cp/67 scheduler had fixed
priorities for both interactive/q1 and background/q2 ... giving Q1
tasks absolute priority over Q2 background tasks. The "fairshare"
scheduler that I did as an undergraduate was shipped by IBM in the
CP/67 product. In the conversion to VM/370 the fairshare scheduler was
dropped and things initially reverted to a fixed priority scheduler
(somewhat similar to early cp/67).

The fair share scheduler was then re-introduced in VM/370 with the
Resource Manager (which also had the distinction of being the first
priced/charged-for SCP code).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45  VM/370 Resource Manager

The other factors in the original cp/67 implementation was not only to
make the delta value proportional to the size of the time-slice
... but also proportional to weighted recent resource consumption and
shift the weight of the resource consumption calculation based on
system resource bottleneck.  It also could take into account
calculation based on non-fairshare. The use of fairshare was the
default administrative policy if nothing else was specified ... but it
was also possible to administratively specify non-fairshare as basis
for the delta value calculation.

Introduced in the VM/370 resource manager was Q3 in addition to Q1 and
Q2.

other posts regarding the scheduler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

somewhat related is also invention clock page replacement algorithm
that I also did as an undergraduate ... which latter appeared in
various platforms and is the subject of Carr's stanford phd thesis
approx. 15 years later
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

general collection of technology related posts ... including other
early cp/67 and vm/370 work:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#technology

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 13:04:53 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

It's a matter of definition, as someone talked about "time-sharing" a
computer running batch jobs.  I imagine the terminology has been all
thought out already, but I would classify OS's thusly (in no particular
order):
1. Real-time (multiple tasks but only one "job") - like S/1 EDX, RSX?.
2. Batch, though it might include interactive components, VSE with
ICCF, MVS with TSO.
3. Transaction processing.  ACP, CICS (though CICS is a submonitor)
4. Time-sharing (TOPS-10, CTSS, MTS, and many others)
5. General-purpose (that is, does nothing well) - maybe some would say
VMS (or MVS).
6. Hypervisors? VM/370. VMWare, etc.

Any others? Arguments? Classifications?  Where does a "server" fit?

as an aside, slightly related thread in vm group:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#8 z VM 4.3

as previously mentioned
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#5 What is timesharing, anyway?

cp/40, cp/67 (et al) was time-sharing microkernel that evolved from
CTSS work ... which happened to have the 360 POP as the micokernel API
... allowing support of interactive user environment ... aka CMS
(cambridge monitor system) as well as allowing partitioning for guest
(batch and other) operator systems. Later evoluation was the zVM
software kenel and return to almost a cp/40 microkernel implemented in
the hardware microcode of the mainframes and referred to as LPARS or
logical partitions.

because of its choice of kernel API ... it was usable as both
hypervisor (aka partitioning and guest operating systems) as well as
large scale, interactive time-sharing computing.

360/67 had the 1) official TSS/360 effort, 2) cp/67 from the cambridge
science center and 3) MTS(/360) from university of michigan

... referenced zVM post ..

I originally implemented the fair share advisory deadline while an
undergraduate on cp/67 (precursor of vm/370 precursor of vm/esa,
precursor of z/vm) in the late '60s.

In cp/67, it didn't use a real timer-value .... but a software
implemented number that was constantly incremented based on elapsed
time. the 360/67 had the location 50 interval timer ... but the TOD
timer didn't appear until 370.

the original point of calculating the current time plus detla for
advisory deadline in the future ... was to include in the delta
calculation a multitude of factors. first it was proportional to the
size of the time-slice. The original cp/67 scheduler had fixed
priorities for both interactive/q1 and background/q2 ... giving Q1
tasks absolute priority over Q2 background tasks. The "fairshare"
scheduler that I did as an undergraduate was shipped by IBM in the
CP/67 product. In the conversion to VM/370 the fairshare scheduler was
dropped and things initially reverted to a fixed priority scheduler
(somewhat similar to early cp/67).

The fair share scheduler was then re-introduced in VM/370 with the
Resource Manager (which also had the distinction of being the first
priced/charged-for SCP code) ... may' 1976
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

The other factors in the original cp/67 implementation was not only to
make the delta value proportional to the size of the time-slice
... but also proportional to weighted recent resource consumption and
shift the weight of the resource consumption calculation based on
system resource bottleneck.  It also could take into account
calculation based on non-fairshare. The use of fairshare was the
default administrative policy if nothing else was specified ... but it
was also possible to administratively specify non-fairshare as basis
for the delta value calculation.

Introduced in the VM/370 resource manager was Q3 in addition to Q1 and
Q2.

other posts regarding the scheduler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

somewhat related is also invention clock page replacement algorithm
that I also did as an undergraduate ... which latter appeared in
various platforms and is the subject of Carr's stanford phd thesis
approx. 15 years later
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

general collection of technology related posts ... including other
early cp/67 and vm/370 work:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#technology

....

and some past LPAR references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#45 Why can't more CPUs virtualize themselves?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#57 Reliability and SMPs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#191 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#8 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#63 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#86 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#51 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#52 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#61 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#62 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#50 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#68 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#78 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#3 virtualizable 360, was TSS ancient history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#72 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#5 SIMTICS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#61 Estimate JCL overhead
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#17 Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#23 MERT Operating System & Microkernels
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#2 Alpha:  an invitation to communicate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#33 D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#24 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#38 CMS under MVS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#31 2 questions: diag 68 and calling convention
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#25 Crazy idea: has it been done?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#75 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#6 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#57 IBM competes with Sun w/new Chips
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#6 Tweaking old computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#27 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#28 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#0 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#15 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#16 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#18 Everything you wanted to know about z900 from IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#4 Running z/VM 4.3 in LPAR & guest v-r or v=f
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#54 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#55 Running z/VM 4.3 in LPAR & guest v-r or v=f
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#26 LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#14 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#15 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#56 Wild hardware idea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#41 How much overhead is "running another MVS LPAR" ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:46:30 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

because of its choice of kernel API ... it was usable as both
hypervisor (aka partitioning and guest operating systems) as well as
large scale, interactive time-sharing computing.

cp/67 and vm/370 follow-on was used for internal online time-sharing
HONE system for all the world-wide field, sales, marketing and
customer support people.  The HONE system in northen cal. supporting
US field, sales, et. al. circa 1980 had something like 40,000 defined
users. misc. ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

cp/67 and then vm/370 spawned a number of large scale time-sharing
service bureaus like ncss, idc, and tymshare. misc. related refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#14 Galaxies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#10 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#150 Q: S/390 on PowerPC?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#179 S/360 history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#9 Checkpointing (was spice on clusters)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#52 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC?  designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#4 virtualizable 360, was TSS ancient history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#22 No more innovation?  Get serious
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#31 stupid user stories
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#30 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#32 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#52 Compaq kills Alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#14 Installing Fortran
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#35 D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#59 Blinkenlights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#38 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#1 ASR33/35 Controls
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#47 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#49 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#51 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#54 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#55 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#10 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#1 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#44 cp/67 (coss-post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#48 Speaking of Gerstner years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#27 moving on
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#47 Multics_Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#17 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#59 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#4 markup vs wysiwyg (was: Re: learning how to use a computer)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#34 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#21 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#44 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#62 subjective Q. - what's the most secure OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#64 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#69 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#53 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#56 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#61 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#66 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#61 The next big things that weren't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#27 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#32 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#67 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#73 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#48 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#3 IBM OS source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#37 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#15 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#17 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#68 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 cp/67 35th anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#75 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#3 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#28 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#41 Segments, capabilities, buffer overrun attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#15 two pi, four phase, 370 clone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#69 IBM system 370

random past time-sharing threads:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#12 360 "OS" & "TSS" assemblers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#15 cp disk story
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#7 Did 1401 have time?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#16 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#39 Internet and/or ARPANET?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#76 Mainframes at Universities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#87 1401 Wordmark?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#119 Computer, supercomputers & related
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#122 Computer supersitions [was Re: Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#126 Dispute about Internet's origins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#127 Dispute about Internet's origins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#148 OS/360 (and descendents) VM system?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#177 S/360 history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#81 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#61 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#40 360 CPU meters (was Re: Early IBM-PC sales proj..
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#44 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#45 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#46 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#47 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#9 Checkpointing (was spice on clusters)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#13 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#52 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC?  designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#53 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#54 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#56 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#58 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#59 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#60 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#61 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#78 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#4 virtualizable 360, was TSS ancient history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#15 Linux IA-64 interrupts [was Re: Itanium benchmarks ...]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#3 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#69 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#10 VM: checking some myths.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#34 D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#35 D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#59 Blinkenlights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#7 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#43 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#44 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#46 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#29 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#30 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#56 E-mail 30 years old this autumn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#24 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#46 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#45 Valid reference on lunar mission data being unreadable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#2 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#6 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#13 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#44 cp/67 (coss-post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#7 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#8 Is AMD doing an Intel?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#34 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#50 crossreferenced program code listings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#51 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#56 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#60 Java, C++ (was Re: Is HTML dead?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#44 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#48 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#62 subjective Q. - what's the most secure OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#64 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#69 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#76 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#4 HONE, , misc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#19 ITF on IBM 360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#34 30th b'day .... original vm/370 announcement letter (by popular demand)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#54 general networking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#57 History of AOL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#64 History of AOL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#14 Z/OS--anything new?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#53 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#56 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#62 Itanium2 performance data from SGI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#63 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#64 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#27 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#28 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#32 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#73 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#37 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#51 windows office xp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#2 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#10 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#60 founder, cambridge science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#40 "average" DASD Blocksize
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#15 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#64 IBM was: VAX again: unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 cp/67 35th anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#1 cp/67 35th anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#3 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#34 Lisp Machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#10 Speed of APL on 360s, was Any DEC 340 Display System Doco ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#27 SYSPROF and the 190 disk
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#29 Lisp Machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#31 Lisp Machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#28 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#41 Segments, capabilities, buffer overrun attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#15 two pi, four phase, 370 clone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#71 Multics Concepts For the Contemporary Computing World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#9 What is timesharing, anyway?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

humor in source code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: humor in source code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 12:45:47 GMT

lawrence@c896388-c.attbi.com (Lawrence Statton N1GAK/XE2) writes:

Sometimes routines that we thought were going to be buried deep in the
bowels of the system came poking to the surface -- which leads to
things like a major subsystem named "PINK_FLOYD" (because we were
listening to Dark Side of the Moon when we wrote it).

ibm convention for module names were three letter component name
followed by three letter module name. VM/370 was DMK, CMS was DMS.
For the resource manager ... recent ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#8 z VM 4.3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#9 What is timesharing, anyway?

the module in the resource manager that implemented all the dynamic
adaptive, fairshare, nonfairshare, feedback & feedfoward control, etc
was

DMKSTP

after the product that had tv advertisement

The Racer's Edge

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

humor in source code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: humor in source code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:55:53 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

DMKSTP

after the product that had tv advertisement

The Racer's Edge

also related
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#12 OSes commerical, history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#51 OT: Ever hear of RFC 1149? A geek silliness taken wing

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 18:56:06 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:

I'd never heard anyone claim that MVS/TSO wasn't a timesharing
system before. I'm curious as to what the basis of that claim is.

lots of people have claimeed that tso wasn't timesharing ... in part
because using it was so horrible and seemingly hardly better than many
of the various crje offerings (tso representing name inflation for
crje).

tso was so horrible that the cern tso/cms bake-off/comparison done
circa 1974 and distributed at share ... internally within ibm, was
immediately classified as confidential-restricted ... available on a
need-to-know basis only.

random past cern cms refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#28 Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#61 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#11 checking some myths.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#43 FA: Early IBM Software and Reference Manuals
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#36 Movies with source code (was Re: Movies with DEC minis)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#37 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#40 Google increase archive reach
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#67 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#14 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#64 vm marketing (cross post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#35 VR vs. Portable Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#37 VR vs. Portable Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#73 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#54 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#54 Timesharing TOPS-10  vs. VAX/VMS "task based timesharing"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#53 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#69 OT: One for the historians - 360/91
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#70 ARIDUS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#19 Why did TCP become popular ?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 22:32:59 GMT

Julian Thomas writes:

I don't remember a lot of trouble with the Poughkeepsie dish (on a tower
behind the 703 bldg, IIRC).

It was referred to as B's erection  (B being the first line
engineering manager for the project).

and the kite flying from top of 705 bldg?, minor ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#60 South San Jose (was Tysons Corner, Virginia)

SBS was 1/3rd owned by IBM (with Aetna and comsat). ibm internal phone
network for awhile ran over T3, c-band network ... big dishes ... i
think there was possibly some 20-odd dishes at various ibm locations
(san jose, kingston, endicott, pok, etc). Operation included the data
aggravator ... T3 DES-encryptor.

HSDT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

designed, built, and deployed data-only tdma, ku-band system using
transponder on sbs-4, bird which flew on 41-d:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-41D.html

minor ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving?

one of the hsdt dishes was out back of bldg. 29. another was in
austin. some amount of the rios chip design flowed over the link
... sometimes at least daily (utilizing LSM and/or EVE). previous
post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

The microwave repeater above the san jose dump between bldg. 29 and
bldg. 12 once had a security incident; after which the sensors on the
perimeter, and other security facilities etc. were upgraded. Somebody
got past the security and climbed the tower .... leaving behind a
large inflatable doll flying from the top.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

RFC # for DCC protocol?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFC # for DCC protocol?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 22:58:49 GMT

arielgont@softhome.net (Fernando Gont) writes:

Go to http://www.rfc-editor.org and search for 1459 . If this RFC is
obsolete (or has been updated), you will find which RFC has obsoleted
(or updated) it.

also ... rfc-editor.org points to
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

getting to 1459
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx4.htm#1459

brings up hyperlinks to updated &/or obsoleted.

clicking on the "(.txt=xxxx)" field retrieves the actual rfc.

clicking on the RFC number brings up the list of keywords it is
associated with.

clicking on a keyword, brings up the list of RFCs associated
with that keyword.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.sys.super
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:49:38 GMT

Andrew Reilly writes:

Dunno about that, myself, either.  I noticed on HPCWire recently
that Sun and IBM both appear to be getting some US government
money to investigate "programmer productivity" environments.
Beyond faster compilers and more graphical debuggers, I'm not
sure what that's about.  Anyone know?

slightly related from the software productivity consoritum:
http://www.software.org/quagmire/

home page:
http://www.software.org/
members:
http://www.software.org/pub/memberaffiliate.asp
architecture page:
http://www.software.org/pub/architecture/
architecture quagmire:
http://www.software.org/pub/architecture/quagmire.asp

random other stuff:
http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html
http://www.bmpcoe.org/guideline/books/498/0001c70a.html
http://chacs.nrl.navy.mil/main_fra.html
http://www.disa.mil/coe/

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:56:27 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:

The state of an executing task in most multi-tasking
systems can be captured. Therefore the state of the task
can be transferred to another processor, or even one of
these trendy virtual machine doohickies.

at least one of the cp67/vm370 service bureaus did that in the early
70s. it wasn't so much for load-balancing .... but it was part of 7x24
operation and the machines periodically had downtime for
maintenance. the relatively straight-forward was to migrate in the
same data-center complex with interconnected disk and high-speed
channel-to-channel I/O. It was somewhat a logical extention of real
storage optimization for idle users .... page out all of their virtual
memory ... and then page out everything else (including various kernel
data structures) associated with the process operation. Migration then
became paging the process "back-in" on some other complex that had
access to the same disk.

They said that they were also able to do it over a 56kbit link between
the waltham datacenter and the sanfran datacenter.

misc. related migration:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#14 Galaxies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#9 Checkpointing (was spice on clusters)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#49 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#15 Linux IA-64 interrupts [was Re: Itanium benchmarks ...]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#89 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#20 VM-CMS emulator
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#52 Compaq kills Alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#16 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#36 windows XP and HAL: The CP/M way still works in 2002
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#16 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#17 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#54 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#40 I found the Olsen Quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#45 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#8 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#28 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#31 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#35 UNIX on LINUX on VM/ESA or z/VM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#45 Question about Unix "heritage"

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

How do I know currently used RFC?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How do I know currently used RFC?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:08:57 GMT

grinder9@freechal.com (J W Lee) writes:

I am looking for site or something like that to know currently used RFC.
Aren't there any web site that I can know currently used RFC?
Need your help.

std1 lists current standards, draft standards, proposed standards,
etc. the current std1 is rfc3300 ... which has gotten a little out
of date (oct2002). I try and keep my web site updated with the
rfc-editor announcements:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

which includes a separate list of standards activity since the
published std1.

there is a file on the rfc editor site:
rfcxx00.txt

which is sort of what the contents of an up-to-date std1 would
approximately look like.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:40:26 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:

I've often wondered if folks did that kind of thing, makes
sense if all the hardware is shared... However I keep thinking
about how the I/O subsystem state would survive that kind of
transfer because it is frequently wall-clock time related.

say an idle process (like edit of a file waiting for keystrokes) is 10
to 40 or 50 4k pages. kernel data structures are maybe another 5-6 4k
pages. paged out approximately contiguously ... there is maybe 3-4
physical disk i/os. the additional time to pull the kernel data
structures back in is lost in the other paging noise (if done
correctly) .... and the overall system thruput because of reduced
fixed kernel requirements (and therefor additional real storage for
process virtual pages) more than compensates for the overhead
rebuilding of the kernel data structures (i.e. the interactive user
sees better thruput .... because there is net overall more real
storage for their virtual pages when they do run).

aka ... the kernel structures are only selected removal if the process
is so idle that it is already loosing all of its other virtual pages
from real storage. the incremental paging activity of also paging the
related kernel data structures is lost in the overall paging activity
noise.

resource manager had support for paging a subset of those kernel
data structures (although a significant percentage)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:11:57 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:

My mainframe had no problem filling my 3279C every 1/10s.

problem with 3274s (compared to 3272s circa late 70s):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol

the "response" time was from keyboard enter to re-display which
included both system and hardware processing time for locally
connected controllers.

I was at internal corporate technical exchange circa 1970 in
DC. Harlen Mills was one of the presentors. There was also
presentation by human factors group from YKT about people perception
of response time. There was variation in the population studied
(mostly univ. graduates) regarding the minimum perception threshold
varying between .10 and .20 seconds across the population (with no
explanation for the variability).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?
Newsgroups: redhat.kernel.general
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:15:02 GMT

poweredge with dual 1ghz processors and 100mbit ethernet.

frequent process that uses scp/ssh to copy several hundred
mbytes into the machine with kernel/18.9 goes into permanent stall
starting with kernel/19.9. also stalls copying several hundred mbytes
out of the machine.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:16:09 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

That was one kind of "response" time.  Another kind was how long
it took to get back to monitor mode or into program mode.

If the user typed

R PIP

and it took five seconds to display the user prompt .  The
user judged that the response time was slow.

channel connected 327x controllers ran at 640mbytes/sec.

the referenced "enter" had system processing & controller processing
before response to trivial command (say locate some text in moderate
sized edit session) before display. A moderate loaded system included
paging in the address space's cms plus editor plus file image (which
might require paging out other stuff) and doing the operation.

Typical measurement for 90th percentile system response for such
activity could be .11 seconds. The referenced table was that the
original 3272 controller added another .086 seconds of processing time
(total .196 seconds elapsed) for end-to-end as perceived by user at
3270 terminal. The newer 3274 controller (late 70s) increased that
processing time for typical operations to .530 seconds (.64 seconds
elapsed with .11 second system response).

Typical CMS environments had moderate to heavily loaded 90th
precentile system trivial interactive response in the .11 to .25
seconds (depending on hardware configuration and severity of load
... and sometimes whether they had my latest system enhancements).
Corresponding TSO avg. response (similar configurations and loading)
was a second or more. Note that frequently CMS measured that 90
percent of all trivial transactions were .11 second or less ... while
TSO measured average response (90th percentile would tend to be much
longer than average).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol

above were figures for local, channel attached controllers. if these
were remote 3270 controllers at the end of (say 9600 baud) telco link,
response could be significantly longer (fullscreen redisplay of
24x80=1920 @960 could add more than another two seconds).

the "remoting" of 300 some odd IMS support progremmers at STL to
bldg. five miles away (circa 1981) using traditional products would
have had them using a lot of (shared) 9600 baud lines. Instead, a
single T1 was used with HYPERChannel channel extenders ... which
actually improved overall system response.

the issue was that while 3274 channel attached controllers nominally
operated 640mbytes/sec, they actually had some significant command
processing overhead which leaked out into total channel busy. When the
channels were also shared with other controllers (like disk
controllers) the 3274 controller channel busy could have a significant
degradation on total system thruput. The HYPERChannel channel extender
boxes actually had significantly lower channel busy per byte
transferred compared to 3274 controllers. In the STL case, moving the
3274 controllers to the end of HYPERChannel channel extenders lowered
the channel busy overhead and improved overall system thruput by 10 to
15 percent (with no noticable degradation in trivial response).

After that exercise, there was some official presentations by various
product groups at user group meetings about never placing 3274
controllers on same (shared) channels with disk controllers (as had
been common practice up until that time).

misc. hsdt:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the other activity that was going on about the same time was the stuff
about the relative disk system thruput had declined by nearly a factor
of ten over a ten to 15 year period (processor and memory had gotten
fifty times faster, disks had only gotten five times faster). There
was some initial effort to refute the assertion ... but then that
morphed into user group presentations regarding how to better utilize
the disks features.

average record access had gotten around 3-4 times faster but transfer
rate had gotten ten times faster. however, the amount of data under an
arm had increased by 20 times ... so that installations tended to have
fewer physical disks ... increasing overall average access because of
increased service delays.

so taking a page out of boyd's performance envelopes ... you try and
shift your operational environment to where the newer disks had more
advantage vis-a-vis the older disks; aka go for larger block transfers
(which eventually also led to things like parallel
transfers). misc. boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

some of the discussions about changing system environment:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8 3330 Disk Drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#6 3330 Disk Drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#22 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

virtual machines for security

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: virtual machines for security
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 01:31:19 GMT

the more things change ... the more they stay the same .... going back
at least 35 years ... I started as an undergradudate at the univ. in
last week in jan, 1968.

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,83465,00.html?SKC=home83465

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:05:28 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:

IBM did not use a microkernel on their mainframes.

one can claim that both cp/40 and cp/67 (precursors to vm/370) were
microkernels ... both in the division of features provided and the
size. slightly related:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#86 Virtual Machines for Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#23 virtual machines for security

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

virtual machines for security

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: virtual machines for security
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:30:43 GMT

Charles Richmond writes:

And of course, Mi$uck is just the company that we want
writing the critical software and insures our homeland
security...yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense...not!!!

I hope Communist China and our other "enemies" are stealing
a lot of the Mi$uck ware...in this way, the Mi$uck programs
might help our national security in the U.S.

while this particular article mentions m'soft ... i've also heard that
similar kind of virtual machine activity is going on with nsa's secure
linux
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

random other ref:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/734111

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 16:22:06 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:

One would be wrong. CP provided services like spooling that were well
beyond what belongs in a microkernel.

but that was about it .... compared to even many other microkernel
APIs, the interface to CP and features supported was extremely
sparse. furthermore, even the spool stuff was done as an extremely
sparse adjunct to the paging system.

somewhat later, I tried to get even that little bit out of the kernel by
demonstrating an implementation that ran faster (shorter pathlength
and higher aggregate thruput) than the kernel-based implementation ...
SFS ... or spool file system (not the product's SFS for shared file
system) ... the other demonstration was that it was almost totally
implemented in vs/pascal (compared to the assembler kernel
implementation), used red-black tree structures to get the pathlength
reduction (compared to the linear lists in the kernel implementation),
and leveraged some of the features I had done in the paged-mapped
filesystem stuff to get the higher aggregate thruput. The thruput
issue was in part motivated by HSDT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the sparse kernel-based implementation was synchronous to the
application ... while it was faster than a real printer or card-reader
... it basically bottlenecked at one 4k disk operation queued at a
time per address space. This resulted in long suspended periods for
the address space whenever a 4k disk spool operation was kicked off;
with any other contention for a spool drive ... the queueing and
service time could elongate until address space (even high performance
networking) was limited to four to five 4k blocks/sec.

In hsdt, we were driving multiple HYPERChannel CTCA links (to local
processors on the same floor) as well as multiple T1 links.
HYPERChannel links were rated at 1mbyte/sec ... or 256 4k blocks/sec
(in slightly related venue, I had done the RFC1044 support for tcp/ip
product and in tests at cray research was getting 1mbyte/sec sustained
between 4341-clone and cray ... using only modest 4341 cycles
... compared to standard 8232 support that would saturate a 3090 cpu
at 44kbytes/sec). The T1 links were full duplex ... or peak at
twice 1.5mbits/sec or about 75 4k blocks/sec per link.

The standard, extremely sparse kernel-based implementation with
synchronous API at 4 to 5 4k blocks per second couldn't even come close
to dealing with a configuration rated easily at upwards of 400 to 500
4k blocks per second (two orders of magnitude higher) ...

The advanced (non-kernel) implementation also supported contiguous
allocation for large (asynchronous) block writes and large
(asynchronous) block reads (while the sparse kernel-based
implementation was purely block at a time scatter allocation)

misc. past refs to sfs/spool file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#33 dasd full cylinder transfer (long post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#46 internal network drift (was filesystem structure)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#27 SYSPROF and the 190 disk

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 18:45:36 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:

Now. While the channel subsytem certainly does a lot more than the
channels on the S/360, the device drivers are still in the CPU. If you
think about it, you'll realize that it has to be that way; you don't
want to require a channel upgrade every time your customer adds a new
type of device. Google for UIM and MVS.

cp/67 had real device drviers for disk (4k paging/spooling/etc), some
terminals, and some unit record. It had virtual emulation for stuff
like virtual 1052 to 2741/tty/etc.

however, majority of the stuff was done by emulating the channel
architecture ... w/o actually having to know a lot about device level
semantics. virtual guests & cms had all sorts of channel command word
(ccw) programs that were device specific (real device drivers)
... that were then passed thru CP/67's CCWTRANS (renamed to DMKCCW for
vm/370) to do the virtual to real address translation and pin the
related virtual pages for the duration of the i/o.

Somewhat side-note, the original translation of MVT to VS2/SVS
involved hacking CP/67's CCWTRANS into MVT (we were down in pok
705(706?) machine room doing some 3rd shift testing along with
Ludlow(?) doing the MVT to VS2/SVS hack.

misc. other from 4th floor, 545 tech. sq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

(multics group was in the same bldg.).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the  Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:30:39 GMT

Eric Sosman writes:

Does the SCSI command set have anything like TIC ("Transfer
In Channel," i.e., a goto)?  There were even what amounted to
conditional gotos, used for things like searching a disk track
for a record with a given key, all without involving the CPU.

while TICs didn't directly requiring CPU instruction cycles ...  there
were defined as being in the memory of the CPU and the CPU could
change the TIC instruction on the fly. In fact, the sematnics allowed
that any CCW could be changed on the fly by the CPU ... and/or any
arguments of CCW could be changed on the fly by the CPU (for instance
the argument that the search CCW was using to match a disk record on)
or even previous/concurrent I/O transfers.

such semantics required that each CCW execution (and any associated
arguments) be explicitly fetched each time. the implementation
fall-out was that a dedicated I/O path was needed between the device,
controller, channel, channel subsystem and CPU memory (as well as
imposing various command processing latencies on that I/O path).

The OS/360 genre of systems made extensive use of the (almost)
outboard search feature in conjunction with vtocs, directories,
libraries, etc.  ... effectively on 360s ... it traded off I/O
bandwidth against real storage requirements (relative cost of memory
on 360 was much more expensive than i/o bandwidth).

However, by the late '70s the trade-off had swung in the complete
opposite direction .... I/O bandwidth & access was a significantly
more scarce resource than processor memory.

A case in point was the san jose research installation for a time that
had a 168-3 MVS system with disk infrastructure interconnected with
that of a 158-3 vm/370 system. Anytime, even a single MVS volume was
placed on a string/controller that was nominally reserved for VM/370
there was a perceived horrendous performance degradation .... because
of the extrreme performance penalty in controller busy cause by MVS
multi-track search operations (compared to normal VM/370 I/O string
optimizations).

The interesting side-note was that the TSO users running on the MVS
system .... where ALL the disks were subject to multi-track search
penalty, didn't notice the extremely horrible performance penalty;
they were so accustomed to (by cms standards) the horrible performance
... they didn't realize that it was horrible performance.

There was an absolute dictate that the controller interconnect was for
backup purposes and that mounting a nominal MVS disk on a disk string
nominal dedicated to vm/370 operations was absolutely forbidden
because of the extremely horrible performance penalty that MVS
multi-track searches imposed on normal operation.

There wasn't much you could do to eliminate the horrible performance
contamination that MVS disks had on MVS system operation ... but you
could at least trying and prevent the horrible performance penalty
caused by MVS disks from severely contaminating VM/370 system
performance.

random past multi-track search references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#29 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#35 mainframe CKD disks & PDS files (looong... warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#16 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#29 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#75 Read if over 40 and have Mainframe  background
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#18 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#19 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#42 IBM 3340 help
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#51 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#52 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#17 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#60 VTOC/VTOC INDEX/VVDS and performance (expansion of VTOC position)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#64 VTOC/VTOC INDEX/VVDS and performance (expansion of VTOC position)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#6 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#22 DASD response times
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#8 Is AMD doing an Intel?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#13 Secure Device Drivers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#47 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#49 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#50 EXCP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#46 Question about hard disk scheduling algorithms
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#15 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#22 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#48 "average" DASD Blocksize
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#51 inter-block gaps on DASD tracks

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,comp.ai.games,comp.lang.lisp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:42:40 GMT

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/view.html?pg=3

Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead ... Marvin Minsky

Scott Menchin

In his role as agent provocateur, Marvin Minsky, cofounder of the MIT
Artificial Intelligence Lab, recently told a surprised Boston
University audience that the field of AI has lost its way. Researchers
are making little progress developing computers with any knack for
reasoning. He took a break from dictating the final chapters of an
upcoming book into his G4 using ViaVoice software to give us his
thoughts on gray goo, bartender bots, and the importance of plain ol'
common sense.

.. snip ..

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing".
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:15:04 GMT

"Alan J. Flavell" writes:

[1] Back then, I had actually fabricated a set of IBM channel
connectors with take-off points for the logic analyzer, for
trouble-shooting our Data General NOVA kit which connected to the /360
channel.  My colleague knew more about the circuitry and logic of that
beastie than DG themselves!

way back when .... after trying to make the 2702 telecommunications
controller do something that I thot it should be able to do ... and
turned out couldn't ... four of us at the university did a channel
controller interface using it in an interdata/3 for emulating the
controller function .... so could automatically recognize terminal
type AND baud rate. we subsequently got blamed for originating the
PCM (plug compatible mamnufactor) ibm controller business (late '60s).
5-6 years ago, ran across descendent of that box still being heavily
used in a large financial transaction process datacenter.

random past musings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Where the Good Jobs are Going

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Where the Good Jobs are Going
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:37:51 GMT

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030804-471198,00.html

Where the Good Jobs are Going

Forget sweatshops, US companies are now shifting high-wage work
overseas.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:42:09 GMT

jchausler writes:

question, "What's a telegraph?"  I wonder when
the phrase "core memory" will cause such a response
or maybe it already does...  I wonder what other
"popular" computer terms have "gone out of style"
and are being forgotten.  IBM had their own words
for a number of things such as DASD and "storage"
instead of memory which I haven't heard in a long
time either, although I haven't been in an "IBM
shop" (another one) in some time.

DASD came from direct access storage device .... from a period when it
wasn't clear that the round & brown "disks" would actually come to
dominate the market.

I believe "storage" came into vogue with the 370 announcement of
relocation hardware and the various virtualized products ... dos/vs,
vs1, and vs2. I have vague recollection that somebody may have
perceived that the term "virtual memory" was some how encumbered.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The Vintage Computer Forum

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Vintage Computer Forum
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:15:49 GMT

Thomas Dzubin writes:

Let's see now...
this newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers
web=RFC 1945
NNTP=RFC 977
and in this newsgroup, older is better... therefore: yes to NNTP!
...AND... you can use the same client for both... TELNET!  :-)

Another forum, by the way is: www.classiccmp.org
and even better you can get it by email (RFC 821)

listserv on bitnet in the early '80s for computer conferencing ...
and several versions were ported to smtp base ... (and some number of
the bit.listserv. lists have been gatewayed to usenet).

usenet was original uucp ... and then later gatewayed to tcp/ip

the bitnet listserv was predated by some internal corporate listserv
stuff (the internal corporate network was larger than the
internet/arpanet until about mid-86) ... and is from approx. same era
as usenet.

UUCP rfc ... relatively late in UUCP lifetime:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx3.htm#976

976
 UUCP mail interchange format standard, Horton M., 1986/02/01
 (12pp) (.txt=26130) (Updated by 1137)

if you go to the above URL and click on the ".txt" field, it
retrieves the actual RFC.

remember the telebit trailblazers that had uucp optimized mode?
misc. telebit/uucp posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#19 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#62 Modem "mating calls"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#6 Oldest system to run a web browser?
random other uucp refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#26 The first "internet" companies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#57 I am fed up!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#5 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#65 UUCP email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#87 A new forum is up! Q: what means nntp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#53 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#26 DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#48 History of The Well was AOL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#41 META: Newsgroup cliques?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#15 Alpha performance, why?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

RFC2557?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFC2557?
Newsgroups: opera.general
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 04:42:04 GMT

Fig writes:

I tried, it didn't work. When I went there it just said "blah, blah,
waffle, waffle"

in general:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

in the section RFCs listed by click on Term (term->RFC#)

and then click on "MIME" in the Acronym fastpath ... which brings up
all the "MIME" related RFCs. In that section you can click on "2557"
which brings up RFC summary in lower frame. clicking on the ".txt=nnnn"
field (from the summary) retrieves the actual RFC.

2557 PS
    MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML),
    Hopmann A., Palme J., Shelness N., 1999/03/31 (28pp) (.txt=61854)
    (Obsoletes 2110) (MHTML)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,comp.ai.games,comp.lang.lisp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:25:59 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

My hypothesis is that group intelligence is always at the level
of the stupidest element.  The more something gets "organized",
the less intelligent it can be.  Now look at computers systems
getting organized by a network.  I haven't spent much time
applying this to gear; it certainly is true w.r.t. humans.

the joke about committees ... rather than being
sum(IQ1, IQ2, ...,, IQn)
or even something like
max(IQ1, IQ2, ...,, IQn)
sum(IQ1, IQ2, ..., IQn)/n
it is more like
min(IQ1, IQ2, ...., IQn)
or even
min(IQ1, IQ2, ...., IQn)/n

where committee intelligence approaches zero

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:04:21 GMT

Lon Stowell writes:

I don't know who first had that monstrous abortion but IBM,
CDC, and RCA all had versions.  I could swear that some of
the addressing for random access I/O came from that
monstrosity, in the form of Bin, Cylinder, Head.

bbccchhr ... the bb came from the 2321, noodle picker, data cell, etc.
web site on 2321:
http://members.optushome.com.au/intaretro/2321DCD.htm

there was more information posted on large optical system in this
thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#33 "Mass Storage System"
there may have also been something previously posted in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#84 Questions on IBM Model 1630

misc. past posts with 2321:
ttp://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#9 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#41 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#17 IBM 1142 reader/punch (Re: First video terminal?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#51 Competitors to SABRE?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#42 OT:  Ever hear of RFC 1149?  A geek silliness taken wing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#50 "IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" tested successfully
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#78 HMC . . . does anyone out there like it ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#63 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#61 Google Archive
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#16 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#22 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#3 Increased Paging in 64-bit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#26 : Re: AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#31 : Re: AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#33 "Mass Storage System"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#40 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#3 PLX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#9 PLX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#70 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#72 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#9 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#18 Card Columns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#36 "average" DASD Blocksize
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#61 RFC 3092
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#28 New RFC 3514 addresses malicious network traffic

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the   Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:55:20 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:

That was what he was referring to!
Only used for native VTOCs and only in MVS nowadays AFAIK, unless
they finally got rid of it in zOS, and replaced it by caching the
VTOCs in memory.
Bit of a channel hog IIRC, and should have been discarded some
time in the 1970s, around the same time that VSAM replaced ISAM.

multi-track search was used for VTOCs and PDS directories. In the late
'70s, i got to shoot an extremely serious performance degradation
occuring at a large national retailer that had multi-CEC installation
.... basically a processor complex for each region ... all having
shared disk support and at least one application program library that
was accessed by all machines in the complex that was on a dedicated
disk.

after a lot of other people were called in, i asked to visit the
customer. they brought me into a classroom that had about a dozen or
so student tables (table about 6' long ... enuf for three chairs
easily) ... all surfaces buried about a foot deep with performance
data on standard greenbar fanfold paper. So I spent an hour or so
thumbing thru the papar ... asking questions about when the severe
performance degradation across the whole complex was observed. For
some reason, I pick out a pattern on one of the disks ... that in
normal conditions would have 20-30 i/os per second aggregate
activity. However, under severe performance conditions ... the
aggregate i/os per second for this particular disk was consistently
around 6.5 I/Os per second.

so this turns out this was a disk dedicated to a shared application
program library. it turns out that the PDS had a three cylinder
directory. A program member name search was consistently averaging
over one cylinder. These were all 3330 disks. There are 19 tracks per
3330 cylinder and the drive spins at 3600RPM ... or 60rps.  A single
multi-track search of a full cylinder was taking 19/60 = ,32 seconds;
during which time the disk was busy, the associated disk controller
was busy (which also blocked access to the 15 or so other disks
handled by the same controller) ... and the associated channel for
that particular processor was busy. The maximum possibly number of
such operations per second was three. It not only seriously
bottlenecked all access to program loading from that PDS application
program library .... but contributed to degrading utilization of other
disks under control of the same controller (for all processors).  For
the specific processor, during the operation at any specific moment,
any other devices where that processor needed to access with the busy
channel was also blocked for the duration of the operation.

the trick was recognizing a disk that appeared to have a consistent
activity value highly correlated with periods of extreme performance
degradation ... and not have any preconceived notions about what a
specific disk drive technology saturated I/O rate might be. going into
the exercise with any such preconceived assumptions would have
resulted in automatically ignoring disks that had peak 6.5 i/o
operations per second (since everybody absolutely knew that saturation
of such disks didn't occur until between 40-80 disk i/os pe second).

recent multi-track posting in this same thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#28 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 03:04:22 GMT

for ecdsa, fips186-2 .... have a look at
http://ecdsainterface.sourceforge.net/

while it specifically references signature authentication for a
specific hardware token .... the signature that the hardare token is
performing is ecdsa/fips186-2.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Differnce between LF and NL

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Differnce between LF and NL
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 14:26:28 GMT

"John Mycroft" writes:

I could be wrong (I was once before) but I think that LF will merely
skip to the next line down the page and stay at the current column
whereas NL will go to the start of the next line down.  That's why
you need Carriage Return & Line Feed to go to the start of a new
line.  And if you're old enough to remember 1052 printers, you had
to insert a load of IDLE characters to stop the stupid thing
printing as the print head returned to the start of the next line.

IDLEs were required for all the mechanical terminals out there.  I had
rewritten the 1052/2741 console support in cp/67 to add TTY/ascii
support. you could optimize ... by knowing how far out the carriage
was (i.e. character position) and sending idles proportional to the
carriage return speed. from somewhere in long unexercised brain cells
... i have vague recollection that for 2741 it was one idle for every
seven character positions ... if you had just written a full 80
character line ... and the carriage was at position 80 ...  then you
needed 12 idles to make sure that the carriage was back to square one.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://w