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```
  </channel>
  ^
```

Source: http://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/index.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/rss2html.xsl"?>
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<channel>
<title>e i g h t - c u b e d . c o m</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/</link>
<description>A day in the life of an OpenVMS systems specialist. Articles and tutorials on Systems Management and Programming for OpenVMS.</description>
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
<dc:creator>James F. Duff</dc:creator>
<dc:rights>Copyright 2024 James F. Duff</dc:rights>
<dc:date>2024-10-09T07:05:36+11:00</dc:date>
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<sy:updatePeriod>daily</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>
<item>
<title>GnuCash price updates</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001298.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001298.html</guid>
<description>Changes to the way I update the price database in GnuCash every day.</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">I've used <a href="https://www.gnucash.org/">GnuCash</a> for a long time to track my finances. As I have a few shares and other investments, I previously used a cron job on my main Linux desktop machine to pull in pricing data about these each day. As the Australian Stock Exchange finishes trading at 4pm, and I'd usually be working on my computer until 5pm, this wasn't an issue. The machine would be powered on, and the cron job would execute in the background.
Things changed when I retired.</body>
<dc:subject>Linux</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2024-10-09T07:05:36+11:00</dc:date>
<comments>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=1298</comments>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>DCX X01-02</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001297.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001297.html</guid>
<description>In eons past (in 1988), I wrote a program in MACRO-32 to call the DCX$ procedures to compress and expand...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">In eons past (in 1988), I wrote a program in MACRO-32 to call the DCX$ procedures to compress and expand files. In response to a blog post from Hoff in 2007, I posted the source code for it to this blog.
And in 2010, Volker Halle pointed out a bug in the code with the map length parameter of the DCX$ routines, and sent me a correction.
It only took me 13 years to update the zip file on website. Thanks Volker!</body>
<dc:subject>Site News</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2024-01-16T11:05:11+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/535</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001297.rss</wfw:commentRss>
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<item>
<title>Some more changes to the examples</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001296.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001296.html</guid>
<description>As I mentioned in the previous post, I used to own an AlphaServer 800 as my workhorse VMS machine at...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">As I mentioned in the previous post, I used to own an AlphaServer 800 as my workhorse VMS machine at home, but after it had a fatal hardware issue after a staggeringly good run of over 20+ years of continuous use, I retired it and relied on access to machines at work to answer questions that I get about VMS via this web site.
One of the issues with retiring the Alpha and not replacing it was that I lost access to DTM - Digital Test Manager, which is a regression test tool that's part of the DECSet product, as we didn't use it at work.</body>
<dc:subject>Programming</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2023-11-23T11:08:39+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/534</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001296.rss</wfw:commentRss>
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<item>
<title>Examples updated</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001295.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001295.html</guid>
<description>My venerable Alpha 800 was retired long ago, and I've been relying on resources at work to answer the regular...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">My venerable Alpha 800 was retired long ago, and I've been relying on resources at work to answer the regular queries that I get about VMS and the code examples.
Now being retired however, it's well past due that I have a VMS machine at home again, and with the advent of the community license for x86_64, I've been able to get a virtual machine up and running OpenVMS 9.2-1 and updated the examples code.</body>
<dc:subject>Site News</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2023-08-09T11:54:36+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/533</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001295.rss</wfw:commentRss>
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<title>And fixed</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001294.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001294.html</guid>
<description>The examples are working again. This is what happens to you trying to maintain a hosted web site for multiple...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The examples are working again. This is what happens to you trying to maintain a hosted web site for multiple years... the hosting company will change out software from under you with no warning. Because my site is so old, this has happened a number of times over the years.
And when I uploaded the new version of the examples, it triggered off a script that contained a depreciated feature. At some stage I should see if I can export all this and import it into a modern CMS. Another project for another day.</body>
<dc:subject>Site News</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2023-08-09T10:28:23+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/532</trackback:ping>
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<item>
<title>Yes, I know the examples are broken...</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001293.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001293.html</guid>
<description>I'm working on getting my dev->website pipeline going and I've broken something. I'll figure out what it is tomorrow. Apologies...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">I'm working on getting my dev->website pipeline going and I've broken something. I'll figure out what it is tomorrow. Apologies for the inconvenience.</body>
<dc:subject>Site News</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2023-08-08T18:47:03+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/531</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001293.rss</wfw:commentRss>
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<item>
<title>I'm officially retired</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001292.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001292.html</guid>
<description>After what seems an eternity, the company I've worked for for nearly 15 years back here in Australia has finally...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">After what seems an eternity, the company I've worked for for nearly 15 years back here in Australia has finally completed a phased migration of their business to a new system, making the VMS systems and my position redundant.
I've been expecting this to happen for a long time, but various delays with the new system pushed it back... and back... and back.</body>
<dc:subject>Personal</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2023-07-25T18:11:29+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/530</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001292.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>My goodness, long time between posts</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001291.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001291.html</guid>
<description>It's been over two years since I've posted anything here! The life of a VMS manager when the system they're managing is in maintenance mode and is being decommissioned is rather mundane, however I haven't forgotten VMS, and have updated the links to VSI's new documentation set in my examples.</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">It's been over two years since I've posted anything here! The life of a VMS manager when the system they're managing is in maintenance mode and is being decommissioned is rather mundane.</body>
<dc:subject>OpenVMS</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2021-11-06T12:54:50+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/529</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001291.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>Bit tests in COBOL</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001290.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001290.html</guid>
<description>It's been a long while since I've had anything interesting to post here. Mostly, my day to day occupation for the last couple of years has been maintaining the infrastructure, operating system, and ensuring business as usual continues for the company's primary application.
However, I got an interesting query from an old friend today, asking if there is a way to do bitwise tests in COBOL. This was an interesting challenge that made me think outside the box!</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">It's been a long while since I've had anything interesting to post here. Mostly, my day to day occupation for the last couple of years has been maintaining the infrastructure, operating system, and ensuring business as usual continues for the company's primary application.
However, I got an interesting query from an old friend today, asking if there is a way to do bitwise tests in COBOL. This was an interesting challenge that made me think outside the box!</body>
<dc:subject>Programming</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2018-06-29T12:43:58+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/528</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001290.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>Are we getting closer to the bug?</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001289.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001289.html</guid>
<description>In my previous post which was terrifyingly over six months ago, I again touched on the issue that I described way back in June 2014 about directory renames sometimes producing catastrophically incorrect results. I thought I'd bring you up-to-date with what's happening...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">In my previous post which was terrifyingly over six months ago, I again touched on the issue that I described way back in June 2014 about <a href="http://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001285.html">directory renames sometimes producing catastrophically incorrect results</a>. I thought I'd bring you up-to-date with what's happening...
Shortly after I published the update in late June 2015, Engineering got in touch with me to note that RMS has a process wide directory path cache, which gets invalidated on every directory remove operations (delete or rename). Cache invalidation is based on a directory sequence number contained in the <abbr title="Unit Control Block">UCB</abbr> of the disk involved. They suggested running some <abbr title="System Dump Analyser">SDA</abbr> commands to see if, when the problem occurred, the field was not being updated.</body>
<dc:subject>OpenVMS</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2016-01-14T11:24:06+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/527</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001289.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>Still rename weirdness</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001288.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001288.html</guid>
<description>Long time between posts. My job has got very quiet due to my company aiming to replace the in-house written...</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Long time between posts. My job has got very quiet due to my company aiming to replace the in-house written system running on VMS with an off-the-shelf <abbr title="Enterprise Resource Planning">ERP</abbr> system. With the inherent stability of the system running on VMS, I haven't had much to write about.
However, I wrote <a href="http://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001285.html">an article</a> over a year ago concerning a rare issue where a series of directory renames gets "confused". This issue has hit us twice in the last three days.
Perhaps now that the old team reassembled for VSI is back together, someone will be able to solve this.</body>
<dc:subject>OpenVMS</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2015-06-27T05:10:45+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/526</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001288.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>HP World in Sydney</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001287.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001287.html</guid>
<description>HP World Tour is coming to Sydney on the 28th of August. I'm registered and attending if you anyone wants to catch up face to face.</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">HP World Tour is coming to Sydney on the 28th of August. I'm registered and attending if you anyone wants to catch up face to face.</body>
<dc:subject>Hewlett Packard</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2014-07-23T18:08:02+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/525</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001287.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>System logical name changes</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001286.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001286.html</guid>
<description>Here's a command procedure that run daily, will provide you with a nice email listing additions, deletions, and modifications to the system logical name table.</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Here's a command procedure that run daily, will provide you with a nice email listing additions, deletions, and modifications to the system logical name table.</body>
<dc:subject>OpenVMS</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2014-06-16T17:21:00+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/524</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001286.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>Rename weirdness</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001285.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001285.html</guid>
<description>Sometimes a directory rename doesn't?</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Consider the following directory structure:
<pre>
$ dir my_disk:[top.branch...]
Directory MY_DISK:[top]
branch.DIR;1
Total of 1 file.
Directory MY_DISK:[top.branch]
archive.DIR;1 report1.rep;1 report2.rep;1
Total of 3 files.
Directory MY_DISK:[top.branch.archive]
20140611.DIR;1 20140612.DIR;1
Total of 2 files.
Grand total of 3 directories, 6 files.
</pre>
During the day, a large number of reports are created in MY_DISK:[TOP.BRANCH].
The goal of the following set of DCL commands is to move these files to a directory called MY_DISK:[TOP.BRANCH.ARCHIVE.20140613]:
<pre>
$ set prot=o:rwed my_disk:[top.branch]archive.dir
$ rename my_disk:[top.branch]archive.dir my_disk:[top]branch_archive.dir
$ set prot=o:rwed my_disk:[top]branch.dir
$ rename my_disk:[top]branch.dir my_disk:[top.branch_archive]20140613.dir
$ create/dir my_disk:[top.branch]
$ rename my_disk:[top]branch_archive.dir my_disk:[top.branch]archive.dir
</pre>
Now imagine there are 80+ BRANCH.DIR directories (with different names of course) and we have that sequence of commands execute in parallel jobs, one for each directory.
The vast majority of the time, this works fine. However, on the odd occasion, the CREATE/DIR command says that the directory already exists, even though the preceding RENAME has returned a success status.
After the CREATE/DIR, the next RENAME also succeeds, however, right afterwards, the BRANCH.DIR directory has mysteriously gone missing! The directory is only then recoverable by performing an ANALYZE/DISK/REPAIR.
This is on I64 8.4 with UPDATE-V0800, FIBRE_SCSI-V0500, RMS-V0400, and SYS_V0300.
The underlying ODS-5 disk is a two member shadow set that a SET VOLUME/CACHE=NODATA has been issued against (the disk is 99.9% write) mounted on all nodes of a five member cluster.
I've logged a call with HP against this.
</body>
<dc:subject>OpenVMS</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2014-06-13T17:15:46+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/523</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001285.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<title>NRPE on OpenVMS</title>
<link>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001284.html?from=rss</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/001284.html</guid>
<description>Trials and tribulations of making NRPE work on OpenVMS.</description>
<body xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">I have a pretty extensive <a href="http://www.nagios.org/">Nagios</a> setup here, that monitors everything from network links, OpenVMS services, Windows server availability, and Linux.
Because I haven't installed <abbr title="Nagios Remote Plugin Executor">NRPE</abbr> on Windows as I don't manage those boxes, some people in the Windows Team have recently been looking at Microsoft's SCOM product. I thought I better demo NRPE, at least on OpenVMS.
I got the <a href="http://nrpevms.dbaalacarte.com/">OpenVMS NRPE kit</a>, but this code seems to be fairly old (no IA64 references). But as all the code was there, it appeared to build just fine on IA64.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of "gotchas" in the kit, both in the documentation, and in the implementation. First, let's fix a bug in the code that of course only rears its head when you set the DEBUG flag in NRPE.CFG to 1 (which you want to do when you are initially configuring the service).
The bug is in the CUSTOM.C module. Replace this source:
<pre>
void syslog(int priority, char *message, ...){
char buffer[MAX_INPUT_BUFFER];
va_list arguments;
va_start(arguments, message);
sprintf(buffer, message, va_arg(arguments, char *));
printf("%d: %s\n", priority, buffer);
va_end(arguments);
}
</pre>
With this:
<pre>
void syslog(int priority, char *message, ...){
char buffer[MAX_INPUT_BUFFER];
va_list arguments;
va_start(arguments, message);
vsprintf(buffer, message, arguments);
printf("%d: %s\n", priority, buffer);
va_end(arguments);
}
</pre>
This prevents an access violation if there are no optional arguments (the result of a va_arg on nonexistent arguments is undefined in the C specification).
The other unfortunate bit is a combination of the documentation, that advises you to create logical names containing a dollar sign (which is <a href="http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/4518/4518pro_003.html#4518_naming_con">generally not recommended</a>); and omissions in the configuration file.
Because the documentation tells you to create a logical containing a dollar sign, you have to specify command definitions that will be examined for macro substitution with an escaped dollar sign ($$) as the dollar sign is the macro introducer in Nagios.
If you look in the NRPE.CFG file supplied in the kit, you will see this is commands such as
<pre>
command[check_test]=@nrpe$$scripts:check_test.com
</pre>
But just below this is
<pre>
command[check_cpu]=@nrpe$scripts:check_system.com CPU
</pre>
which only supplies a single dollar sign. Because of this, the macro processor assumes you've carelessly left a trailing dollar sign off and supplies you with one. The command finally executed is
<pre>
@nrpe$scripts:check_system.com CPU$
</pre>
which doesn't work.
To fix, simply add the extra dollar sign in the NRPE.CFG file (or better yet, ignore the documentation and don't use a dollar sign in your logical names at all).</body>
<dc:subject>Systems Management</dc:subject>
<dc:date>2014-04-30T17:14:11+11:00</dc:date>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<trackback:ping>http://www.eight-cubed.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/522</trackback:ping>
<wfw:commentRss>https://www.eight-cubed.com/blog/archives/commentrss/001284.rss</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
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