A queue't little bug in Itanium's INSQTI!

Recently, while making some changes to the Attunity RMS CDC code, I experienced a system crash when testing the edits on Itanium. The Attunity RMS CDC code, as much as is conceivably possible, is common source code for all of the supported OpenVMS architectural variants; thus, I was rather puzzled that these new edits would cause a bugcheck and crash on Itanium, but not on Alpha. Perusing the crash dump, it turned out that the bugcheck was precipitated by a ROPRAND fault on the Itanium's equivalent of the VAX INSQTI instruction. In the system dump analyzer, I examined the address in Itanium register R32 which should be the queue header. Verified! It was properly quadword aligned. I then examined the address in Itanium register R33 which should be the entry address. It too was quadword aligned. Why then should it be evoking a ROPRAND fault? (read all 2188 words.)

24-Mar-2012 | Operating Systems»OpenVMS | No comments

My envy is not my ENVY¹⁷

My venerable old 17" Toshiba Satellite has been demonstrating that its time is nigh, so I'd been shopping for a new laptop to replace it. The selection criteria was simple — 17" display, keyboard with alternate/numeric keypad, and it had to be capable of fitting comfortably into my red Vanguard^® attaché case along with my 17" MacBook Pro. I looked at several candidates and had narrowed it down to two; another Toshiba or an HP Envy. The Envy was thinner but also much pricier; however, I was able to get a nice discount which brought the HP Envy in at about US$1000.00 including the state sales tax. So, I made its purchase. This is the first system that I have purchased new with the added baggage of Billy-tax — Micro$oft WEENDOZE. Hear it not, Duncan, for this system never booted this demonic seed! It was erased from the drive upon arrival and I began my protracted sojourn to install Ubuntu. (read all 2249 words.)

10-Mar-2012 | Operating Systems»Ubuntu | One comment

PivotX—change

Procrastination? Not me! PivotX, the follow-on for Pivot which ran this site, has been available for some time, but I have just been way too busy to download and install it. Besides, the old Pivot installation — the Dreadwind release — was working just fine for my modest needs, so there was no rush to update it. However, I finally found a lull in my workload and I decided to install the very latest — PivotX 2.3.1. (read all 1284 words.)

7-Feb-2012 | Miscellany»Hodgepodge | No comments

No Network ≠ No Net Work

Recently, I worked a gig at a site that replaced its cluster's Alpha systems with new Integrity systems — all, save for one lowly DS10L. This was a three node cluster and the DS10L only existed as the quorum tie-breaker. The DS10L had been part of the former Alpha-based cluster and had not been touched for years. In fact, the only access to the node was through its console. One of the problems I was on-site to address concerned some of their network issues with these systems and this DS10L was at the heart of it. It simply would not properly auto-negotiate on the corporate LAN. Despite its SRM settings and attempts to configure the two on-board ethernet controllers with LANCP, this Alpha insisted on being half-duplex 10 base-T. (read all 1377 words.)

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A queue't little bug in Itanium's INSQTI!

My envy is not my ENVY¹⁷

PivotX—change

No Network ≠ No Net Work

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