What's new in KP3 computing ?(ARCHIVE 9412)

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• December 29th, 1994
  
  • Increased the Virtual I/O cache size on our AXP systems from the default value of 3.2 Mbyte to 1/16th of the system memory. The SYSGEN parameter VCC_MAXSIZE is now 24576 blocks on AXP612 and 12288 blocks on AXP625 and AXP627.
  • Bad news is that the Virtual I/O cache size does not handle page faults and will thus not improve image startup times. The change (see September 6th) of the PFCDEFAULT parameter on AXP625 was therefore undone.
  • Fixed the account and owner field of all KP3 accounts. Now
    • account = KPIII
    • owner = lastname_firstname
  • Increased Job Table Quota for all KP3 accounts from 10240 to 20480 bytes to avoid "logical name table full" errors.

• December 27th, 1994
  
  • The CMS libraries SETUP and DBASE are now regularly distributed to the AXP cluster. The ref_... logicals are defined after executing login_aladin.
  • Moved ref_ulib on AXP cluster from kp3$root:[caveb...] to disk$dl154:[caveb...].
  • Discontinued monthly MVS backup of al_pool0. This disk set is now backedup on tape (see December 16th) every week. All VAX pool disks as well as a25_pool and a27_pool are backedup every month onto MVS datasets.

• December 16th, 1994
  
  • The free quota target for al_temp0 increased to 3 Mblocks.
  • Setup weekly backup scheme for al_pool0 using the new DLT2000 tape unit. Saving 11.4 kfiles with 6 Mblocks took 29 minutes ! This corresponds to an average transfer rate of 1.69 Mbyte/sec.

• December 15th, 1994
  
  • A new disk drive with 4.3 Gbyte capacity arrived. It's a 3 1/2" drive with impressive performance (7200 rpm, 8ms seek, 7 Mb/sec transfer rate). It is installed in the AXP612 system box.
  • A DLT2000 tape drive was installed as AXP612$MKD0:.
  • The whole disk system got reconfigured. Main user impact:
    • the al_pool0 area doubled in size.
    • the al_data0 area is now on a separate disk (ca. 4 Gbyte)
    • the al_temp0 space is now about 4 Gbyte.
    • the ref_**** were moved to DISK$DL154:.
    • better throughput. I/O is now distributed over 4 SCSI channels
    • many logical names changed. Get a fresh login !

    The changes in detail:

        old name       new name    volume          comment
    
        DKD0           DKA100      DL124
        ..repaired..   DKA200      DL125           now volume set dl125/dl126
        DKD200         DKB200      DL126
        ..new..        DKC0        DL154
        DKC300         DKC300      AXP612_62745    only disk with old name ...
        ..new..        MKD0                        new tape drive
        DKA0           DKD200      DL063
        DKA100         DKD300      DL109
    

  • There are now 9 Gbyte drives (5 1/4 inch) announced, price about DM 6000, availability February '95. The plan is to add three of those drives by early March '95 and get the following capacities (in Gbytes):

           Area     Nov 94   Dec 94   Mar 95     Comment
    
           Root       3.5      3.5      4.3      will move to dkc0
           Pool       3.5      7.1     10.7      add third 3.5 Gb drive
           Temp       3.0      4.0      4.0
           Prod       1.0      1.0      1.0
           Data       1.0      4.0     27.0      set of 3 * 9 Gbyte
                     ----     ----     ----
           Total     12.0     19.6     47.0
    

    The final SCSI configuration will be

       Adapter   ID-0           ID-1           ID-2          ID-3          ID-4
    
          A     9.0Gb          3.5Gb(DL124)   3.5Gb(DL125)
          B     9.0Gb          9.0Gb          3.5Gb(DL126)
          C     4.0Gb(DL154)                                 1.0Gb(62745)  CD-ROM
          D     MKD0 tape      MKD100 tape    2.0Gb(DL063)   2.0Gb(DL109)
    
       Notes: The four SCSI channels have different properties:
         A,B are on a Turbochannel module and have 10 Mb/sec throughput
         C,D are on the motherboard and have 5 Mb/sec throughput
         C   can only be used in the processor box
    

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• November 28th, 1994
  
  • The disk DL125, which failed on October 13th, came back from repair and was reinstalled on AXP612.

• November 24th, 1994
  
  • stasto_ibmacc.com prints now a warning if the MVS account info file isn't protected.

• November 10th, 1994
  
  • On the AXP's we got the UCX Patch 3.1 ECO 5. Consequence:
    The FTP get command ignores the device and directory specification of the local file name. STASTO_FTP and all other FTP access stuff was fixed according to this bug and also to other changes in the VMS style vs. UNIX style command interface, especially to take care of "dir/full" (illegal now), "DIR" (gives short info), and "dir" (gives long info).

• November 7th, 1994
  
  • Changes in REF_ULIB:STASTO_DATA (used by many STAGE... and STORE... commands):
    • The warnings on "missing logfile" and "couldn't check file size..." have been removed.
    • Removed a hardwired record size default of 8192 bytes for LMDV and 3600 bytes for DSTX. Now record sizes found in VMS and MVS are used, like the default in stasto_ftp. The record size can be overwritten by defining the STASTO_DATA_RECL DCL symbol. Note, that this must be done in the LOGIN.COM file because it is evaluated in a batch job.

• November 4th, 1994
  
  • The private analysis template routines have been moved from the S114 to the ALIB CMS library. Affected elements: PX_ANAL.FOR, PX_DEF_FLAG.FOR, PX_INI_EVT.FOR, PX_INI_PAW.FOR, PX_INI_RUN.FOR, PX_INI_ZEB.FOR, PX_KDEF.CDF.

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• October 27th, 1994
  
  • The node VSBZ got a new motherboard. Hope that SCSI problems (especially when SQL was used) are gone now...

• October 26th, 1994
  
  • A HTML syntax checker is now available: ref_amgr:html_check.
  • Improved information on S114 Datasets. There are run summaries and run lists for all data generations, e.g. summary for RAW data or list of a 1000 MeV/u U+Au run set.
  • Added new mailing list for the KP3 members interested in and working with WWW: kp3-www@axp612.gsi.de

• October 17th, 1994
  
  • Making use of FORT$INCLUDE now (see October 14th). Removed all include path names in libraries S022, S114 and ALIB.

• October 14th, 1994
  
  • Changed lib_make and mms_rebuild to call setup_'name' and to use the include search path logicals FORT$INCLUDE and DECC$USER_INCLUDE. Removed all include path names in library TFIT.

• October 13th, 1994
  
  • The disk DL125 attached to AXP612 and holding al_pool0 and all ref_.... areas broke in the evening of October 12th. All files were saved however, only a single file was lost. All files on al_temp0 had to be deleted. The disk system was rearranged:

        al_pool0       now on DL126         DISK$DL126:[ALADIN_POOL.]
        al_temp0       now on DL063         DISK$DL063:[ALADIN_TEMP.]
        ref_*          now on KP3$ROOT      KP3$ROOT:[ALADINSOFT.*.REF]
                                            KP3$ROOT:[CAVEB.ULIB.REF]
        2nd page file  now on DL063
    

    Note, that al_temp0 and al_data0 share now one disk. All reference copy areas were rebuild, all source recompiled.

• October 11th, 1994
  
  • The ALADiN login was changed on VAX and AXP. All important declarations and initializations are now done in login_aladin.com. See also the description of the new login.com template.