August 2008

[27-Aug-2008]
Replacing Alphas:   The production cluster here consists of four alphaservers in a homogenious cluster connected to some EVA storage. The goal in the near future is to migrate the applications running on these alphaservers to four replacement IA64 BL860c blade servers. As a first step, I have built a separate four node cluster from the new Itanium based systems, and used a copy of the system disk that is currently booting the single IA64 machine they have in the development cluster to create a new system disk that will eventually end up as the production IA64 system disk. (190 words, 4 comments, 0 pings)

[21-Aug-2008]
Important patch released:   A patch to correct an OpenVMS security vulnerability was released moments ago. I urge all sites running OpenVMS to install SMGRTL-V0100 as soon as possible. The patch can be obtained from the HP ITRC FTP server. (37 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

Wanted: LK46W-A2:   If you are in Australia and you have an LK46W-A2 keyboard that you can part with (I'll pay, and pick up the shipping), please let me know. Having to type on an IBM style keyboard is driving me nuts. (63 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[15-Aug-2008]
Itanium Porting:   One of my major focuses in the upcoming weeks will be assisting with the port of a major user application to OpenVMS running on an Integrity server. As you would expect with a COBOL application, we are seeing lots of alignment faults. (103 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[12-Aug-2008]
Crash!:   Fortunately not a system crash, but a crash in the bus on the way to work. I'd congratulated myself on making the early bus leaving Parramatta station, thinking "Great! I'll be 10 minutes early on my second day at work" when suddenly there was a horrendous metallic crunching sound from the side of the bus. (106 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

HP finally patches cache poisoning problem:   HP have finally released patches for the cache poisoning problem (CERT vulnerability note VU#800113) that has received so much publicity recently. (118 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[11-Aug-2008]
Starting a new job today:   I've started a new job today. Unfortunately, the commute is huge, but with the lack of work in the VMS space in Sydney, I can't be choosy. I'll be discussing blogging ettiquite with my manager as soon as I get a chance, and hopefully the frequency of articles will pick up here again. From what I've seen of this operation so far, I'm sure I'll have a lot to write about. (71 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)