Some time back, about 18 months in fact, I started on a project to port Samba 4.x to OpenVMS. Well, then there was a year that was very interesting, very demanding, and not much progress occurred on my Open Source On OpenVMS projects. Times change - now back working on the port.

Samba 4.x saw a major change in the build environment. It went from the classical configure/make and bash scripting to using a Python-based environment called WAF. So LOTS of learning and finding things that needed to be worked to make things work. The initial attempt showed that the subprocess.py module in Python had no support for OpenVMS. I did an initial implementation using lib$spawn and sys$crembx as well as some other items but I found that to limiting and required too many changes in the Python scripts.

My current effort has created a new version - soon to be available - of subprocess.py. This version uses more of the CRTL features to do thing closer to the way Linux/Unix works. So we have the use of the execv()/execve() functions and vfork to create the child. We had to implement some of the code in C due to the way vfork/exec calls work but that is easily called from Python and could be implemented in a single call rather than multiple, which would not work.

We have eliminated any changes to the Python scripts and currently have the configure process running to a point where it is trying to test for building extensions to Python, which is quite a ways down the process - several thousand tests.

Will add more to this as we progress...

Bill.

We have been busy behind the scenes working on our new website. As you can see if is a bit sleeker and more focused on our offerings.

We have also been developing new offerings. One of the most important is the Support of Open Source On OpenVMS. You can check it out here.

Do you have a new project that needs help?

Do you need to get your systems tuned or evaluated?

Or how about that open source software, does it need to be updated?

Contact us for a quote or proposal.

The 2015 OpenVMS Boot Camp is scheduled to begin on 28 September!

It is not too late to still sign up to attend! This is THE OpenVMS Community event of the year! Come join many of your VMS colleagues and network and plan your year together!

There are currently over 80 technical sessions, as well as the Vendor Round House on the evening of the 28th and the Banquet/VMS Reunion and Scholarship Auction on the evening of the 29th.

And for those that really want to get into the details about Security and OpenVMS there is the Pre-Conference Seminar on Sunday, 27 September. The presenters include:

Stephen Hoffman, HoffmanLabs LLC
Colin Butcher, XDelta Limited
James Preciado, James J. Preciado, LLC
Bill Highleyman, Availability Digest
Greg Guthman, Software Concepts International, Inc.
Bill Pedersen, CCSS, LLC
Eddie Orcutt, VMS Software, Inc.

The schedule for the Pre-Con is here:

Continental Breakfast/Registration
Morning
Introduction
Infrastructure
Securing hardware consoles, ILOs, MPs, Virtual Connect, Chassis and other things
Why worry about this?
Default usernames and passwords
TELNET and FTP
External authentication
Individual accountability and activity logs
Monitoring
Routers
LDAP
VLAN
Fibre
NAS/SAN
Break
VMS Security in review
Built in components
SYSUAF - Password Policy - History
ACL / ACE’s - / Identifiers / Groups etc.
Auditing / Accounting
Monitoring / OPCOM
Add-in components/Tools
Encryption
Commercial options
Open Source options
Rapid Recovery / State checking
Other
Networking:
DECnet / LAT
bjects / Proxies
TCPIP
ACME - LDAP
Proxies
IPSec
SSL
DMZ’s / VLAN’s
Lunch
Afternoon
Best practices
VMS Guide to Security
Overview of various Standards
Audits and Standard Compliance
Risk vs. Compensating Control
What makes an effective control?
The "nasty" privileges
Fine tuning and monitoring access and functions
Segregation of duties
Security policies and escalation procedures
Real world examples
Application / Open Source remediation / hardening
Smart Card Technology
Break
Infrastructure
Penetration test preparation
Futures (VSI)
Round table

Kevin Duffy of Oracle has announced that registration for the 2015 Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Technical Forums in North America and EMEA is now open. To register, go to:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/datab ... 01986.html

As was previously announced, the dates and locations for the 2015 Oracle Forums are:

• October 1-2, Burlington, MA, USA
• October 5-6, Redwood Shores, CA, USA
• October 12-13, Utrecht, Netherlands
• October 15-16, Kista, Sweden
• October 19-20, Vienna, Austria
• October 22-23, London, UK
• October 26-27, Paris, France
• December 1-2, North Ryde, Australia

Registration for the 2015 Asia Pacific Forum being held in Sydney, Australia is not yet open but will be opening soon.

Note that the Burlington Forum will be held just following this year’s Connect OpenVMS Boot Camp in Nashua, NH. The Forum will be held at our Burlington, MA campus instead of Nashua, NH because we have larger conference facilities in Burlington. The Boot Camp begins on Sunday, September 27th and ends on Wednesday, September 30th and the Oracle Forum begins on Thursday, October 1st. The drive from Nashua to Burlington is about 30-45 minutes depending on traffic, so Boot Camp attendees may want to consider relocating to a Burlington hotel starting Wednesday evening.

We will be presenting an Oracle session at the Boot Camp. However, to get an in-depth understanding of the latest Oracle related developments on OpenVMS, we highly recommend that you attend the Forum as well.

A sampling of the Forum session topics includes:

• Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Product Status and Direction
• OpenVMS Update from HP and VMS Software Inc.
• An update from Intel on Itanium and x86
• Connect OpenVMS Community Update
• What's Next with Oracle 11g
• 11g Install on OpenVMS
• Replaying Your 10g Workload on 11g with RAT
• What's New in Oracle Rdb
• Upgrading to Rdb 7.3
• Oracle Rdb Remote Database Access
• Oracle Rdb Connectivity Update
• Using PHP Data Objects (PDO) with Oracle Rdb Databases
• OpenVMS and Oracle Rdb at one of the Largest Customers in Japan
• History of SQL Features Including Newer Ones You May Have Missed

The full Forum agenda is being finalized and will be posted soon on the registration web page.

Attendance will be opened to those who cannot join us in person. Remote attendees will be sent the information needed to join us in a live online Forum web conference. To receive this information, remote attendees must send an email to InfoRdb_US@oracle.com, after they have registered, indicating that they will be attending remotely. Remote attendees are welcome to attend any or all sessions.

Kevin and his team are very excited to be bringing the 2015 Technical Forums to you. They hope you will be able to join them.

New versions of several packages have been uploaded to the SourceForge VMS-Ports Project as well as the GNV Project. These include:

New versions of some GNV tools on GNV/FILES…

Bash V4.3.39
Grep V2.21
Gawk V4.1.3
Sed V4.22
Coreutils V8.23
LD_utils (26 June, newer version soon)

New versions of other open source now on VMS-Ports/FILES...

cURL version 7.43
SQLite version 3

Also the next conference call is this Thursday – 20 August, 23:00 EDT.

The notes and recording of the 17 July conference call are available at:

https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/discussion/call_topics/

Thanks!

See you Thursday (or Friday depending on your locale).

Best,
Bill.