Author Archives: mark

About mark

At work, been working on Tandems for around 30yrs (programming + sysadmin), plus AIX and Solaris sysadmin also thrown in during the last 20yrs; also about 5yrs on MVS (mainly operations and automation but also smp/e work). At home I have been using linux for decades. Programming background is commercially in TAL/COBOL/SCOBOL/C(Tandem); 370 assembler(MVS); C, perl and shell scripting in *nix; and Microsoft Macro Assembler(windows).

Using Q to display held output

Rates a post simply because it took me so long to figure out how to do it. But this post is for hercules users running MVS3.8J, it won’t make any sense to the rest of you. The online help in … Continue reading

Posted in MVS3.8J | Comments Off on Using Q to display held output

Plastic Wrap, Cling Film, Glad Wrap

Is there something the manafacturers know we don’t ?. We have all seen the ads where it is put over a wine glass and the glass tipped, and no liquid comes out. But are you like me when I use … Continue reading

Posted in Home Life | Comments Off on Plastic Wrap, Cling Film, Glad Wrap

Upgrading to FC10 is impossible !

Well, my prevoius post discussd difficulties until this point. But this is the end of the line. Rolling back to FC6. Whats happened since the last post ? Still playing with attempt 5. Just glad I made a symbolic link … Continue reading

Posted in Unix | Comments Off on Upgrading to FC10 is impossible !

Where is all the calendar printing software ?.

I was thinking it might be nice to print my own calendar for next year. The home grown sort with pictures of my pets all over it. Searching on google, even with -“”TRIAL” as a parameter returns a lot of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Where is all the calendar printing software ?.

Cats and Summer

Bother, it has started. Birds are all over the place again, field mice are all over the place again, lots of slamander things are all over the place again. My bloddy cat has started bringing them all home again, and … Continue reading

Posted in Home Life | Comments Off on Cats and Summer

More problems with the boot_archive feature

An interesting problem with opensolaris 2008.05 under qemu I have been fighting against today; it’s still beating me. In my qemu image I had fortunately cloned the rootfs (must write a post on how to do that one day) which … Continue reading

Posted in Unix | Comments Off on More problems with the boot_archive feature

Worried Puppy, and a sore back

Well it was howling a gale up here last night, the whole house was shaking and the wind was making a real loud howl around the house, although the wind warning was only for 140k gusts. The roof stayed on … Continue reading

Posted in Home Life | Comments Off on Worried Puppy, and a sore back

Tape mounts in MVS 3.8J, automating them

Ok, I’ve been in computers too long. As soon as I got MVS3.8J running in hercules I thought about backups. Of course I was running it under Linux so had the server backups to fall back to, but I wanted … Continue reading

Posted in MVS3.8J | Comments Off on Tape mounts in MVS 3.8J, automating them

Console message automation on MVS3.8J

Like many of the old timer MVS sysprogs and operators out there when I discovered the hercules emulator that lets you run your old MVS system at home I was overjoyed, and immediately wasted many happy months playing with it. … Continue reading

Posted in MVS3.8J | Comments Off on Console message automation on MVS3.8J

Puppy Happiness

Found some lovely puppie sleeping/resting pads today. Two of them. The first was a really large rectangular cushion type thing, really soft and fluffy. I was sure fletcher would like it. And then there was a big circular sort of … Continue reading

Posted in Home Life | Comments Off on Puppy Happiness