Advanced System Manager Console

Advanced System Manager's Consol, hereafter Advmgr, includes programs that perform operations that cannot normally be done using the facilities provided by the normal OS. These programs are based on a combination of public domain software provided for free and my own research and efforts over the last ten years or so. They are referred to as System Programs.

These programs require full privileges and the account should be treated the same as the system account. Thanks to Ralf van Diesen of AVT, these programs have been designed to work in a cluster environment. Those items in the menu which are followed by an asterisk employ SYSMAN to do this. Those programs in blue are inherently cluster wide. Those in white will not return to the menu.

Other selections are automated to assist the manager by helping to do things without having to remember dozens of little details. The All Security procedure will be found to greatly assist in performing the majority of security operations a manager must regularly perform. Authorize will be run from here as well as the Access Control List Editor. There are additional things that can be done such as adjust another process' privileges and file encryption. Queue Management is complex involving multiple DCL commands and myriads of command switches. There is an annoying laok of consistency. This script will make life a lot easier.

The Spy program will show what another terminal/process is doing. While not as complete as the commercial versions, it is pretty good for helping other users do their jobs. It was written from scratch without the benefit of listings and required a great deal of "poke and hope", intuition and a terrifying number of system crashes. It only took six years to write.

There are other goodies included such as Paul Klisner and my Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program that captures control keystrokes to accomplish certain tasks while another operation is in progress. For example, you may toggle the verify state while a DCL script is running, capture a list of all open files, clear the screen, start/stop the unsupported file watch procedure and paint a nice looking calendar in the upper right hand cocrner of your screen.

Another service is a rewritten version of Hunter Goatly's LOGIN.MAR which can be installed with the CMEXEC privilege, will define logicals in both job and process tables, symbols, key definitions and search (indexed) logicals all in one invocation of an image thus making logging in very quick. It parses the user supplied definitons in an editable text file.

We have a method of running the EVE editor as a sub process in such a way as to make editing a file as easy as possible. When at the command line of the parent process you type "e file_spec" without the device and directory, the file will be searched for in the logical search list defined in your login file followed by other locations in a DCL script you can edit. If found, it will cause characters to be placed into your typahead buffer and then attach your terminal to the editor sub process and have it open the file for editing automatically. You may toggle back and forth between the parent process and the editor sub process with a single keystroke.

We include a document called ADVMGR_MANUAL.TXT that describes the functions and operations available from the menu plus some other programs we have included. You may open the manual in PDF format and optionally save it to your computer by clicking on

If you are running OpenVMS on an AXP box or its equivalent in software emulation on an X86 box and have version 6.2 or greater, you can download Advmgr by clicking on the link below. Use FTP to put it onto your OpenVMS computer. It installs with VMSINSTAL. Please display and read the release notes. Failure to do so will lead to a compromised experience.

If you are a programmer, you may be interested in the source code for this package. I will be happy to provide it for free. I choose not to post a link because, if you are a system programmer/manager type, I'd like to make your acquaintance. Please go to Contact, send me an email and introduce yourself.