Linux and OpenVMS Interoperability, Tricks for Old Dogs, New Dogs and Hot Dogs with Open Systems (HP Technologies) (Paperback)

by John Robert Wisniewski (Author) "Welcome to the book that answers the questions why Open VMS?..." (more)
Key Phrases: def sys, cluster alias, announce comment, Open Source, Using E-mail, Linux Style (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“I’ve found this book to be a practical, hands-on manual that explains how OpenVMS system managers can integrate their systems with Linux, allowing the two platforms to work cooperatively and extend the processing capability of a computing environment. John clearly describes the features and benefits of both operating systems, so that you can evaluate which one is best for any given task. The hints, tips, and techniques you’ll find here will help you create a heterogeneous OpenVMS and Linux computing environment to meet your needs today and tomorrow.”—Martin R. Fink, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, Business Critical Systems, Hewlett-Packard -- Review

Review
"I've found this book to be a practical, hands-on manual that explains how OpenVMS system managers can integrate their systems with Linux, allowing the two platforms to work cooperatively and extend the processing capability of a computing environment. John clearly describes the features and benefits of both operating systems, so that you can evaluate which one is best for any given task. The hints, tips, and techniques you'll find here will help you create a heterogeneous OpenVMS and Linux computing environment to meet your needs today and tomorrow."-Martin R. Fink, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, Business Critical Systems, Hewlett-Packard

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Digital Press (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555582672
• ISBN-13: 978-1555582678
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,032,651 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many screenshots and stories, not enough detail, November 26, 2007

By	David F. Douthitt "ssrat4" (Beloit, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book was a disappointment. It contains more pages of screenshots than text, and does not explain anything in any great detail. Most of the descriptions fall into the "push this button" category: Push This Button, then That Button, then That Button and it'll work - except for when it doesn't work.

The author spends a lot of time trying to be cute (and it fails). Even the title shows this: the subtitle "Tricks for Old Dogs, New Dogs and Hot Dogs with Open Systems" is too cute for words (besides being a little misleading). There is no discussion of the various "Open Systems" (such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Slackware, SUSE, Debian - or other non-Linux, non-UNIX systems).

Chapter 2 ("Breaking into OpenVMS and Linux") is totally out of place: it's in the wrong order, in the wrong book, et al. In chapter 6 ("Using E-mail with OpenVMS and Linux"), three pages are spent describing "the ol' days" of email - then almost 40 pages of screen shots. Chapter 7 ("SMB for OpenVMS and Linux") is two pages text, and 36 pages of screen shots. Chapter 8 ("Apache VMS and Linux Style") is 3 pages text and 26 pages of screen shots.

All of the chapters appear to share a single approach: here is product 1 (on OpenVMS) and product 2 (on Linux): here is how you set this product up on OpenVMS, and here is how you set up that product up on Red Hat Linux 7.3 (or whatever specific version). There is no mention of SUSE, or any other variant of Linux that can be found.

One interesting (and obvious!) lack is the lack of discussion of DECNET implementation on Linux. The DECNET project for Linux is never mentioned anywhere.

The index is 7 pages long - not very long at all.

The book is also somewhat aged; no mentions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora for example. The version of Red Hat used was Red Hat Linux 7.3, and the version of OpenVMS was OpenVMS 7.3-1. At least he said so; many books don't have the guts to mention it, or hide it somewhere deep in the bowels of the book (sometimes showing it by accident!).

Too bad. There is a real spot for a good detailed explanatory reference guide of the ways of getting Linux (not Red Hat Linux) to talk with OpenVMS.

4 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Leave VMS behind?, May 13, 2004

By A Customer

A little weird. VMS, excuse me, OpenVMS, is at best a stable niche, if not actually declining. The only people using it should be those with legacy applications running atop it. By contrast, linux is experiencing massive growth worldwide, for servers, and even on desktops.

But as a practical matter, there still are clusters of OpenVMS machines, which nowadays probably have linux machines in them. So interoperability would be nice. Somewhat like how Samba lets Microsoft and linux/Mac/unix machines see each other and access each others' data on a LAN. Here, the author explains how to get the linux and OpenVMS machines to cooperate.

With any luck, VMS readers of this book might learn enough about linux to eventually migrate their applications to it. That is, if they want to have a more promising career path.