On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 9:48 AM, Steve Thompson <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've got an observation you and your boss probably won't like.
>
> Windows is based on CP/M (that is what Microsoft started with). Guess what
> CP/M was based on.
>

​Hum, I used CP/M on a z80 based system back in the day. I don't recall
what it was based upon. I thought it was "new" from Digital Research (Gary
Kindall). I know that it targeted the 8080 architecture.​



>
> Now, here we are 30+ years from M/S and Windows (~ 1983 for first
> release), and they have a lower RAS than does Linux which started after
> them (~1991).
>
> So, perhaps your boss should consider going to Linux Desktops and get away
> from the problems of Windows?
>

​Too bad that the company CIO is a devoted Windows lover who despises any
other platform: Wintel or Death! seems to be his mantra.​



>
> As more and more people go to Linux Desktops, Adobe (and others) would
> have to change their position and go back to supporting their products for
> Linux distros.
>

​I'd love that!​



>
> And then the *nix file structure being case sensitive would stop being a
> problem, because one would get use to it from working with it on a daily
> basis.
>

​Eventually. Unless the big players like RedHat, Canonical, et al. "did an
Apple" and created a filesystem (ext5?) which could be set as "case
insensitive" in order to placate the masses and get market share.​



>
> My biggest problem with *nix (POSIX) on z/OS is the goofy way we have to
> define the files for it.
>

​Hum, would you expand upon that? I don't really have any problems defining
files. Creating a new filesystem is a bit "weird" to me, but that's because
I use the zfsadm command from a "true" (not TSO OMVS) UNIX shell prompt.
The use of JCL and that program which I can never remember is a bit weird.
And needing to enclose the PATH= value in ' marks is a bit strange, but
understandable from the JCL viewpoint.​




>
> Perhaps the MVS side of z/OS needs to learn to get along with FBA and we
> can stop emulating ECKD with FBA, that then emulate FBA to allow POSIX
> (Unix System Services and related file systems) to work on/with z/OS (what
> overhead).


> [FBA boxes seem to be cheaper than the ones that emulate ECKD devices --
> well at least from where I sit.]
>

​ ​YES! +infinity on that.​ The is the barest beginning of that in z/OS
with "z/OS FBA Services" for a 2107 with the zDDB feature.
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.3.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r3.ieaa800/fbaasm.htm

That gives the conceptual equivalent to using EXCP or XDAP on an
unformatted ECKD device. IBM needs to work on supported "access method"
type facilities. ​I'd start with the "next generation" zFS filesystem being
able to use "z/OS FBA Services". This shouldn't be, conceptually, a big
problem. The current zFS is a VSAM LINEAR dataset. Which is basically a DSN
which is formatted as 4K physical blocks. The DSN is physically allocated
to the ZFS address space. An FBA device on z/OS is "dedicated" to a single
address space, so that should work the same -- the FBA device is dedicated
to the ZFS address space. IBM "just" needs to write an I/O routine which
uses z/OS FBA Services instead of VSAM LINEAR to access it and Bob's your
uncle.



>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> Regards,
> Steve Thompson
>
>
-- 
We all have skeletons in our closet.
Mine are so old, they have osteoporosis.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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