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DATE
1.0 PURPOSE
The DATE program allows you to do some neat things. It does
all this in the background, so that you can proceed with
your regular work simultaneously.
2.0 HOW TO RUN DATE
Assuming it's on SYS:, start it with
@RUN SYS:DATE
It starts up and leaves your terminal at standard TOPS20
command level. You'll notice two slight differences,
though. Firstly, the character CTRL/Y will produce a prompt
which says
DATE>
If you do this accidentally, type EXIT<cr> to get out.
Secondly, if you try to POP out of your new "top level"
exec, you'll get an error saying
DATE: no higher exec level
If you start it automatically by running it from LOGIN.CMD,
start it as the last item in your LOGIN.CMD, because no
commands in LOGIN.CMD beyond it will be seen by the exec!
3.0 HOW TO DO INTERESTING THINGS
The default state for DATE is to not provide any of its
features. You must enable the ones you want. Some of them
require WHEEL privileges. To enable and disable features,
either put commands in DATE.CMD in your login directory, or
type commands when you see
DATE>
which you get if you type CTRL/Y.
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4.0 ENABLE INSTANT-PUSH
This command allows you to type CTRL/P when you want to do
exec commands while other programs or commands are already
executing.
CAUTION:
Only type CTRL/P while no program or command is
reading input from your terminal. Otherwise that
program or command will be competing with the new
exec for terminal input! If you inadvertantly get
into this state, use CTRL/R to ascertain which
command level is listening to you. Then give that
command level's appropriate exit command (for
instance POP for and exec or EXIT or CTRL/Z for many
programs).
5.0 ENABLE GRUMP-CHECKING
This allows you to see grumps as people submit them.
6.0 ENABLE MAIL-PREVIEWING
This feature causes mail sent to you to while you are logged
in to be immediately displayed on your terminal. The mail
remains "unread", so any system features reminding you of
new mail will continue to remind you. This MAIL-PREVIEWING
feature allows you to automatically see what message has
just been sent to you, without you having to interrupt what
you are doing in order to see what the message is about.
New system mail (message-of-the-day) is also displayed with
MAIL-PREVIEWING on.
7.0 ENABLE SPY-PROTECTION
This requires WHEEL privileges, and warns you whenever
someone links to you, regardless of whether it is a two-way
link or a sneaky one-way link.
8.0 ENABLE BUGCHK-REPORTING
This allows you to see BUGCHK's and BUGINF's as they get
logged. This is useful so that you can see whenever you do
something that causes a bug.
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9.0 ENABLE STATISTICS-REPORTING
This command causes the typing of CTRL/D to display a myriad
of information. The items displayed are:
9.1 Current Date, Time, Load Average
9.2 List Of Jobs
This list displays the user name, program name, and what
percentage of the system they used in the last ten seconds.
Only jobs that have used "alot" are reported. "Alot" is
defined as over 50% of what the load average predicts they
should use. For instance, if the load average is 4, any job
using over 12.5% of the machine will be reported. This is
useful for seeing why the system is slow, and who's hogging
it!
9.3 Active Files
Any files currently being read or written by your job are
displayed if the files have a non-zero file pointer. (This
is a vague description).
10.0 ENABLE LOGGING (ON FILE) FILESPEC
This allows all of DATE's asynchronous output to be recorded
in the specified file, as well as on your terminal. DISABLE
LOGGING will turn off logging. The output to the SHOW
SETTINGS command will tell whether logging is enabled.
The filespec defaults to DATE.LOG. The default behavior is
for any previously existing file of the specified name to be
appended rather than superseded. If you desire the log file
to be superseded, delete it before giving the ENABLE LOGGING
command.
An example of asynchronous logging that will appear in the
log file is a line announcing that someone has written a
particular file (assuming you have given ENABLE
UPDATE-FILE-CHECKING).
Note that synchronous output such as statistics in reponse
to CTRL/D, or output from a specific command, such as SHOW
VALUE, will not be recorded in the log file.
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11.0 ENABLE UPDATE-FILE-CHECKING (FOR FILES) filespec
Whenever someone writes a file matching the specified
"filespec", you will be told what file got written, by whom,
and when. For instance, you could say
DATE>ENABLE UPDATE SYS:*.EXE
and you will be told whenever someone puts new programs on
SYS:.
This command can be given over and over, in order to watch
several different sets of files.
The SHOW SETTINGS command will include a list of which file
sets are being checked.
You can use DISABLE UPDATE-FILE-CHECKING to cease checking
particular file sets.
12.0 ENABLE HOG-CHECKING
This causes you to get told whenever a user is using an
unfairly large portion of the machine due to using his
privileges to coerce the scheduler into giving him more
attention than anyone else. You will be told when said user
stops using the special scheduler priority.
12.1 EXCLUDE HOG user
This command allows specific users to hog the system without
being reported. For instance, if you know that operator
jobs occasionally run NETCON, which hogs the system, and you
don't want to be told this, but you do want to be told when
other users hog the system, you can say
DATE>EXCLUDE HOG OPERATOR
which will prevent announcements regarding operator jobs
hogging the system.
12.2 INCLUDE HOG user mask
This command causes a set of users that was previously
declared to be excluded (see EXCLUDE HOG) from announcement,
to be again announced. The user mask is either a specific
user name or one with wildcard characters. For instance, to
cause announcements about all hoggers no matter what user
they are, and you have previously excluded some, you can say
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DATE>INCLUDE HOG *
to cause all users to be reported.
13.0 SHOW WHO'S-USING filespec n (THROUGH JOB NUMBER) z
This command, available to wheels only, displays which files
are in use by the selected job range. The filespec defaults
to all disk files, n defaults to 0, and z defaults to very
large. Hence the following command will show all files in
use:
DATE>SHOW WHO
As another example, this will show who's running FORTRAN
programs using the field image FORTRAN:
DATE>SHOW WHO'S-USING PS:[FIELD-IMAGE]FOROTS
14.0 SHOW BUGHLTS
This command causes all BUGHLT's which have occurred since
your previous login to be displayed. This is useful for
finding out "why the system crashed".
15.0 SHOW VALUE (OF SYMBOL) yyy
This command lists the value of the MONSYM symbol whose name
is yyy.
Note: The first time you give this command, DATE must
initialize the symbol table, so you'll notice an
approximately 20 second lapse in service.
16.0 SHOW SYMBOLS (WITH VALUE) v
This lists all MONSYM symbols whose value is v. See note on
SHOW VALUE command.
17.0 SHOW SETTINGS
This command shows the current settings, as determined by
the ENABLE, DISABLE, and EXCLUDE and INCLUDE commands. An
asterisk appears in front of enabled items for quick
scanning.
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18.0 SHOW BUG-STRING (For BUG name) a
This command will print on your terminal the text string
associated with the bug named 'a'.
19.0 QUIT (COMPLETELY)
This command gets you out of the DATE program entirely.
Normally, you should use the EXIT command instead, which
resumes whatever you were running when you typed CTRL/Y to
get to DATE.
20.0 SET INTERRUPT-CHARACTER (TO) p
This command allows a new character, CTRL/p, to replace
CTRL/Y as the interrupt character that gets you to DATE
command level. This is useful if you need to be able to
type CTRL/Y as input to another program.
21.0 EXCLUDE BUG (name) a
This command will allow you to prevent one or a number of
bugs from being reported as they occur. The bug name
represented by 'a' may be wild carded with * and % to obtain
subsets of the entire list of bugs. As an example,
DATE>EXCLUDE BUG *
will prevent all bugs from being reported. The following
will prevent all bugs of six characters and beginning with
UXX from being reported.
DATE>EXCLUDE BUG UXX%%%
22.0 INCLUDE BUG (name) a
This command will allow you to resume reporting on the bug
named 'a' which you had previously excluded. For example,
assume you had issued the following exclude command:
DATE>EXCLUDE BUG *
then the following command,
DATE>INCLUDE BUG DN20ST
will cause DATE to report only on the DN20ST bug. The bug
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name 'a' may be fully wild carded as in the EXCLUDE command.
Note that whether or not any bugs are reported at all still
depends on the enable/disable setting of the BUG option.
The EXCLUDE BUG and INCLUDE BUG commands merely serve to
qualify which of the bugs get reported on your terminal if
you have the option enabled.
23.0 SHOW LOGIN-TIME (FOR USER) USERNAME
This command shows what time and date the specified user
last logged in.
The set of users that you can get the last login time of is
the same set that you can get the login time of with the
exec's INFO DIRECTORY command.