|
Manfred,
You will not be able to register the Macintosh. Unfortunately, we have
encountered some problems interoperating with the Mac's NICE protocol
and its NML object server.
I have been in contact with some of the Mac people here that should be
able to help us resolve exactly what is going on. For your purposes
however, we can't register the MacIntosh. It will take a new release
of either DECmcc or the DECnet that runs on Macs.
That doesn't mean that you can't perform operations to it using DECmcc.
The error you have seen,
The requested operation cannot be completed
MCC Unhandled Service Reply = NML object not found on Node
has, in my experience, been intermittent. In a few moments, whatever
condition it was that occurred will be cleared up. It seems that the
Mac itself requires a little time to clean up the context associated
with its NML object. If you want to use DECmcc FCL, you can, but I
would suggest NOT using NCP around the same time.
It is unfortunate that you can't register the Mac, as that means that
you cannot put it on the map.
However, you can use FCL (the command line interface) to interoperate
with the mac with good success. I have done a wide variety of
operations to Macs (short of Registering them).
The best suggestion I can give you for your customer:
1) Show them some management capability via FCL. Not everything is
possible, so try it first. Also, be sure that DECmcc is the
only manager you'll be using against the Mac. I have found that
using NCP first, then switching to DECmcc is likely to cause the
error you have seen. It can occur at other times, and I'm not
sure what the conditions required are. It appears that Macs
only allow one manager at a time.
2) Tell them we're looking into the situation (true), but be
careful not to make any promises. I don't know the exact nature
of the failure, or how we will get around it yet. It may be
fixed in DECmcc, or in the Mac. We may be able to get around
the whole situation by modifying our Registration requirements.
There are a lot of options.
FYI - it has been my experience that the Mac responds much more
reliably to our requests if you give it a short break between requests.
Sometimes it seems to take thirty seconds or so to recover from
whatever it is doing so that it can listen again.
Sorry I can't give you a better answer. We have just not been able to
spend enough time with this problem to understand it fully.
The MacIntosh falls into the category of "really nice things to support
if it happens without too much trouble". It has not been a primary
focus although I am aware that it is often an integral part of NAS
demos and would like to see it on the map and seamlessly integrated.
We're definitely working towards that, but we don't have it for you
yet.
-Jim Carey
P.S. Hi Manfred! It is good to know you made it back from your trip to
the States and now you're trying to sell DECmcc!
|
| re .1
Jim,
How can I help change the status "real nice if not too much trouble..."
of the Mac to something higher. Like "if you don't do Mac's DECmcc
is of no value to us." The customer I an considering has a couple
hundered VAXen, some I*M PC's and more than 1700 Mac's. The Mac
population is projected to double in the next 16 months.
The numbers vary from customer to customer, but we simply must have
a better story for service of the Mac's.
Regards,
Glen R.
|
| I am the Development Manager for DECmcc DNA4 AMs. If the customer that
was talked about in .3 is a very large sale (ie. more than a few
DECmcc licenses), make that information available to Tony Viola of
TaN Network Management marketing. If you know of other situations
where support of Mac's is the critical factor to selling DECmcc
include that in your message to Tony. For the DNA4 AM team to spend
any significant effort to provide a work around for Macintosh's
idiosynchracies, we need to defer some other work. Right now Mac's
have little impact on DECmcc is the perspective that we have. If
that perception is wrong, it needs to be corrected. The easiest
way to correct it is to quantify the impact of not having it
supported. Without that information there is little likelihood that
Network Management Engineering will give higher priority to Mac's.
NME is working on changeing the way registration works. Sometime in
the future the Registration FM will allow registration of entities
that are currently unreachable. When that becomes available you will
be able to register Mac's whose NML is not currently reachable. We
have had similar problems with DECnet DOS in the past doing the same
things. DECnet DOS's latest releases have corrected the problem but
it has inspired us to change the way registration will work.
Regrettably this will not fix your problem for the short term. The
work within the Registration FM is scheduled but has not been started.
We can make no commitments as to which kit it will be available in.
But we are aware of its need are making the changes.
Another avenue to consider. If you need AM specific work done, you
can contact Karl Molander on node NWACES. Karl has several developers
who are trained in developing Access Modules and who work very
tightly coupled with NME. Karl's people are for AM development
consulting to either customers and/or internal DEC organizations.
Karl may be able to do something for you in the short term and
feed it back into the mainstream product.
wally
|