A new release of GNV is available for both OpenVMS Alpha and Integrity Servers.  GNV version 1.6-2.  This kit is intended to be used with OpenVMS Alpha and Integrity FT8.2.  On Alpha, it also works with OpenVMS V7.3-2. It has not been tested with older versions of OpenVMS.

This release of GNV should be installed on an ODS-5 disk.  It has not been tested with ODS-2.  While it may work with ODS-2, installation
problems will likely arise. If your system disk is not ODS-5, it may be installed to an alternate ODS-5 disk.

An ODS-2 system disk may be converted to ODS-5 by booting an alternate system disk, or by booting the OpenVMS installation CD.  Mount the designated system disk privately (i.e. not /SYSTEM or /CLUSTER), and type:

$ SET VOLUME/STRUCTURE=5 disk

Then reboot the designated system disk.

Read the System Manager's Manual, Volume 1: Essentials, for information on using ODS-5 disks.  See Chapter 10, USING FILES AND DIRECTORIES.

Changes since GNV A-1.5-3

Known Problems:

Certain forms of pipe operations are known to have problems. For example:

    bash$ (cat t.txt) | less

This command works fine for a small enough t.txt. If the file is larger, the command hangs.

One workaround to this and certain other pipe hangs is to use the Run-Time Library's feature to increase the buffer size of the mailboxes used to implement pipes, as in the following example:

    $ DEFINE DECC$PIPE_BUFFER_SIZE 65000

Do not use a value much larger than 65000. For example, 65535 does not work.

For more information, refer to the discussion of the DECC$PIPE_BUFFER_SIZE feature in the Introduction Chapter of the HP C Run-Time Library Reference Manual for OpenVMS Systems.

This allows the command to work for moderately large files. However, sufficiently large files will still hang.

Another workaround to the hang is to use a temporary file as in the following example. Of course, this requires editing the script file.

    bash$ (cat t.txt) > s.txt; less s.txt; rm s.txt;

The real problem is that bash should execute both the cat and the less child processes asynchronously.  However, it does not currently do this. Instead, the less command does not get processed until the cat has completed. The output of the cat command is buffered in the pipe. If the pipe is not large enough to hold the entire output, then cat waits for the less function to read, but less does not run until the cat function completes. The result is a hang.

HP is attempting to resolve this problem in a future release of GNV.
There are numerous problems with the bash History File and Command-Line Editing.
HP hopes to resolve these in some future release of GNV.
$! is supposed to return the process id of the most recently executed background job. Currently, it instead returns a job number, which is not useful for most purposes.

HP hopes to resolve this problem in a future release of GNV.