DNETNML(8)

📦 version 2.65build2, in ubuntu jammy

🦋 NAME 🦋

okay bestie, so dnetnml is the DECnet Network Management Listener. that's the whole vibe. she listens, she manages, she's booked and busy. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dnetnml [options]

and the options are, in their natural habitat:

[-dVh]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so dnetnml is a daemon and her whole job is serving up incoming management requests from remote systems — usually from NCP, like when the remote side is VMS or RSX. she's the girl at the front desk with the clipboard, fr fr. 🎀

the recommended way to run her is from dnetd, by adding this exact line to /etc/dnetd.conf:

NML            19         N         nobody       dnetnml
okay but like, type it exactly. she's sensitive. 🙈

rn she only serves a subset of information requests — not everything, just these queens. in NCP terms:

SHOW KNOWN NODES
SHOW ADJACENT NODES
SHOW EXEC CHAR
SHOW KNOWN OBJECTS
SHOW KNOWN LINKS
heads up bestie — for SHOW KNOWN OBJECTS to actually work, /etc/dnetd.conf needs to be readable by the daemon user (which is usually nobody). if it's not, you're getting a Privilege Violation and nothing else. 😭

now listen, there is no sensitive data in that file, so it's genuinely quite OK to set the permissions to 0644. i'm giving you permission. do it. 🫶 but just so you know — that is not the default. so don't act surprised when it doesn't work out of the box, mwah. 💖

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -d — don't fork and run in the background. this is the debug-girlie setting. use it when you want her right there in front of you. 🔥
  • -v — verbose. and the way that she's verbose is cumulative — the more -vs you stack, the more she says. but please don't use more than one for normal operation, because it will seriously impair performance. one is cute. two is a crime scene. 💀
  • -h, -? — displays help for using the command. she's helpful like that. ✨
  • -V — shows the version of dnetnml. know your queen's lineage. 👑

💀 BUGS 💀

ngl... probably lots. 😭 particularly because some of the functions are undocumented and whoever wrote this had to literally reverse-engineer them. respect the hustle tho. 🫡

also SHOW KNOWN LINKS doesn't show quite the same information as VMS does. so don't come for her.

and the big one: dnetnml relies on the information she can get from /proc/net/decnet, which means she can't show load PIDs or processes. unfortunately. it's not her fault, it's the kernel's. periodt. 🙈

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

made with love by the DECnet utilities girlies 💜 — this is the September 5 2008 era, okurrr, stay iconic ✨

📦 where this page comes from