Free MPE Software

Please Note:

The Allegro software offered on this page is not shareware. It is freeware copyright by Allegro Consultants, Inc. We believe these programs to be safe, well-behaved software, and we would appreciate any feedback.

The non-Allegro and Compatibility Mode software packages available below are offered according to the terms of the original authors who provided them. We include them here, with permission, as a courtesy to the community.

In all cases — Allegro and non-Allegro — these utilities are provided “as is”, and you may use them on your HP 3000 at your own risk. Allegro makes no warranties as to performance, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or any other warranties whether expressed or implied.

Contents

Instructions

Most of our downloadable software packages for MPE/iX are available as either STD (STORE-to-Disk) archives or LZW files.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please read our STD information and/or the LZW “how to” document before trying to transfer a package to your HP 3000!

If you plan to restore the files into the ALLEGRO account, which we strongly recommend, you’ll probably want to do the following first:

   :hello manager.sys
   :newacct allegro, mgr; pass= somesecretpassword; cap = &
        AM,AL,GL,DI,CV,UV,LG,PS,NA,NM,CS,ND,SF,BA,IA,PM,MR,DS,PH
   :altacct allegro;access=(r,x,l:any;w,a:ac)
   :altgroup pub.allegro; cap = BA,IA,PM,MR,DS,PH; &
        access=(r,x,l:any;w,a,s:ac)
   :newgroup data.allegro; access=(r,x,l:any;w,a,s:ac)
   :newgroup doc.allegro; access=(r,x,l:any;w,a,s:ac)
   :newgroup help.allegro; access=(r,x,l:any;w,a,s:ac)

Note: most Allegro programs can be run with a “help” entrypoint of to display online help. For example:

   :run appender.pub.allegro,help

Allegro Programs

    • ALLOWALL : Gives the current user, either a job or a session, temporary access to all commands normally restricted to the system OPERATOR. It has the same effect as someone issuing a series of ALLOW commands at the system CONSOLE. When the job/session logs off, the user reverts back to default capabilities. When this program is run it does a PRINTOP so that a message similar to the following will appear on the CONSOLE, and will be logged if CONSOLE logging is enabled: 
        12:05/#S47/95/ALLOWALL run by JANE.GLAP,DATA

      This program should run on all versions of MPE/iX, as well as on “classic” MPE/V. NOTE: This program must reside in a GROUP.ACCOUNT with PM capability, but can be run by any user on the system if MPE security permits it.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • APPENDER : Appends text to a file. Both text and filename are specifed in the INFO string. Can be used to replace “echo >>” in POSIX shell. This avoids a problem in which the shell append can result in thousands of file extents being created.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • AUTOST : A tool which allows a system manager to add or delete an autoboot command file on an HP 3000 system without having to reboot or update from a CSLT.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • BACKCTL : sets or unsets a flag in a file’s label (metadata
    • ) to tell MPE that the file should not be backed up by STORE, or by other backup products which honor the flag.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • BIGDIRS : A utility to find “big” directories on an MPE/iX system. Large directories (e.g., thousands of files) can trigger system aborts. BIGDIRS can scan the entire file system and report which directories are “big” (either by number of entries, or by the size (in bytes) of the directory).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • CHECKWWW : A utility to check an HP 3000’s web server’s access log file, looking for problems. It can also scan a web page hierarchy, looking for bad local links.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • CHKRTMSL : This program tells you if RTMSL is enabled or not, and optionally enables or disables it.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • COMPILE : A utility to automate compiles. QEDIT aware. Vaguely similar to “make”, but with all information embedded in a comment area of the source file, not in a separate Makefile.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • COMPRDDS : An unsupported privileged program that tries to enable/disable hardware compression for DDS drives.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • COPYFILE : A (somewhat old) fast file copier. No wildcards, but it can copy privileged files like IMAGE datasets. For a more full featured file copier, see the REP Tool.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • COUNTNB : A program that counts the number of code, blank, and comment lines read from $STDINX.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • DBDRIVE : A different approach to a generalized low-level IMAGE/SQL exerciser. Somewhat more friendly than DBDRIVER.PUB.SYS.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • DEBUGMAC : A utility that enters Debug/iX after loading DATINIT.DAT.TELESUP and does an implied MACSTART ,”1″. This makes it easier to run the DAT macros on a live system.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • DISKMAP : DiskMap is a utility to analyze disk and file usage and fragmentation. The most popular commands are:
      • LISTLT ALL EXTENTS 400
        list all files that have more than 400 extents
      • MAP ALL
        produce a one-line-per-disk-drive “map” of disk space usage
      • VSODS NODES 100
        list in-use objects (usually files) that are using more than 100 nodes in the Extent B-Tree

      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • EDFILE : A very tiny file editor which can edit files (including userlabels) in ASCII, binary, or hex. EDFILE may be run as a separate program, or invoked via QEDIT’s P command.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • EJECT : A privileged program that turns DDS eject-on-close on/off. It also has a “once only” eject-on-close option.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FILECODE : A utility that changes the filecode of files on MPE/iX. It must reside in a group with PM capability.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FILEOPEN : A utility, callable via QEDIT’s “P” command, which aids in writing FOPEN calls in SPL, FORTRAN, or Pascal.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FILLSCR : FILLSCR is a simple program designed to emit text to the screen, in an attempt to “fill” the screen, for the purpose of testing the size of terminal memory. This can come in handy, for example, when testing terminal emulators.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FINDBIG : Searches for files larger than some specified number of megabytes. It can also look for files with ACDs, bad creators, new files, old files, and/or files with HFS names (but not MPE names). Run FINDBIG with the entrypoint of “HELP” for more information.
      This program is also known as…

      • FINDACD : (find files with ACDs);
      • FINDBADC : (find files with creators from other accounts);
      • FINDFILE : (find files that match some criteria);
      • FINDHFS : (find files that have HFS names, not MPE names);
      • FINDNEW : (find files newer than a particular date);
      • FINDOLD : (find files older than a particular date).

      …because its default search behavior depends upon its own file system name.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FIXCLOCK : A command file that updates your hardware clock to match your software clock. This is useful when you have an incorrect hardware clock setting, which can affect some programs.
      Download: FIXCLOCK.txt (command file)

    • FIXFDATE : The free FIXFDATE utility will sweep through your files and change any creation/modification/access/allocation/statechange date that is a “future” date to be “today”.
      Usage:

         :run fixfdate
      ... searches all files in your logon account

   :run fixfdate; info = "/"
      ... searchs all files on the system

   :run fixfdate; info = "@.FRED"
      ... searches the files in @.FRED

   :run fixfdate, help
      ... prints on-line help

      Download: STD or LZW

    • FIXROOT : Unfortunately, MPE’s STORE program changes an Image root file’s modification date, even if the file (or database in general) has not be modified. The FIXROOT program rectifies the condition by searching for Image root files that have dates more recent than dataset 1, and changes those dates to match dataset 1.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FLUSH : Flushes closed disk files from memory; useful when doing timing tests that you want to have repeatable and meaningful.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FMTFCODE : Includes code (source & object) plus an in-line “database” of filecodes, which allows you to convert to/from filecode numbers and filecode mnemonics, including mnemonics for vendor/user filecodes (in addition to HP filecodes).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • FOPEN : A set of Debug/iX macros that shows the parameters to an FOPEN call.
      Download: TEXT file

    • FTPRUN : A logon “CI” replacement, UDC, SL, and XL that allow system managers to provide restricted dial-in (or network) logon access to selected file transfer programs.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • GETVA : A subset of XMONOFF, this program allows the user to determine the virtual address of a file’s data, its file label, and the current/most-recent GUFD. Its main purpose is to assist support staff from Allegro in helping customers.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • HOURPROG : Says “hi” to the system console once an hour, and synchronizes the system clock at the same time (via NETTIME, packaged with HOURPROG).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • HPFOPEN : A set of Debug/iX macros that displays the parameters of an HPFOPEN call.
      Download: TEXT file

    • HTTPBACK : Background detacher for HTTPD. HTTPBACK allows you to have your HTTPD running without having a constantly running batch job (or session).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • LCLINT : A port of LCLint to the HP 3000. Lint is a tool that checks your C source code for potential problems. In addition, we’ve added the ability to handle “#pragma intrinsic“, if you have CSEQ, one of our Toolbox programs sold by Lund Performance Solutions.
      For notes on installation, see the help text.
      Sample use (from the shell):

        export LARCH_PATH=/usr/include
  lclint foo.c

      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • MECONS : Makes the current terminal the system console, even if it is connected via the network. When the session terminates, the console reverts to ldev 20. This includes MPE/iX and MPE/V versions.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • MHZ : Another program to measure the speed of your CPU (in MHz). The included source code can be compiled on many Unix systems.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • MICHECK : A utility that reports whether the Measurement Interface (MI) is currently on or off.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • MODIFY : A replacement for the “VEMOD” single-line visual mode editing routine inside QEDIT.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • ONLINE : A utility which can put most tape drives, DDS (DAT) drives, and DLT drives back online. Waits for the AVR (Automatic Volume Recognition) to complete before returning to the user (this uses Priv Mode).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • OSVER : A program that analyzes HPSWINFO.PUB.SYS to tell you what version of MPE is installed on your system.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • PDCPATHS : The PDCPATHS program tries to fetch and display the boot path information for your system.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • PHANTASM : A CM alternative interface to BASIC.PUB.SYS.
      Download: STD or LZW

    • PTRUTIL : Sample source code and NMOBJ for accessing long pointers from COBOL or other languages. Source included, written in Pascal.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • PURGER : A wildcard file purger which can purge privileged files in addition to non-privileged files.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • RUPTIME, RWHO, & RWHOD : Programs to report how local systems are doing. RUPTIME reports how long various local computers have been up, assuming they’re running an rwhod demon. RWHO reports who is logged on to various local computers, also assuming they’re running rwhod. RWHOD allows an HP 3000 to participate in this report by broadcasting information to various local computers. Although you may put the files into /usr/local/bin, they seem to run fine from the CI. The job stream RWHOD.JOB.ALLEGRO is a sample job file to run RWHOD. Notes:
      1. rwho and ruptime aren’t much use if you don’t have rwhod running.
      2. Before running rwhodfor the first time, do… 
           :newdir /var/spool/rwho

        …and make sure that whoever you’re running rwhod as has write access to the directory.
        Also, everyone should have read access to it (for rwho and ruptime).
        The /var/spool/rwho directory is where rwhod stores information about systems that are broadcasting rwho information. For example: chmod 775 /var/spool/rwho

      3. The RWHOD program file must be in a group.account with PM capability!

      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SCOM : A file comparison program, designed to compare printable ASCII files, including QEDIT files.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SETFDATE : A CM program that sets various dates for files (e.g., access date, creation date, etc) to specified values. Note: it does not know about “state change date”, because it’s an old CM program. For modern date manipulations, see FIXFDATE below.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SHCI : A utility designed to be called from the POSIX shell, replacing the “callci” command. It takes its parameters and passes them to the HPCICOMMAND intrinsic.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SHOWSW : A set of Debug/iX macros that shows (or counts) switches to/from CM/NM (either or both).
      Plain TEXT macro file

    • SHOWTMR : Displays information about system “timers”, including how many are in use at the current time.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SLFREE : A package of routines that can be called from QEDIT or EDITOR. Some “clean” text, some downshift text, some write FOPEN calls.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • NewSTORDATE : A utility to list the ‘header’ of an NM STORE tape …this will show you when the tape was created, and (usually) how many files are on the tape set.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SSTOBYTE : An alternative to the MPE/iX /bin/tobyte program. The usage is the same as /bin/tobyte. It must be run from the shell, not the CI!.
      Installation:

         :copy sstobyte.pub.allegro, /usr/local/bin/sstobyte

      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • SYSLOG : A utility that displays and changes what items are being logged by system logging to the LOG####.PUB.SYS files. The next LOG#### number may be configured. In addition, the network logging NMLG#### number, as well as the next NMTrace file number can be adjusted.
      NOTE: this is not the same as the Unix “syslog” utility.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • TAPECHK : Checks tapes/tape-drives. We wrote it when we had a tape drive that failed with every program we ran *except* TAPETEST.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • TAPECOPY : Copies a single reel STORE tape to disk as a STORE-to-Disk file, and vice versa. Notes:
      • To handle multiple (or single) reels, or to handle STORE tapes created with the MAXTAPEBUF option, please see our X-Over product.
      • To handle just single reels created with the MAXTAPEBUF option, please see TapeTape, part of our TapeDisk product.

      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • TAPEDIR : Displays the contents of CM STORE tapes. TAPEDIR is a subset of the TINDEX Tool, which handles NM & CM STORE tapes, TAR tapes, SLT/SYSGEN tapes, memory dump tapes, and others.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • TAPESTAT : A utility to test and report the status of a tape drive. Original version courtesy of Terry Tipton, formerly named CHKTAPE.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • TAPETAPE : A utility to copy single reel tapes to another single reel … this is no longer available because it has been enhanced and added to our TAPEDISK product. In addition to being able to read records larger than the standard file system limit (a necessity for some STORE tapes!), it can read and duplicate DDS setmarks (used by some backup products!). TAPETAPE can also create up to ten copies of an input tape at a time.

    • TIMETEST : A simple program which tests if your session has an altered date/time, and times how long calls to various datge/time routines take (e.g., CALENDAR).
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • UNWRQ : UNWRQ is a program that reads a binary “WRQ labels” (Reflection) file uploaded to MPE from a PC/Mac, and extracts the embedded MPE file.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • WHOIS : A port of Marco d’Itri’s “whois” program. It seems to have to be run from the shell, not from the CI.
      Installation:

         :copy whois.pub.allegro, /usr/local/bin/whois
   :newdir /usr/local/man        (if needed)
   :newdir /usr/local/man/man1   (if needed)
   :copy whois.doc.allegro, /usr/local/man/man1/whois.1

      Notes:

      • If you created directories, you may want to set their security appropriately.
      • You will need to have the GNU groff tool installed for “man whois” to work correctly.

      Download: STD or LZW
      man page

    • XCLOSE : A dangerous program which tries to close a specified file that some process has open, which you need closed.
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information

    • XMONOFF : A utility to look at a file and display various virtual addresses for the file (file label, GUFD, and file data), and optionally attach/detach the file from XM. (HFS files cannot be detached.)
      Download: STD or LZW
      Plain text information


XSCHEMA : A stripped down version of our commercial product DBHTML, this utility simply reads an Image root file and produces a DBSCHEMA-compatible text file as output.
Download: LZW or STD
Plain text information

(top) (contents) (instructions) (Allegro Programs) (CM Programs)

Non-Allegro Programs, available for download here

A collection of miscellaneous non-Allegro software for the HP 3000

    • TAPESTAT : Terry Tipton has allowed us to modify/release a new version of his CHKTAPE utility. Our version is now named TAPESTAT.
      Downlaod: LZW or std
      Plain text information

    • LUA : This is a very experimental port of the Lua language to MPE/iX. You can learn more about Lua at www.lua.org.You may download Lua 5.1 in STORE-to-Disk format to your PC, but bear in mind this is experimental software.

    • MASTEROP : Carl Kemp has made the newest, Year-2000 compliant version of his MasterOp job scheduler package available for download in LZW format. Please note that we don’t provide a directly clickable link to MasterOp in order to prevent robots from downloading it every day, however you can get to it via the following URL:
      http://allegro~com/software/mpe/non_allegro/MASTEROP~LZW
      (Note: you’ll need to convert all instances of “~” to “.” in order for this link to work!!!)
      After you restore the files from the LZW archive, see MASTEROP.txt (also known as README.DOC.KEMP) for installation instructions. You do need to stream BULDKEMP.PUB.KEMP, but you don’t need to restore the files from tape.
      If you’re looking for a full-featured, commercially supported job scheduling package for MPE/iX we also recommend that you take a look at Tidal Software’s MPE Express product (formerly OCS). Please note, however, that their web site no longer appears to have any readily available information about Express.

    • PYTHON : an object-oriented scripting language for MPE/iX
      Please see our separate Python/iX page for detailed information and installation instructions.

    • RUBY : This is a very experimental port of the Ruby language to MPE/iX. You can learn more about Ruby at Ruby Central. You may download Ruby 1.6.1 in STORE-to-Disk format to your PC, but bear in mind this is experimental software.The resulting download should be 5,825,536 bytes in size. You need to then FTP it into a file on your HP 3000 as follows: 
        C:\> ftp [your HP 3000]
  [login as MANAGER.SYS]
  ftp> binary
  ftp> put RUBY.std RUBY;rec=128,1,f,binary;disc=22756,8;code=2501

      You can log into the HP 3000 as MANAGER.SYS and install Ruby by doing:

        :FILE RUBY;DEV=DISC
  :RESTORE *RUBY;;CREATE=PATH

      At this point Ruby should be fully installed. To test it, you can try:

        :SH.HPBIN.SYS -L
  /SYS/PUB $ /usr/local/bin/irb
  irb(main):001:0> print "Hello World!\n"
  Hello World!
  nil
  irb(main):002:0> quit

      This version has a few known problems (time functions will always return Jan 1, 1970) and has not been tested very much, but otherwise seems to work. As always, your mileage may vary, and we provide no warranty for this software whatsoever!

      We would appreciate reports of success or problems.

  • SFTP : Secure FTP client, allows MPE users to access secure FTP sites. Note that this is a client only, not a server! As far as we’re aware, it is not possible to run inbound sFTP services under MPE/iX. After downloading the SFTP STORE-to-Disk file (WRQ format) you may wish to consult our How-To document for information on getting the sFTP client configured properly.

(top) (contents) (instructions) (Allegro Programs) (Non-Allegro Programs) (Compatibility Mode Programs)

Non-Allegro Programs, available for download from other sites

A catalog of miscellaneous non-Allegro software for the HP 3000 available at other web sites

    • Three handy utilties ported to the HP 3000 platform by Andreas Schmidt:
      • ANALOG : A program which analyzes logfiles from web servers. ANALOG is freeware originally written by Stephen Turner.
      • PLOTICUS/iX : A data display engine originally written by Steve Grubb.
      • TIDY/iX : A utility that helps to correct HTML code and tidies up sloppy editing into nicely layed out HTML code.

(top) (contents) (instructions) (Allegro Programs) (Non-Allegro Programs)

Compatibility Mode (“Classic”) Programs

These are old CM programs of unknown origin (and not written by Allegro Consultants, Inc.). Unless otherwise noted, they will run on both MPE V and MPE/iX. Available download formats are LZW and STD (STORE-To-Disk). Your mileage may vary.

    • ALTPROG : A program that can modify attributes of a CM program file (e.g., capability list, stack size).
      Download: STD or LZW

    • PROGMAP : A program that displays information about the segments and procedures inside a specified CM program. The procedure-level information requires that the program have been prepped with FPMAP. This is a slightly modified version of the 1988-10-11 (A.01.04) version as contributed to the CSL and/or swap-tape by Exxon.
      Download: std or LZW
      Plain text information

  • XLOGON5 : A program that can do a “re-logon”, changing your job/session name, user name, account name, and logon group… without really logging off and on. Will not run on MPE/iX.
    Download: std or LZW
    Plain text information

(top) (contents) (instructions) (Allegro Programs) (Non-Allegro Programs)