Status on 28 July 2010

Have spent some time over the last couple of days reviewing OpenVMS
commands and configuring the account's web site.

Alpha is one of the few systems avalable to me whose web server
supports SSL transactions (or at least one of the few where I can
potentially configure SSL for my own site). I'm planning/hoping to
set-up SSL and HTTP basic authentication to secure all or a part of
the site, most likely for purely personal content. (Polarhome's port
mapping scheme reduces Alpha's avaiability.)

The first bottleneck (beyond unfamiliarity with OpenVMS) is CGI
configuration. I have copied a couple of DCL CGI scripts but they
have so far returned only error pages. I have tried adjusting file
protection settings (guessing: I haven't found any guidelines)
without success. Has Alpha's web server been configured for
per-account CGI, or any CGI? ==> Find server config. guidelines and
ask Zoli on the forum.

OpenVMS doesn't have quite the wealth of free software available as
Unix-like systems. I haven't yet clarified what exactly is installed
on Alpha. However, it's unlikely Common Lisp, my current
language-of-choice, will be available. C, C++, and DCL appear to be
the languages bundled with OpenVMS. BASIC and maybe a few others are
also available. Time to learn C?

edit not formatting screen properly, probably due to incorrect
terminal definition (connecting with GNOME terminal -> ssh ->
Alpha). vi/vim (are they separate programs or aliases for the same
executable?) work fine.